Why does the 92°C hot water used to make coffee not come out at 92°C? How much water should I use to make hand-brewed coffee?

For coffee making, water temperature is a crucial extraction parameter. Its height affects the dissolution rate of coffee flavor substances during making, so when making coffee, we pay special attention to the control of water temperature.

But does everyone know? In many cases, the water temperature we set before brewing is actually not the water temperature at which we actually come into contact with coffee powder and extract coffee. What does it mean? For example, when we make coffee, the water temperature displayed on the thermometer is 92°C, that is, the water temperature used is 92°C. But in fact, the hot water that comes into contact with coffee powder is not 92°C most of the time, and they will be lower than what we set. Even in some extreme cases, the temperature difference between the hot water in the pot and the hot water that actually comes into contact with coffee powder will be very large!

If you are a friend who often brew coffee yourself, you should have encountered the same water temperature, but sometimes you will brew coffee with insufficient extraction. This is the result of the large difference between the water temperature in the pot and the actual water temperature of the coffee powder under extreme circumstances.

Why is the water temperature of 92°C that we use to brew coffee, but the actual water temperature is not 92°C? The reason is actually very simple, because hot water will come into contact with multiple factors that can cause temperature reduction in the gap between being injected into the pot and before it comes into contact with the coffee powder, such as the neck of the pot and air. These factors will absorb the heat of the hot water, causing its temperature to drop. If you use a filter bowl made of a material with a high specific heat capacity such as ceramics, the water temperature will drop due to the heat absorbed by the filter bowl without preheating.

When the temperature difference between hot water and the appliance or environment it comes into contact with, or the more air it comes into contact with, the more heat the hot water will absorb and the greater the temperature drop. A suitable temperature drop will not have much impact on our extraction, but when the temperature drop reaches a certain level, the stability of our coffee brewing will decline. Especially when the extraction efficiency of other parameters is not high enough, it is very easy to brew coffee with insufficient extraction, because the water temperature determines the extraction efficiency. The higher the water temperature, the higher the extraction efficiency, and vice versa.

Therefore, in addition to controlling the parameters we use before brewing, stabilizing the water temperature during the brewing process or reducing the amount of water temperature changes during the process will also help us steadily brew delicious coffee. So what should I do specifically? There are several directions you can refer to! The first is preheating. Before starting cooking, we can inject some hot water in the pot to preheat the neck and spout. If you use a filter cup with a higher specific heat capacity such as ceramics, we can use this hot water to preheat. In this way, the appliances that hot water will come into contact with can be preheated in advance and the temperature difference can be reduced. When brewing, the hot water will not be excessively absorbed by these factors, reducing the temperature. The other is to reduce the air that hot water comes into contact with, which mainly depends on the height of water injection when brewing. When the height of water is higher, the distance between the hot water from the spout to the coffee powder will be longer, the more air it will come into contact with, and the more heat it will be absorbed, and vice versa. Therefore, appropriately reducing the height of water injection can reduce the loss of heat from hot water.

Generally, the water injection height on the front street is a fist away from the powder bed. This distance can not only ensure that the hot water has enough penetration to stir the coffee powder, but also reduce the air that the hot water comes into contact with and reduce the amount of heat loss, thus stably rushing out a pot of delicious coffee. But if the ambient temperature is low, such as making hand-made coffee in winter or in an air-conditioned room with air conditioning, in addition to these operations, we may need to make adjustments to increase the water temperature.

Because in this environment, the temperature will lose very quickly. Not only the hot water injected out, but also the water temperature in the pot will be debuffed rapidly. Therefore, the Qianjie Association recommends that you can adjust the parameters according to the current cooking environment. Not only the water temperature, grinding, and time are all okay. Take Grana Rose Summer in the former street bean list as an example! Front Street Grana Rose Summer is a medium and light baked sun-dried Ethiopian bean. The coffee brewed with it will have the flavors of apricot, berry, citrus, and green tea. The taste is balanced between sweet and sour, and the taste is light and smooth. It is very good.

When brewing it, the water temperature used on Qianjie is usually 92°C when the ambient temperature is suitable. However, if the ambient temperature is low, Naqian Street will increase the water temperature to 93 - 94°C, and other parameters will remain unchanged. This will offset the impact of too fast temperature drop!

Of course, if you use a hand-flushing pot with a water boiling module, you can also choose to put the pot back to the base for insulation after filling the water. This is also a good method. So the above is all the content shared by Qianjie this time! I believe that everyone has fully understood the impact of water temperature on extraction and the factors that affect it, so when everyone finds that the brewed coffee suddenly does not taste so good, the water temperature may be a parameter worthy of special attention ~

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FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473