How did Xiaobai rush out to drink good coffee? What equipment should a novice prepare to learn to make coffee by hand?

It is true that when it comes to making coffee, different groups of people will hold completely different views.

In the eyes of all simplistic "old coffee people", there are only three steps to make a cup of coffee: grinding, pouring powder, and adding water. After the drip is over, you can start drinking. One more step will be a waste of time; If you want to ensure stable production, starting from stores, such as Qianjie believes that a good cup of coffee is inseparable from the control of various parameters, so the brewing framework must be set based on the characteristics of coffee beans;

If you are an avid hand-washing enthusiast, there is a high probability that you will be addicted to various tricky techniques, instruments and complex data, and even summarize an "exclusive extraction plan" yourself.

Compared with the above three experienced groups, many of the friends who come to Qianjie stores are still in the novice stage of not getting started or just getting started. This kind of "little white" who has just begun to come into contact with brewing rings usually first goes to the Internet to search for various hand-brewing equipment, learn various brewing plans, watch various video tutorials, and even recite certain professional terms on coffee. Terms, and then when practicing, they realize that they have learned it with their eyes, but their hands have not, and the brewed coffee is a mess.

For this kind of friends, Qianjie does not recommend that you worry too much about what degree of grinding, what method, what water temperature, and what extraction rate to use. Instead, we start by looking for the feeling, then pay attention to a few principles and details, and then match them with your own taste. Try to brew a satisfactory cup of coffee first.

The first step is to prepare the necessary equipment: a hand-flushing pot for water filling, a filter cup and filter paper to separate the coffee grounds, a bean grinder for grinding coffee beans, an electronic scale with timing function, a thermometer for measuring hot water, and a sharing pot for holding coffee (you can also use cups instead). When it comes to electronic scales and thermometers, many small partners will buy them as appropriate, but Qianjie believes that they each play an important role and are not expensive. Therefore, if you want to improve the level of brewing in a targeted manner, it is best to prepare them all.

In terms of the choice of hand-brewed coffee beans, we can roughly divide them into three categories: sour, balanced, and strong. Friends who like sour coffee directly focus on floral, citrus, and berries; if you are pursuing a balanced taste, you can choose beans with both fruit and baking aromas (such as toast, nuts, chocolate); and if you prefer strong coffee types, it is recommended to directly choose deep roasting. Qianjie Kafa Forest is used here, which has floral fragrance, citrus acid, and slight aroma of melon seeds and nuts. It belongs to medium and light baking.

Now that the equipment is ready and the coffee beans are available, start making immediately ~

Weighing beans + milling: Before grinding, we need to first weigh the amount of beans used for a cup of coffee. Here, we use the 15g beans produced daily from Qianjie. Assuming you choose not to buy an electronic scale, you can refer to Qianjie's article "No Scale? Teach you to measure the weight of coffee with a spoon!", Then make a judgment based on the utensils at home.

After weighing the coffee beans, immediately take an extra 2 - 3 grains and throw them into the bean grinder and grind them into powder. When the grains are close to the level of white sugar, pour all the remaining coffee beans into the bean bin and grind them into powder. If it is much thicker than granulated sugar, adjust the scale by 3 to 5 squares. If it is thinner than granulated sugar, adjust the scale by 3 to 5 squares. (This method can only help us roughly determine the grinding scale. To find the most suitable thickness of coffee beans, we must also combine it with the subsequent brewing situation.)

Preparing hot water: Although Qianjie has talked about the impact of water temperature on coffee flavor in many articles, for the scene of novice practice, reciting too much data will only add to our annoyance. Therefore, Qianjie recommends that everyone choose a conservative value directly--90℃. It not only applies to multiple types of coffee beans, but also allows us to avoid the results of over-extraction and under-extraction as much as possible. If there is no thermometer, boil the water, open the lid and place it at room temperature of 25 - 30 ° C for 2 minutes, 30 seconds to 3 minutes, and it will drop to 90 ° C.

Water injection: When making tea, we will habitually pour hot water based on the amount of tea leaves. In fact, the same is true for coffee. When there is less water, the taste will be strong, and when there is more water, the taste will be weak. At first, Qianjie recommended using a powder-to-water ratio of 1:15, that is, 15g of coffee powder corresponds to 225g of hot water. If you feel that the coffee brewed is too strong and bitter, inject more hot water next time to make the powder-to-water ratio change to 1:16 or 1:17. Still the same, friends who are not equipped with electronic scales can refer to another article on Qianjie,"Without electronic scales, how can I blindly brew coffee?" Determine the amount of water injection by finding your feelings.

The water injection technique is not only the most basic part of making coffee by hand, but also one of the most diverse parameters in the gameplay. It can make the coffee present different tonality, but when you are still at the introductory stage, you may not understand the "mystery" at all. In fact, without fancy techniques, you can also make delicious coffee during the novice period. We just need to make sure that hot water is poured on the coffee powder in about 2 minutes and let them fully come into contact.

For example, the three-stage extraction of 15g of Kafa Forest coffee powder is commonly used in Qianjie, and the corresponding water volume of 225g is divided into three injections. The weight of the electronic scale shows: 30g, 125g, and 225g.

When the dripping time falls between 1 minute and 50 seconds to 2 minutes and 10 seconds, the coffee grounds also form a beautiful "bowl shape" and the concentration is moderate, which means that there is no big problem with injecting water.

If your extraction time is less than 1 minute and 40 seconds, and the taste is light or sour, it may be caused by too much water flow. Qianjie recommends using a gentle small water flow to brew; conversely, if the time is more than 2 minutes and 20 seconds, the taste is strong and bitter. It may be that the coffee powder has been soaked for too long. You can increase the water flow around it next time.

When you successfully brew a delicious cup of coffee, it means that you have roughly mastered the brewing steps. It also means that you have a certain understanding of individual parameters and can continue to familiarize yourself with them in future operations and make improvements. If you want to improve your brewing level, you have to try to understand how they change the flavor of coffee and how the various parameters are related, and then use them flexibly in brewing.