Coffee review

What is the reason why hand-brewed coffee is slow? How to make high-density lightly roasted coffee?

Published: 2025-07-17 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/07/17, "Plugged","widowed","bitter" and "thin" are situations that often occur when brewing high-density beans. Many friends who have just started have a headache because no matter how they adjust, it is always difficult to make a good cup of coffee when using these beans. Not because the extraction time was too long

"Plugged","widowed","bitter" and "thin" are situations that often occur when brewing high-density beans. Many friends who have just started have a headache because no matter how they adjust, it is always difficult to make a good cup of coffee when using these beans. Either the extraction time is too long, or the coffee is extracted unevenly and insufficiently due to too much bypass water.

Although Qianjie has shared many related articles, there are still many friends who don't know how to deal with these coffee beans that are easy to block and overturn. That doesn't matter. Today, Qianjie will come and share again how high-density coffee beans should be brewed ~ So before entering into brewing and sharing, we need to first understand why high-density beans are so difficult to brew.

Why are high-density beans so difficult to wash? The so-called high density means that some coffee beans have high hardness and tight structure. Generally speaking, these beans will be grown at a higher altitude or the degree of baking will be relatively shallow. High-density coffee is more likely to deposit on the bottom of the filter cup during brewing than lower-density beans. This leads to the reduction of the flow channels of hot water, and it will be very easy for hot water to accumulate in the filter bowl during brewing, because the water injection rate will be much greater than the water drainage rate.

To put it bluntly, the amount of water injected will be larger than the amount of water injected, so the water in the filter cup will pile up more and more. This may cause the two situations mentioned by Qian Jie at the beginning, one is excessive extraction and the other is uneven extraction. If we don't build a high enough white wall when brewing, too much hot water injection will drown out the coffee powder. This will provide some "side ways" for hot water to avoid contact with coffee powder and penetrate out from other parts of the filter cup, resulting in uneven extraction; when hot water accumulates in the filter cup for too long, coffee will be released because water and coffee powder have been in contact for too long, causing too much substances to be released and a clear bitter, miscellaneous and astringent taste, which is what we often call overextraction.

Maybe after seeing the above cases, many friends will think of a solution to speed up the water launching speed by adjusting rough grinding. Indeed, the grinding of coffee powder can increase the flow rate after being thickened and reduce clogging. However, there are only a few. A small adjustment of grinding will not have much impact on the flow rate, and although an excessive adjustment can indeed significantly increase the flow rate, it will cause another extraction problem-it is easy to extract insufficient. Because the coffee powder is too thick, it takes more time for the hot water to reach the inside, and it is difficult to dissolve all the substances in the coffee in a limited time. High-density coffee beans are more difficult to extract than ordinary coffee beans, so too rough grinding will further reduce the extraction.

Therefore, Qianjie does not recommend using rough grinding as the main correction method. Of course, the premise is that your degree of abrasion is correct. The grains of the powder bed after brewing are neither too clear (too thick) nor muddy (too finely ground/too much fine powder). As for blockages, Qianjie even recommends adjusting in another direction-lowering the water injection rate.

How to brew high-density coffee? Lowering the water injection rate can narrow the gap with the drainage rate, which can prevent the water level from overflowing the coffee powder layer and ensure that every drop of hot water can come into contact with the coffee powder, so that the flavor substances in the coffee can be fully dissolved. At the same time, we can also reduce the height of water injection. Because this can reduce the intensity of the water column, which in turn reduces the rolling of the coffee powder, so that the fine powder will not quickly sink to the bottom and block the filter paper.

In many cases, blockages are not all caused by the excessive density of coffee powder, but also by the fine powder clogging the filter paper. When we reduce the water injection height and then reduce the water injection rate, the coffee will hardly be greatly stirred during the brewing process, which greatly reduces the occurrence of over-extraction caused by too long extraction time. Without saying much, let's go from Qianjie to demonstrate how to make high-density coffee! (If the blockage is caused by too much fine powder, you need to move to this article to understand: "What should I do if I have too much fine powder?")

The coffee beans used on Qianjie this time are the most popular ones in recent times-the red label of Guixia Village, Ethiopia. It is planted at an altitude of about 2000 meters, and it is also a lightly roasted coffee bean, which perfectly has two major factors that are difficult to grind. There are two extraction solutions. One is the multi-stage brewing once shared by Qianjie. It will divide the total water injection into 4 to 5 stages. It is more suitable for friends who have just started and are not so proficient in water control. For details, you can refer to the article "A High-sweetness and Non-blocking Brewing Plan for Shallow Roast Coffee", which will not be repeated here. The other plan is the plan that Qianjie wants to share in this article. It is more suitable for friends who have a certain degree of proficiency in water control. Because its water injection duration will be relatively long and requires a small water flow throughout the process. The extraction parameters are the same as usual, as follows: amount of powder used: 15g Grinding degree: 10-scale grinding of Ek43, 75% sieving rate of No. 20 sieve, fine granulated sugar grinding powder and water ratio: 1:15 Boiling water temperature: 92°C brewing method: three-stage use of filter cup: V60 Then first, we first use twice the amount of water to steam for 30 seconds.

After the steaming is over, we inject a second section of hot water, totaling 120ml. Hot water in this section is injected using a small water flow (average of 3ml/s) throughout the entire process, first injecting from the center and then slowly spreading outwards, and then repeatedly injecting water around the "mosquito incense" until the hot water injection in this section is completed.

In 1 minute and 10 seconds, Qianjie completed the second stage of water injection, and then we waited for the hot water to be almost filtered, and we could start to inject the next stage of hot water (at this time, Qianjie's cooking time reached 1 minute and 45 seconds). Similarly, the third section of hot water is still injected with a small water stream in circles, with a total of 75ml. However, this time it was a small circle because it needed to focus on extracting the coffee powder in the middle. When all the hot water is injected (at this time, the brewing time on Qianjie is 2 minutes and 10 seconds), we only need to wait for the drip filtration to complete before removing the filter cup and ending the extraction.

The total time was 2 minutes and 31 seconds! Although the extraction time is longer than usual, the coffee does not have the negative taste of excessive extraction, which is due to the fact that the disturbance intensity is not so high and because coffee beans are more difficult to extract.

Through tasting, Qianjie captured the sweet and sour taste of citrus and berries, the fermented aroma of strawberries, and the floral aroma of roses from the coffee in the cup. The overall taste is balanced and soft, with rich layers and long aftertaste. It is the aroma of oolong tea. If you are also troubled by some high-density or clogging coffee beans, then try these two brewing methods ~

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