Today Front Street is going to share with you how it tastes when you use hand brewing to "cook" Luodou. Before that, let Front Street have a brief introduction to the science of what Luodou is!
What is "Luodou"
"Rodou" is the abbreviation of "Robusta". Because the coffee made from this variety has outstanding characteristics, it was nicknamed by others! There is absolutely no intention to isolate it~ There is a very obvious difference in appearance between Robusta and Arabica. The midline of Robusta is a straight line, while most of the midline of Arabica is curved and not straight!
Currently on the market, the main coffee varieties with commercial value are Arabica and Robusta. However, due to its poor flavor, Robusta has not been widely spread in the field of specialty coffee, especially in the field of hand brewing.
But Luodou is not without any advantages. Its biggest feature is that it has a very large amount of oil and a high body texture! The oil can give the espresso more caramelized aroma, and the mellow taste makes the whole cup of coffee richer. Therefore, it often appears as a member of Italian blends. In addition, its price is very affordable, about half cheaper than Arabica.
Due to its high caffeine content and rich oil content, Robusta was often used in the formulation of Italian coffee beans during the period when Italian coffee was popular around the world. At that time, a large part of the reason why people loved drinking coffee was to obtain caffeine. The classic blend of Front Street uses the combination of Brazilian + Mandheling + Robusta, which gives the coffee a rich aroma of nuts and toasted bread, a mellow taste, and beautiful coffee crema, making it very suitable for beginners.
In addition, for coffee shop owners, in order to ensure stability, cost-effectiveness, and compatibility, a combination of Colombia + Brazil + Robusta is used. Brazil is responsible for the buttery nutty aroma, Colombia provides chocolate glycol, and Robusta adds thickness and fat, so that even novice baristas can easily make standard espresso.
From the above we can know that if you want to find a coffee shop on the market that uses Robusta as hand-brew beans, the chance is very small (yes, not many). Therefore, Front Street will give you a good experience today and see what Pour over(V60) coffee made with Luodou will taste like!
Brewing experiment
The Luodou used in Front Street comes from the Vietnamese production area and is darkly roasted, so we will use the extraction parameters of dark roasted beans to "cook" it!
Use filter cup: Kono filter cup
Amount of powder used: 15g
Grinding scale: ek43's 11 scale (No. 20 screen pass rate 70%)
Pink to water ratio: 1:15
Brewing water temperature: 88 degrees
Brewing method: three-stage
First, we still use twice the amount of water as the powder for steaming (30ml)! After 30 seconds, we use a small flow of water at a constant speed to inject the second section of hot water (120ml) in a large circle; finally, we use a large flow of water at a constant speed to inject the remaining third section of hot water (75ml) in a small circle in the center of the filter cup; then we only need to wait for the drip filtration to complete, and the brewing is complete!
During the brewing process, we can clearly feel the wet aroma of hazelnuts and caramel. Moreover, this aroma spread very quickly and soon filled the entire Qian Street store. When tasting it, the flavors of caramel and cereals are very obvious, but the taste is more of barley tea. The taste is very mellow and the bitterness is not bad! The freshly brewed Robusta is pretty good~
But after it was left for a while, its shortcomings were exposed after the temperature dropped. The taste of grains is aggravated, with a hint of rubber, the cleanliness is low, mixed with the fishy smell of earth and a bitter aftertaste, and the negative feeling is very obvious.
From the above we can see that the taste of Robusta is indeed not outstanding. This is largely due to its caffeine, which has higher chlorogenic acid than Arabica. With the blessing of these two bitter contributors, Robusta will be much more bitter than Arabica. Moreover, the commercial bean tasted in Front Street is Robusta, which is grown at an altitude below 800 meters. This causes it to grow relatively quickly and cannot fully absorb nutrients. Therefore, the flavor will also have certain defects!
But Robusta is not all bad. Nowadays, some people are trying to use the method of growing Arabica to grow Robusta, so as to cultivate "high-quality" Robusta. The result is indeed done! This type of high-quality Luodou tastes very clean. Although the flavor still revolves around the original caramel, grains, and hazelnuts, it has not changed much, but overall it is still very good. However, due to the scarcity of the quantity, it is difficult for us to experience it in China.
Well, you can’t keep good things to yourself in the front street. If you happen to have friends nearby, let’s experience the “beauty” of Robusta together!
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
