Coffee review

How to judge the brewing method by the state of the powder bed? How to break out of a deep hole with hand-brewed coffee?

Published: 2025-12-09 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/12/09, "Wow!!! Why is the powder bed after you make coffee like a bowl? It is so big and even!!! "There is no exaggeration (there may be a little bit). There are often friends who will sigh like this after making coffee on the front street. In most cases, the powder left in the filter cup is boiled in the front street

"Wow!!! Why is the powder bed after you make coffee like a bowl? It is so big and even!!! "There is no exaggeration (there may be a little bit). There are often friends who will sigh like this after making coffee on the front street. In most cases, the powder bed left in the filter cup after boiling on the front street takes the shape of a bowl. As you can see, the potholes are deep and even.

Although Qianjie often says that the final state of the powder bed does not represent whether a cup of coffee tastes good or not, it may also be OCD. Some friends, including Qianjie, will inevitably feel about this kind of uniform and deep powder bed when they first started the game. There is an inexplicable sense of "admiration"! I want to know what method such a powder bed is washed out. Why is the powder bed that others can make is so flat? So today Qianjie came to share again how we should make a uniform bowl-shaped powder bed. After reading it, Qianjie believes that everyone should be able to understand why Qianjie often says that the structure of the powder bed has little to do with the taste of coffee.

How to get out of the deep pit? If we want to break out of the deep pit, we don't need any superb technology. We just need to meet these three conditions. Breaking out of the bowl-shaped powder bed is a piece of cake!①. Use low-density coffee beans ②. Inject a large amount of hot water in a short period of time ③. Pour water evenly

If you are a friend who often makes coffee, it should not be difficult to find that even if you use the same brewing method, the state of the powder bed will actually change with the coffee beans. When the coffee beans we use are roasted deeper/lower in density, it will be easier to break out of the potholes/pits; and if the coffee beans we use are roasted more lightly or have a higher density, then the potholes that are washed out will be flat if they are shallower.

Because the coffee powder can float better on the liquid surface when the density of the coffee powder is lower, the coffee powder can float as the water level rises during brewing. The powder pit is formed because hot water washes away the coffee powder that was originally gathered together and then adheres to the wall of the cup. The more coffee powder adheres to the wall of the cup, the deeper the powder pit will be, because the concentrated coffee powder will be scattered to the surrounding area.

So seeing this, I believe many friends on Qianjie have discovered that in addition to the density of coffee powder not being so high, another condition for building a powder pit is to raise the powder bed.

Only by raising the powder bed sufficiently can the coffee powder have a chance to adhere to more cup walls. And if we want to do this, we need to increase the amount of water injection in a short period of time. By increasing the water injection rate to be greater than the drainage rate, more water will accumulate in the filter cup, causing the water level to rise, and the coffee powder to rise accordingly. This is what we often talk about raising the powder bed. The more the powder bed rises, the higher the powder wall the coffee powder can build. Of course, we cannot increase the water injection at will, because as mentioned earlier on Qianjie, some lightly baked/dense beans are not easy to "carry".

As we all know, most coffee filter cups have diversion ribs designed on the walls. The purpose of these ribs is to support the filter paper to create an exhaust channel so that it does not fit completely against the filter cup. If the water level falls above the powder bed when we use these filter cups to brew, then the hot water that has not touched the coffee powder will have the opportunity to "slip" directly through the gap where there is no coffee powder, forming bypass water, which will affect the extraction. Then when we encounter this kind of coffee powder, the water flow during brewing cannot be so large. Only in this way can we avoid the appearance of bypass water and the taste and texture of coffee not be affected. However, for this type of coffee, it is naturally difficult for their powder bed to form a unique "bowl shape" after brewing.

For example, Qianjie Essei ALO and Qianjie Yejia Shefi Godin in the Qianjie Bean List are lightly baked beans with relatively high density. When brewing, we try to use a small water flow or moderate water flow for brewing. In addition to avoiding the situation where the water level exceeds the coffee powder, this can also reduce the phenomenon of clogging filter paper. It doesn't matter if it takes a long time, because beans are relatively resistant to extraction, so in the end we can get a pot of delicious coffee with a full aroma of flowers and fruits!

Finally, the uniformity of water injection! Although many friends can break out of the deep pit, the depths of the left and right sides of the hole are not the same. One side is high and the other is low, or there is no coffee powder at all in some places, so we can directly see the wall of the filter cup.

In this case, hot water is injected too intensively in a certain location when injecting water, which makes the depression in that location deeper and forms a sharp contrast with the coffee powder in other locations. So this is why Qianjie often says that although the powder bed after making coffee cannot be used to define whether the coffee tastes good or not, we can see from it whether the water is evenly injected.

To sum up, we can know that as long as the density of the coffee powder used is not so high, the amount of water injected is slightly larger, and the water flow remains evenly injected, then we can finally get a uniform and deep coffee powder pit ~

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