What does By pass mean in coffee? What does bypass water mean when making coffee by hand? By pass means adding water to coffee? Is American coffee just espresso and water?

Like other industries, coffee also has many technical terms. The so-called technical terminology can be understood as a condensed expression of a complex concept. They can not only improve the efficiency of our communication, but also increase the accuracy of communication and reduce the chance of communication obstacles.

But because most terms are not that intuitive, it is inevitable that outsiders or friends who have just entered the circle cannot understand their meaning literally. For example,"By pass." The direct translation of "By pass" is "bypass","detour". Literally, it's hard to understand what it means in coffee. In fact, Front Street often shares this term, which mainly refers to the water added to coffee through "bypass" and its corresponding behavior. So what is a bypass?

First of all, we need to know that water is the solvent when we extract coffee. By bringing water into contact with coffee, water can dissolve the flavor substances in the coffee, and finally become coffee and fall into the cup. However, sometimes the water we use when making coffee does not all pass through the coffee powder. It will "bypass" the coffee powder, fall directly into the cup and be added to the coffee.

If we call the path where water passes through the ground coffee and then falls into the cup the "main road", then the water that falls into the cup without passing through the ground coffee goes through the "bypass road." These water that has gone through the "bypass" and has not participated in the extraction is also called bypass water. The emergence of bypass water is both active and passive! The example of passive generation is something Qian Jie often mentions when sharing brewing. For example, when brewing with a filter cup such as the V60.

When we use filter cups such as the V60 that have a large number of diversion ribs to brew coffee, we need to try to avoid the water level exceeding the coffee powder. Because the exhaust space vacated by the protruding ribs creates more channels through which water can flow, if the hot water passes through the coffee powder or washes on the filter paper, then the hot water may flow directly from these channels into the cup, without contacting the coffee powder and not participating in extraction. These are passively generated bypass water. Their appearance will not only reduce the extraction rate of coffee, but also affect the coffee liquor that has been obtained, diluting their concentration and reducing the taste and taste of coffee. There are many examples of bypass water generated by our active control. The most classic representative is "American coffee." The making process of American coffee is to add a certain amount of water to the extracted espresso coffee. The water added to the coffee is bypass water. The purpose of actively generating bypass water is very simple, that is, to be able to "dilute" the concentration of coffee. The reason why American coffee appeared was because Americans were not used to drinking espresso with too high a concentration, so they needed to add water to the concentrate to dilute it to reduce the difficulty of importing the coffee. This behavior of interfering with the taste of coffee by adding water can be called By pass.

In addition to espresso, By pass will also be used in other coffee making, such as hand-brewed coffee. In some professional coffee competitions, we can often see players using By pass to intervene in the brewing framework. In order to reduce the bitterness in coffee, they will choose a high-concentration and low-extract method to brew a pot of coffee with higher concentration and less bitterness. Because the concentration of coffee is too high and is not easy to enter, the concentration of coffee will be diluted through By pass, diluted to a good concentration at the entrance, and then presented to the competition judges.

Also in daily life, we often use By pass to make coffee, but you may not realize it! Because we did not add water directly when By pass, but ice cubes. That's right! Front Street is talking about ice rush. When making ice by hand, we need to add ice cubes to lower the temperature of the coffee. The ice cubes will melt into water during the process of cooling the coffee, diluting the coffee. So, this is also a By pass behavior, because water that is not involved in the extraction needs to be added to the coffee.

Of course, in some cases, By pass can also be a remedy. For example, Qianjie used the wrong proportion of powder and water when cooking Qianjie Boundary Manor·Xizhao. The Xizhao taste was very strong, and the flavor could not be displayed due to its concentration. So at times like this, we can dilute the coffee appropriately through By pass. Just add 15 - 30ml of hot water to the coffee, the concentration of the coffee can be reduced, the flavor of the coffee has more room to display, and we can better taste the flavor of the coffee.

Or when brewing an unfamiliar coffee bean, the fine powder blocked the filter paper and the hot water couldn't penetrate for a long time. If this continues, we may end up with a cup of over-extracted coffee full of bitterness. At times like this, we can discard the coffee liquor that has not yet seeped out and is still in the filter cup by intercepting it. In this way, the coffee obtained is not very delicious, but at least it will not be too bitter to swallow. This interception behavior will give the coffee a higher concentration, so at this time we need to dilute the coffee by By pass until the coffee is diluted to a good concentration for the entrance.

So to sum up, we can know that By pass mainly refers to the water added to coffee without participating in the extraction and its corresponding behavior. But everyone should note that By pass is not a panacea coffee improvement solution. The above-mentioned cases shared by Qianjie all have certain prerequisites before using By pass to optimize coffee! If we use it without any problems with the coffee, we will easily make a cup of coffee with a less outstanding taste and taste. So this is something worth paying attention to ~

- END -