With its extremely high error tolerance and excellent flavor performance, Pour over(V60) coffee has become one of the top extraction methods after the popularity of specialty coffee. At the same time, because the operation is simple and the investment threshold is low, many friends have purchased hand brewing equipment and started to learn how to make hand brewed coffee at home.To be honest, it is not difficult to learn how to brew coffee by yourself, because the Internet is now very developed, and we can easily collect various coffee brewing-related tutorials from the Internet. Whether it is coffee utensils, brewing steps, techniques, parameters, or even various other details, we can obtain relevant knowledge sharing from the Internet for free.However, because the content is too complicated and many lack systematic combing, friends often fall into cognitive and operational misunderstandings, which invisibly adds many obstacles to themselves, making it difficult to brew delicious coffee. So today Front Street will share with you some pitfalls that we can easily fall into when getting started. You can pay attention to them and avoid lightning!Friends often have misunderstandings about the use of parameters, for example: "The higher the water temperature used, the better the quality of the beans." The implication of this sentence is that only high-quality coffee beans can use more extreme parameters. For example, brewing at 96°C or 97°C water temperature.It is undeniable that high-quality coffee beans are not easy to overturn even if they are paired with extreme parameters, but what we need to know is that the use of parameters does not entirely depend on the coffee beans used, but is mainly determined by our brewing method and extraction parameters.Take water temperature as an example. Water temperature is not the only variable that affects extraction. In addition to water temperature, there are also other factors such as grinding, time, and stirring methods that affect extraction. As long as the other parameters are matched properly, even if the water temperature we use for brewing is as high as 96°C, 98°C, or even 100°C, we can still easily brew a pot of delicious coffee.On the other hand, the same is true for other parameters. No matter how fine the coffee powder is ground and how long the extraction time is, as long as the parameters other than themselves can be properly matched with it, then a good cup of coffee can be brewed, regardless of the quality of the brewing object.2. Used to wash away with waterwhitewash wallMany of my friends liked to do one thing when they first started making coffee.(Including Front Street), that is, use water to wash away the coffee powder that has adhered to the edge of the filter cup during the brewing process. The purpose is simple - to allow this part of the coffee powder to be fully extracted. Because the range of water injection generally does not include the edges, the coffee powder that has built a powder wall on the edges cannot be washed away by hot water.Although this can indeed allow these marginal coffee powders to be more fully extracted, if used improperly, it can easily cause the originally delicious coffee to become less delicious.Because the most commonly used filter cups at present will havediversion rib, the existence of these ribs can increase the space for coffee powder to exhaust, and also increase the passage of water flow. If we use hot water to rinse the coffee powder on the edge of these filter cups, the water rushing to the filter cup will directly break through the filter paper and slip away from the edge, forming a so-calledBypass water。The presence of bypass water will affect the extraction of coffee, and it will easily make the existing coffee weak. Moreover, this will also thicken the powder bed, making it easy for the fine powder originally attached to the edge of the filter cup to be washed to the bottom, making it more difficult to enter the water.Therefore, Front Street does not recommend that you use this method unconditionally. Although the coffee powder attached to the edge of the filter cup is not fully extracted, it can make the coffee more layered due to the difference in extraction rate.3. Like high water injectionAs we all know, the height of water injection will affect the stirring intensity of the water column. When the water injection height is higher, the strength of the water column stirring is stronger. Then some friends will use a higher than normal height to inject water in order to achieve a higher extraction rate.While high water levels do increase the intensity of stirring, there are limits. Front Street found that many friends increase the height of water injection without limit, and the coffee brewed in the end has a lighter flavor and lower extraction rate than the coffee brewed before. The reason why this happens is because the water injection position is too high!When the hot water comes out of the spout and then comes into contact with the powder bed, its temperature will be continuously absorbed and lost by the surrounding air. The higher the water injection height, the more the water temperature will drop. Therefore, when the water injection height is too high, the hot water will be absorbed by a large amount of temperature and the extraction efficiency will be reduced to a certain extent.(Matsuya-style brewing uses this method to lower the water temperature)Moreover, if the water flow injected is not large enough, when the water injection height is too high, the hot water will not be able to maintain the posture of the water column, but will become intermittent water droplets. The water droplets will be difficult to stir up the coffee powder, and the natural extraction efficiency will also drop significantly.Therefore, Front Street does not recommend that you increase the position of water injection without limit. Usually, it is enough to inject water at a position of 1 fist away from the powder bed. If it is higher, then it is 2 fists away.4. If the bag does not bulge during steaming, it means the coffee is not fresh.Next are two things that are often shared on the front street, because there are really too many friends asking about these two topics in the background. Many friends will give feedback to customer service after buying coffee beans from an online store on Front Street, saying that the coffee powder layer does not bulge when steaming. Is it because the beans are not fresh enough?Of course this is not the case. The coffee beans shipped from Front Street are roasted within five days, so there is no problem of staleness. Whether the powder bed can form a "hamburger"-like bag during steaming depends not only on the freshness of the coffee beans, but also on the parameters during extraction.Because we all know that the bulge during steaming is caused by carbon dioxide. In addition to the degree of roasting and freshness of the coffee beans that will affect the carbon dioxide content, whether the parameters are reasonable will also have an impact on the degree of bulging in the powder bed, because the high or low extraction efficiency determines the rate of carbon dioxide emission.Still using water temperature as an example, the higher the water temperature, the higher the extraction efficiency, and vice versa.When the water temperature is higher, the carbon dioxide will escape from the coffee beans faster and form "burgers". If the water temperature is not that high, the carbon dioxide will be emitted slowly. Naturally, the coffee powder bed will not expand so much in a short period of time. The same goes for coffee grinding.So we need to know that the size of the bulge during steaming is not only affected by the freshness and roasting degree of the coffee, but also related to the parameters during extraction. If the bulge in the powder bed is not as big as usual when steaming, in addition to checking the freshness of the coffee beans, we can also check whether the extraction parameters have changed.5. Misunderstanding about the node where bitterness appearsMany friends have certain misunderstandings about the node where the bitterness of coffee appears. They believe that the bitterness of coffee is mainly dissolved in the tail. Therefore, we often see that these misunderstood friends will add some "fancy" operations during the brewing process, such as flow interception, in order to avoid the bitter taste. By cutting off the coffee liquid at the end so that it does not flow into the cup, the coffee will not have a bitter taste.But obviously, this is a misunderstanding. The bitter taste of coffee does not only dissolve in the tail section. The main reason for the misunderstanding among many friends is that the sentence "the tail section is the node where bitter substances dissolve in large amounts" is misunderstood as "the bitterness will only dissolve in the tail section".In factFrom the moment the water comes into contact with the coffee powder, the bitterness has begun to be released continuously, but the bitter substances dissolve slowly, so even if the extraction reaches the end, after the sour and sweet substances are almost dissolved, the bitterness is still being dissolved continuously.If we don’t use the right extraction parameters, even if we use the cut-off method, there will still be a noticeable bitterness in the coffee. Because the extraction efficiency is too high, a large amount of bitterness has been dissolved out before the flow is intercepted. So we need to know that bitterness is not only dissolved in the tail section. The best way to avoid bitterness is not to intercept the flow, but to control the extraction parameters. At the same time, interception is not an operation that can be used casually.So, the above are some of the "pitfalls" that Front Street has recently collected that are easy to step on when self-taught hand rushing. You can compare them to see if there are any pitfalls that you have stepped on~
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
