Coffee knowledge introduction: the relationship between the extraction amount and concentration of coffee taste

Found that many friends have such a basic concept, the finer the coffee is ground, the stronger the taste will be, while the thicker the coffee will be, the lighter it will be. According to this principle, people asked, "can you grind it very fine to improve the depth of the taste and save coffee powder at the same time?" according to some of my knowledge of the history of modern coffee, this does not seem to be the first time coffee makers have put forward such a hypothesis, and some people have indeed made such an attempt.

There was a time in history when coffee shop operators grind coffee finer and extract it for longer in order to save the amount of coffee beans and not to reduce the taste of coffee. For coffee drinkers, the coffee they drink is still very strong (bitter), but compared to the strong coffee they have drunk, they always feel that something is missing, and the coffee always tastes less than it used to be. Customers who find coffee less attractive leave the cafe, and the coffee shop owners grind the coffee finer in order to further reduce costs to reduce the amount of coffee used, thus forming such a vicious circle.

Why is this a vicious circle, because it is a lose, lose, lose way. First of all, guests can not drink good coffee, the fewer guests originally; second, operators can not sell more coffee; third, roasters are roasting less and less, unable to achieve economies of scale.

So how much coffee can it take to achieve a better taste, a degree acceptable to the public? According to a survey by SCAE (European Fine Coffee Association), under general conditions, the most appropriate amount of coffee bean extraction is 18-22%, which contains most of the aroma components of coffee. Excessive extraction (more than 22%) will extract more bitter substances, while insufficient extraction (less than 18%) will waste a lot of aroma substances. So 18-22% is a suitable extraction degree.

And the high-quality aroma substances in these 18-22% coffee are dissolved in the brewing coffee water is this cup of coffee concentration, the same amount of coffee dissolved matter water, the lower the coffee concentration, and the less the water, the higher the coffee concentration (Note: the same amount of water can be determined by adjusting the fineness of the powder and water temperature to get the amount of extraction), according to the data. A coffee concentration of 1.2-1.5% is the most appropriate concentration, or one that is suitable for most consumers.

Therefore, there is a certain relationship between coffee extraction and coffee concentration, but it is not necessarily related. You can extract very little and use more coffee, but also make a cup of coffee with a concentration of 1.2-1.5%, but this cup of coffee is also missing something, because a lot of aroma substances are still in the coffee rather than in your coffee cup. And you can make the same concentration of coffee with a small amount of coffee beans, but you need finer powder, or higher temperature, to extract more substances. But this cup of coffee will look sour, even astringent, because your amount of extraction must be more than 22%, so you can extract except the inelegant parts of the coffee.

Therefore, a good cup of coffee requires proper extraction, the right concentration, and an inappropriate link may ruin a good cup of coffee. This requires the producer to adjust the variables in the production through his own understanding of coffee: the fineness of coffee powder, the amount of coffee powder, the temperature of brewing water, the speed of brewing water and so on.

(note: all the above data are from SCAE Gold Cup Program)