Is it necessary to buy a cloth powder for an espresso machine? Why should we evenly distribute the powder when extracting espresso?

In the past, the process of making a cup of espresso was very simple. We just needed to use the handle to pick up the right amount of coffee powder from the bean grinder, then smooth the coffee powder with our fingers, and finally use a powder hammer to fill it and start. The extraction of coffee is over.

But now it is much more cumbersome. Most cafes in China also use various tools such as cloth powder dispensers and cloth powder injections to assist them in making espresso in addition to powder hammers. The same is true for Qianjie Coffee. So we can see that many friends are also preparing to buy these assistive devices after purchasing a coffee machine.

This puzzled some friends,"Is it necessary to make a cup of coffee so complicated? "This is an inquiry that Front Street often receives. So today, Qianjie plans to compare the difference between the "traditional" operation and the concentration obtained by adding assistive devices! See if "multiple stationery from poor students" can really make coffee better.

Extraction experiment In this experiment, Qianjie will use the above two methods to extract three cups of concentration, and then compare their taste and taste to see if there will be obvious differences overall. The coffee beans selected are still the popular Qianjie Italian style strawberry candy·Espresso in Qianjie Bean List. The extraction parameter is 20g of powder and 40ml of liquid.

The extraction time was the same, around 30 seconds. After the extraction was completed, the front streets were tasted one by one, and colleagues were asked to conduct a blind test. The results were without exception, and everyone did not make much difference. Except for one cup in the group where the powder is powdered by hand, which has a strong taste, the others are all very different. They all have the flavors of strawberry, flower fragrance, cocoa, and nuts, and the taste is mainly sweet and sour.

I believe everyone has found from the case on the front street that even if the use of powder dispensers and powder injections was added to one group, the coffee made was not much different from the coffee made without using equipment. Then does this mean that the use of powder dispensers and powder powders is just a "superfluous move"? Obviously not! The purpose of using powder dispensers and powder powders is not to help us make better coffee, but to steadily make better coffee. As we all know, whether it is a powder applicator or a powder powder injection, their function is to distribute the coffee powder in the powder bowl more evenly. The reason why the coffee powder should be evenly distributed is that the production of espresso uses pressurized extraction. A pressure of up to 9bar will accelerate the dissolution of flavor substances during the extraction process, so that a cup can be extracted in a short time. High-concentration coffee.

But because water is inert, it will flow where it flows easily. When the density of the powder cake is not uniform enough, hot water will concentrate and flow to the low density area during the extraction process to form a channel. The result of this is that the extraction becomes more uneven. Places where a large amount of water passes are over-extracted, and coffee powder outside the channel is under-extracted because it comes into contact with less hot water. There is a well-known term for this phenomenon in the circle, called channel effect.

It is obvious that this kind of extraction will degrade the quality of the coffee we end up getting, so if we don't want the coffee to have channel effects during the extraction process, then the best way to improve is to make the coffee powder more evenly distributed before extraction. For example, the earlier practice of fingering coffee powder by hand is actually one of the improvement methods. Powder applicator and powder applicator are two auxiliary devices born in response to such demand! The powder dispenser can replace the coffee powder we use to spread with our hands, which can save a lot of time without worrying about hygiene problems;

Although cloth powder injection can also be used to evenly distribute coffee powder, its main use is to break up agglomerated coffee powder. In addition to the uneven distribution of coffee powder, the appearance of channel effects is caused by the static electricity generated by grinding, which causes the coffee powder to cluster and agglomerate. The existence of agglomerated coffee powder will also increase the probability of channel effects. Therefore, when grinding deep-roasted coffee beans or when the environmental humidity is low and there is more static electricity, some coffee shops will use cloth powder injections to break up the agglomerated coffee powder in advance, and then carry out the operation of cloth powder and pressing powder.

To sum up, you can know that the use of cloth powder dispensers and cloth powder injections is not actually a "fancy punch". The purpose of using them in coffee shops is to stabilize the production and ensure that every cup of coffee produced can maintain the same delicious taste. If you are an individual player and don't need to make cups or sell them in large quantities, the existence of powder dispensers and powder powders is optional. After all, even powder distribution can be easily achieved with good technology; but if you have certain requirements for quality or need stable production, then these assistive devices can also be considered. The details depend on personal needs ~

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