How to properly powder espresso? How to use the coffee cloth powder maker? How much force does it take to press espresso? Share coffee cloth powder techniques!

In the production of Italian coffee, in order to make the extraction of coffee more stable, we will distribute coffee powder in the powder bowl more evenly by distributing and pressing powder, so that channel effects can be reduced and extraction unevenness can be reduced. Uniform situations occur.

Although it is only two simple actions, the knowledge contained in it is really quite a lot, especially about pressing powder: "How much force should be used to fill the pressure" and "How to press the powder correctly" have always been questions that everyone likes to talk about when they are just getting started. So today Qianjie plans to share with you how much force we need to use when filling coffee powder! And how to operate to achieve the correct powder pressing.

How much force does it take to fill the coffee powder? The reason why we need to press the powder is to use pressure to make the loose coffee powder in the powder bowl more compact, so that hot water can penetrate evenly and extract relatively evenly. The main reason why many friends have doubts about the strength of pressing the powder is that everyone believes that the strength of pressing the powder will affect the extraction time. The greater the strength, the longer the extraction time.

Because when the powder is pressed harder, the coffee powder will become tighter. When the coffee grounds become closer, the channels for water flow will be reduced, the channels for water flow will be reduced, and it will take longer for hot water to pass through the powder cake. So is this really the case? Obviously not exactly. Pressing powder does affect the tightness of the coffee powder, but the impact will actually be much smaller than everyone thinks. You can take a look at an experiment done before Qianjie. Qianjie extracted three servings of espresso. The amount of powder used and the amount of liquid extracted each were the same. 40ml of coffee liquor were extracted with 20g of powder. The only difference was the power of pressing the powder they used: One portion was not pressurized, one portion used a force of 2 kg/about 20N, and the other portion used a force of 15kg/about 147N.

Although the strength of the three groups is very different, the time for extracting coffee is almost the same, which is 29 seconds, 30 seconds, and 30 seconds respectively. Needless to say, the extraction rate and taste are quite consistent, except for the portion without pressure, which is slightly different, the performance of the other two portions is quite consistent. Then why did this happen? In fact, the reason is very simple! The pressure that the coffee machine applies to the powder cake during extraction is about 9bar, or 9 atmospheres. The force of 9 atmospheres was applied to a cake with a diameter of 58mm, and the pressure generated was about 2380N, which was about 242kg when converted into kilograms. In the face of a force of 242kg, whether it is 2 kg or 15kg, it is insignificant. Not only that, there is another element worth noting. According to information reviewed on Front Street, La Marzocco had previously conducted a special pressure test when designing a Swift bean grinder with automatic filling. The strength tested ranged from 2 pounds to 30 pounds. Then it was discovered that no matter how much force was used to fill, the bottom of the cake was almost unstressed. A blogger gave a very good example before, which is like a car crash experiment. The extrusion and deformation of the car body itself is the result of absorbing energy.

So, as long as the force we use can ensure that the powder cake can be filled tightly, there is no need to worry too much. Qianjie even recommends that everyone focus on how to fill and flatten the flour cake, that is, how to press the flour correctly.

How to press powder correctly? To be reasonable, the correct pressing of powder mentioned here on Qianjie does not actually refer to a correct action, but to filling and pressing the powder evenly. As long as you can fill the coffee powder in the powder bowl evenly, it doesn't matter what kind of action you use. Because although the hot water coming out of the brewing head of the coffee machine drops vertically downward, when penetrating the powder cake, the hot water will seek to penetrate in the place with the least resistance. If the powder cake is not flat enough, it will easily cause uneven extraction, a channel effect occurs. Of course, it is not enough to apply powder without powder! If you only press but not cloth, even if you can finally press a flat cake, the density of different areas will be uneven, and channel effects will still be easy to occur. So we need to spread the powder first and then press the powder. If you are just starting the game and don't know how to evenly distribute and press powder, then you may wish to refer to the set of actions shared under the front street, which may bring you some help.

Without using a powder receiver, the distribution of the coffee powder we pick up in the powder bowl is generally more concentrated in a certain place, and the coffee powder in a certain place is very small. In this case, we cannot directly remove the powder, because the use of the powder dispenser will exert a certain pressure and cause a certain amount of pressure filling. The correct way to do this is to gently rub the coffee powder with your fingers first and spread the overflowing powder to areas where powder is scarce.

Then gently tap the powder bowl from the side to let the coffee powder in the powder bowl fall into your own "position."

Finally, use the powder distributing machine to distribute powder! In this way, the process of cloth powder is completed.

Then, all we have to do is take out a powder hammer and press the powder. Front Street said that as long as you apply evenly, you can use it at will no matter what kind of cloth powder posture or holding method. But if you can't do it yet, you can replicate the powder pressing technique under the front street. This is also the powder pressing method used by most people: First, we put the powder hammer into the powder bowl, and then use the middle finger, ring finger, and little finger Hold the hammer handle, and then place the index finger and thumb on the two opposite edges of the powder hammer respectively. When it comes to the powder pressing stage, the index finger and thumb need to touch the powder bowl and powder hammer at the same time, because this can ensure that we apply force evenly. Then, concentrate the force on the index finger and thumb and press down. OK, the step of pressing the powder is completed.

Because most powder bowls have a graduation mark, you can observe the distance between the powder cake and the graduation mark after pressing the powder to see whether the distance in each area is the same. If so, then congratulations on you for pressing the powder correctly; if not, we need to recall the details when pressing the powder and the angle of inclination of the powder cake to see what needs to be improved before we can achieve uniform pressing.

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