Basic knowledge of coffee beans-to give you a deeper understanding of the characteristics of coffee

Freshness:

There is a saying in the coffee industry, 'freshness is the life of coffee', so how to determine the freshness of coffee beans has become a key issue. Experts say: there are three main steps: smell, see, peel.

Smell: just to see if you can smell the aroma of coffee beans. If you can, coffee beans are fresh enough. On the contrary, the fragrance is weak or greasy, indicating that the coffee beans are completely stale.

No matter how much effort you put into grinding and cooking such coffee beans, it is impossible to make a good cup of coffee.

Look: if you pour the coffee beans on your hand, you can determine the origin and variety of the coffee beans, and also determine whether the coffee beans are roasted evenly.

Peel: take a coffee bean and try to peel it off by hand. if the coffee bean is fresh enough, it should be easy to pull away and have a crisp sound and feeling. If the coffee beans are not fresh, you will find that you have to work hard to get rid of a bean.

Another important thing to peel off the coffee beans is to see if the firepower is uniform when baking. If it is uniform, the outer skin and inner layer of the beans should be the same color.

If the color of the surface layer is obviously much darker than that of the inner layer, it means that there may be too much firepower during baking, which will also affect the aroma and flavor of coffee beans.

The difference in taste between large coffee beans and small coffee beans

For the same kind of coffee, the bigger the bean, the higher the grade, the smaller the bean, the lower the grade, and the cheaper it is. Of course, there are differences in taste. The bigger the beans, the stronger the coffee. However, in addition to high-grade products, the classification of other coffee is not very strict, for example, the central grade beans can account for 60%. Then beans one level higher than this level and beans at a lower level will each account for 20% at the same time. Therefore, sometimes it is roasted according to the standard of the marked central grade, and the other 40% of the coffee cannot be roasted under the best conditions.

The division of new beans and old beans in coffee beans and the time to market

The taste of new coffee and old coffee baked in the same variety and degree will be significantly different, of course, new beans are more fragrant. Although the moisture of the new bean will be greatly lost and the color will turn white after several years of preservation, the fragrance will not be greatly affected. Preservation of coffee beans:

Fresh beans are suitable for sealing and preservation in a bag with an one-way exhaust valve. be sure to empty the air in the bag as much as possible after use, and then keep it sealed. Usually put beans in a cool and ventilated cabinet, as long as it is not close to the heat source is not a big problem. If it's not for special reasons, don't put beans in the fridge! Keep it in a cool place at room temperature. Because the low temperature of the refrigerator will bring condensed water to the package. This is the sweet coffee! If you really don't have time to drink, but the beans are very good, those you don't want to throw away can be frozen in the freezer and thaw later. Although the flavor will certainly be greatly damaged, it is better than throwing it away.

Raise beans:

I just said that the freshness of coffee beans has a lot to do with the flavor of coffee extraction. But it is not the beans that are just baked that are suitable for immediate extraction. Because the gas in the freshly baked beans is not discharged, the stability of the extraction will be affected to a great extent. And there are some special roasting methods that require more stable ingredients in coffee beans to taste better. So in the boutique coffee industry, there is a talk of growing beans. Bean cultivation is to make the beans reach the best and most suitable extraction state after baking, so that you can drink better coffee. So the question is, how to judge the time of growing beans? This is really a complicated problem, and it takes a lot of experience to judge. Different roasters, different beans, different seasons, different extraction methods. Too complicated. I can't say a word at all! I would like to recommend a bean cultivation time suitable for most situations for your reference. In general, the best drinking time is 2-5 days after baking, while Italian beans usually take 15 to 20 days to drink. Summer beans can be better extracted the next day after baking, Italian beans are generally 5 to 7 days after the best drinking time. Beans are recommended to be killed within a month in summer and within 2 months in winter.

Find your favorite coffee flavor:

In the third wave of boutique coffee, people began to have a new understanding and understanding of the real boutique coffee flavor. The way of roasting coffee also began to develop from the original French, or completely urban roasting to medium-shallow roasting, and gradually began to pursue the flavor of origin. So the question is, what is the flavor of origin? This is really complicated. To put it simply, beans from different producing areas show fruits, flowers, almonds, chocolate, honey and caramel at the right baking degree. Wait for the flavor. These flavors will basically disappear under the traditional deep culture in the past, and the beans can only be left bitter when baked deeply. For example, you can often hear Yega Xuefei's sweet and sour tangerine, Brazilian chocolate caramel. But the origin of coffee is too many to be explained in a few thousand words in an article. We are profound and simple here, directly and simply to classify them according to their personal preferences.

Coffee bean treatment

First of all, let's take a look at the treatment of coffee (from coffee fruit to raw coffee beans). Different treatment methods will bring completely different flavor orientation to beans. So it is necessary to understand this! Generally speaking, the traditional treatment methods are divided into water washing, semi-washing and solarization. The water washing method belongs to the treatment method with higher precision system, and the beans treated by the water washing method generally have a clean flavor and tend to a clear new flavor. And then there's the sun. The beans treated by the sun have a thick flavor and a strong fermentation flavor. It will be accompanied by the smell of red wine or bread! But sun beans are generally recommended to buy expensive varieties (ARICHA, Kongjia, etc.), cheap sun beans, because the fine system is not high, rotten beans, insect beans, dead beans and it is difficult to eat. Generally speaking, many high-grade beans will choose the method of sun treatment, but the fine system is very high. Like the secret kisses of 90 PLUS. Later, in order to integrate the advantages of sun exposure and water washing, people invented semi-washing, honey treatment, red wine treatment and other treatment methods. I won't talk about them one by one here because of the space. You can try more for yourself!

Coffee bean roasting

Secondly, let's know the roasting degree of coffee. This is also a way to greatly influence the taste of coffee! Generally speaking, we can be divided into very shallow baking, shallow baking, medium baking, medium deep baking and deep baking. Because beans are different, good bakers will choose the best baking degree to bake beans according to their understanding of beans, so that beans can achieve their ideal flavor expression. But what is certain is that from shallow to deep, the same kind of beans will change from sour to sweet to bitter. At this point, we need to drink more, and then establish a framework understanding of baking. Combined with the previous treatment, plus your own preferences, you can basically choose your favorite beans.

The flavor of coffee is really an extremely complex process, you need to taste its unique flavor.