Coffee review

How to choose the direction of the circulation of hand-brewed coffee? Should I fill the water clockwise or counterclockwise when making coffee by hand? How do you turn around while making coffee?

Published: 2025-11-16 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/11/16, In order to increase the extraction efficiency during brewing, we will control the kettle to draw a circle and let the water flow stir the coffee powder, so that the hot water can dissolve more flavor substances. Although there is no clear standard, almost everyone will default to injecting water clockwise when circling. So this caused many friends to have a problem with counterclockwise water injection

In order to increase the extraction efficiency during brewing, we will control the kettle to draw a circle and let the water flow stir the coffee powder, so that the hot water can dissolve more flavor substances.

Although there is no clear standard, almost everyone will default to injecting water clockwise when circling. So this made many friends interested in adding water counterclockwise: "You say, if we used water counterclockwise when making coffee, would the taste of the coffee be different? "This is something many friends have asked about Qianjie in recent times. The reason why some friends have such an idea is mainly because they have come into contact with the V60 filter cup. The inner side of the V60 filter cup wall is designed with a number of spiral guide ribs, most of which are surrounded clockwise from top to bottom. So this allows us to use clockwise loop water injection by default because of the guidance of the lines when using it! After all, when you see such a rib design, most people will have the following idea: If we inject water along the direction of the ribs, the vortex formed by injecting water in circles will allow the water to follow the designed route and converge towards the center of the filter cup, which can make The extraction of each particle is more uniform, and then the taste will become softer;

But if it is injected counterclockwise, it may cause convective collision between the water flow and the ribs. As a result, the coffee powder will be stirred more strongly, the extraction efficiency will be greatly improved, and the extracted result (coffee) may become less stable! So, is this really the case? You can take a look at this experiment carried out under Front Street.

The content of the brewing experiment is very simple. It is to brew two pots of coffee using the same equipment, the same beans and the same parameters. The only difference between them lies in the difference in the direction of the water injection around the brewing. One uses conventional clockwise water injection and the other uses counterclockwise water injection, and then compares the difference in concentration and taste between the two!

The coffee bean used this time is the Qianjie Ethiopian Flower Kui in the Qianjie Bean List. It is a medium and light roasted Ethiopian bean. Its outstanding flavor and distinctive texture can help us distinguish the two. The subtle differences between them. The parameters are as follows: amount of powder used: 15g powder-to-water ratio: 1:15 Grinding degree: 75%~80% sieving rate of No. 20 screen Boiling water temperature: 92°C Using filter cup: V60 Water injection rate: 4ml/s First, we inject twice the amount of water into the powder for a 30-second steaming period! After the steaming is over, we use moderate water flow to inject 120ml of hot water into the second section from the center out.

After the hot water injected in the second section seeped down to the powder bed where the bottom can be seen, we also injected the hot water in the third section with moderate water flow around the center, a total of 75ml.

After the injection is over, we just need to wait for the hot water drip filtration to complete before removing the filter cup and ending the extraction.

At the end of the extraction, the extraction time of the two pots of Huaqui was the same, both falling to 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Their performance in all aspects is just like the results previously shared by Qianjie, and it can be said that there is almost no difference. The taste is mainly sweet and sour, and then the flavor is strawberry, berry, cream, citrus, with a light floral fragrance, round taste, long finish, and very clean overall. The extraction rate and concentration were also measured on the back front street, and the difference between the two was almost the same.

To sum up, we can know that the direction of the loop will not have much impact on the extraction of coffee, even when using the V60 filter cup, the water is poured counterclockwise. The reason is also very simple: the ribs are not prominent enough to affect the extraction, especially after we built a thick powder wall. The main impact on coffee extraction is the parameters during extraction, such as water temperature, grinding, ratio, time, as well as the number and intensity of water agitation. They are directly related to the extraction efficiency, so slight changes will change the taste of coffee.

As for whether to choose to inject water clockwise or counterclockwise, it completely depends on your personal habits. Just that everyone needs to pay attention to maintaining the same direction and injecting water in circles throughout the entire water injection process ~

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