Do I have to steam my hand-brewed coffee? What is the function of drip coffee steaming? What is the purpose of steaming hand-brewed coffee? Can I make coffee by hand without steaming it?

After Qianjie's tweet "How to Make Perfect Steaming" was released yesterday, some friends were curious about such a question-"Can I make coffee without steaming it? "There is no doubt about it, of course! However, this "can" requires certain conditions. First of all, we need to be clear, that is, the purpose of steaming.

The purpose of steaming has been mentioned in previous articles: steaming is an act of exhausting air in order to better extract coffee. Because in many cases, coffee powder will be rich in carbon dioxide. When this carbon dioxide is present, it is difficult for hot water to dissolve the flavor substances in the coffee, and the coffee that is washed out is very likely to become dull and tasteless. You can take a look at the comparison of brewing made by Qianjie below!

The content to be compared on the front street here is: "The difference between making coffee by hand and without steaming." To do this, we need to use the same beans and the same parameters to make two pots of coffee. The only difference is that one pot will have steaming and the other pot will not have steaming. Finally, the differences between them were compared through tasting and concentration measurement.

Then, this brewing on Qianjie will use two fresh beans to brew two sets of coffee! One is the lightly roasted coffee bean in the Qianjie bean list-Qianjie Ethiopia Huakui, while the other is the deep-roasted coffee bean in the Qianjie bean list-Qianjie Sumatra Golden Mantonin. The extraction parameters are as follows: amount of powder used: 15g powder and water ratio: 1:15 Grinding degree: 85% sieving rate of No. 20 screen No. 10 Brewing time: 1 minute and 50 seconds Brewing water temperature: lightly baked flowers 94°C/deep-baked gold Mantelin 90°C brewing method: one-knife flow brewing process: skip directly! Let's look directly at the results.

The extraction rate of the flowers without steaming is 17.86%. It tastes very fresh. It has a light fruit acid and a light tea aroma. The flavor will not be very prominent, the taste will not be very strong, and the overall taste will be sour. There are stewed flowers: The extraction rate of stewed flowers is 19.25%. In comparison, the taste is very full and the flavor is very outstanding. The flavors of citrus, berries, white floral flowers, and oolong tea can be clearly tasted. The overall taste is smooth and balanced, which is very good ~ Golden Manterin that has not been steamed stewed: The extraction rate of Golden Manterin that has not been steamed will be lower, which is 16.19%. The taste is thin, with only a layer of nutty flavor. There is steamed golden manterine: The extraction rate of steamed golden manterine is 18.27%. The taste will be much mellow and the flavor will be more prominent. The sweetness of caramel, the aroma of chocolate, and the ending rhyme of spices and pine wood can be clearly captured by us. It's just that because it uses a knife stream, its taste is not as mellow as the three-stage stream.

It can be seen that whether it is deep-roasted or lightly roasted coffee, even if the beans, time, grinding, water temperature and other parameters are the same, the taste of the version without steaming is far worse than that of the one with steaming. Then we can clearly see the difference between the two in terms of extraction rate, especially for the deep-baked group with sufficient carbon dioxide content, the difference will be greater. This is enough to illustrate the importance of steaming for hand-brewed coffee under regular brewing. However, this does not mean that hand-brewed coffee must be steamed. If certain conditions are met, the steaming process can also be eliminated! However, this condition will be very strict, referring to both beans and parameters.

Under what circumstances can I not use my hand to steam? As mentioned earlier, the effect of steaming is to expel carbon dioxide that hinders extraction. Then, when there is no carbon dioxide in the coffee beans that hinders extraction, there is naturally no need to carry out the step of steaming.

But usually we don't wait until this time to start cooking! Because everyone knows, the existence of carbon dioxide is not completely negative. In addition to hindering the effect of extraction, its existence will also bring a lot of positive blessings. For example, allowing the flavor substances of coffee to stay in the coffee beans for a longer time, or slowing down the penetration rate of water flow, lengthening the extraction time and increasing the extraction efficiency... In addition to brewing coffee beans without carbon dioxide, there is also a situation where coffee can be brewed without steaming-even if a brewing method without steaming is used.

As we all know, there are many ways to brew hand-brewed coffee, many of which do not involve steaming. For example, drop method, one-drop method, stirring method, etc. The reason why these brewing methods do not require steaming is that they use some extreme methods or parameters to release and ignore the impact of the presence of carbon dioxide.

For example, the drip method, the first half of the drip method is to inject water in a drop, and then seamlessly connect with the normal water injection and boiling without the action of steaming. But in fact, all the carbon dioxide from the coffee powder is emitted when the water is dripped. Because it takes a long time to soak coffee powder in drops, many coffee powder that has been wetted by water will complete the discharge of carbon dioxide during this time; there are also stirring methods and one-throw methods! The stirring method uses strong manual stirring to quickly stir out the flavor substances and carbon dioxide in the coffee powder, which naturally eliminates the need for long-term steaming to remove carbon dioxide; while the one-throw method uses high water temperature and fine grinding to increase the extraction efficiency and speed up the removal of carbon dioxide, eliminating the need for special steaming steps.

In addition, there are many similar methods, but Qianjie will not list them one by one. But what we need to know is that these brewing methods will more or less test the barista's understanding of brewing. Whether it is the use of parameters or the proficiency of water control, it will also be troublesome to rinse, so few people will usually use them. To sum up, hand-brewed coffee can be brewed without steaming, but the conditions will be relatively harsh. The brewing method with steaming can help us simply and stably brew a pot of delicious coffee, so this is why the current mainstream brewing method has the step of steaming ~

- END -