Recently, many specialty coffee shops have begun to sell a "niche" coffee - "Chang Cui". For friends who are new to coffee, Changcui can be said to be very unfamiliar, so recently friends often ask Front Street what Changcui is.
To be fair, Front Street believes that the reason why people are unfamiliar with it is mainly because of the name "Changcui". If it is called by its other alias "Lungo" or "Longo", Front Street believes that everyone will no longer be unfamiliar with it.
No matter what kind of Italian black coffee we make, Front Street will give priority to using medium to dark roasted Italian beans. When you want to drink a rich and rich oily aroma, use Front Street’s classic blend. This is a medium-dark roasted Italian recipe composed of three production areas. Its design is inspired by the "Mamba" popular in ancient times, namely Mandheling and Brazil. In order to add aroma and oiliness, the Front Street classic blend also contains a small amount of Robusta to enhance the flavor intensity and allow novices to easily make Italian espresso with golden oil at home.
But if you want to make black coffee that is not bitter, you must choose the Front Street Strawberry Candy espresso Italian blend. It combines the mixed taste of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Costa Rican honey processing, and Colombian cymbidium. When made in the American style, it can present floral aromas like roses and jasmine, and the flavors of blueberries, grapes and other berries, which are sour, sweet and refreshing.
What is Lungo/Lungo?
In the article "How to Extract the Big Three of Espresso", Front Street shared: There is not only one version of espresso extracted by an espresso machine. In addition to our common concentrated version, there are also short-brewed Ristretto and long-brewed Lungo. The difference between them mainly lies in the change in the extraction liquid volume and the coffee concentration and extraction rate affected by the liquid volume.
From left to right are Ristretto, Normale (regular espresso), Lungo
1:2 is the most commonly used ratio of powder to water when we usually extract and concentrate. If we use 20g of powder, we need to extract 40ml of coffee liquid. The concentrate extracted with this ratio will have a higher concentration and extraction rate, and the coffee will taste rich and balanced. If the liquid output is reduced by a certain amount on a regular basis, the concentrate obtained will be "Ristretto". Because the concentration is higher but the extraction rate is relatively low, Ristretto tastes strong but not bitter, and has a high sweetness;
And if a certain amount of liquid output is added to the regular basis, the concentration obtained is "Lungo". Compared with the first two, the concentration of Lungo will be much lower, so it will not taste as "exciting" as the first two, and will be softer. At the same time, the flavor of coffee will be displayed due to the low concentration, making it easier for us to capture.
Lungo actually appeared much earlier than everyone imagined. Lungo already existed before the current version of espresso appeared and became popular. At the beginning of the 20th century, the world's first true espresso machine was invented. It didn't take long for the word "Espresso" to be included in the Italian dictionary, which translated means: "espresso made with a pressurized machine or filter."
But at that time, coffee machines were not that powerful yet. Although they already had a pressurizing function, the pressure was only 1.5~3bar, just like a Moka pot. Friends who have come into contact with a Moka pot will know that such pressure is obviously unable to produce the higher-concentration espresso that is common today. So if you want your coffee to have a strong enough flavor, you can only increase the extraction rate of the coffee by increasing the liquid weight. And this is what we know today as Lungo/Lungo.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the emergence of lever coffee machines allowed the pressure to be increased to 9bar. The 9bar pressure not only makes the extraction of espresso faster and more concentrated, but also leaves a layer of rich, golden oil on the surface. So from this time on, the Italian coffee system was gradually established. All types of Italian coffee use Espresso as the basic link, and then definitions and standards for various Italian coffees emerged. Lungo and Ristretto were defined from this time.
Even in the era of espresso orthodoxy, Lungo has not disappeared. In Italian, Lungo means "long" and "expanded", so we can understand it as an extended version of Espresso, that is, long extraction. If you want to ask why you should keep the long extract instead of directly diluting it with concentrated water, the answer is of course that European gentlemen have their own consistent style.
As mentioned before, Lungo has more liquid than Espresso, and the powder-to-water ratio it uses is generally 1:4, 1:5, or even more. Its advantage, as mentioned in Front Street, is that because the concentration is not that high, the taste will not be too concentrated, the drink will be softer, and the flavor will be easier to capture.
But what we need to know is that Lungo is not simply about increasing the amount of extracted liquid based on espresso. This approach is obvious. The coffee will be extracted too efficiently due to the substantial increase in liquid volume and time. The bad substances in the coffee will be extracted, and then be filled with prominent bitterness.
Therefore, if we want to make a good cup of Lungo, we need to readjust the coffee parameters, especially the grinding degree. Generally speaking, the grinding used for extracting Lungo will be relatively coarse. The purpose is to increase the gap between the powder and the powder, so that the speed of water can be increased. This can reduce the extraction time and avoid the risk of over-extraction of the coffee.
However, things are not that simple. After the grinding is coarsened, because the gaps between the powders increase, the coffee is more likely to produce a channel effect. So after we extract a Lungo, we often see splashes of coffee liquid everywhere, as well as "cold" powder (half of which is not moist), and the taste of the coffee is not that good due to uneven extraction. Therefore, for a long time, Lungo was not very popular. It wasn’t until the popularity of pressure swing extraction that Lungo returned to people’s horizons.
By adjusting the pressure during the extraction process, channeling is much less present, the extraction becomes more stable, and the flavor of the lungo is no longer fickle.
The most important thing is that Lungo combined with this method will give a relatively high tolerance to the grinding of coffee powder. It is not like conventional concentrate or Ristretto, which requires extremely high grinding requirements. Each bean must have an exclusive grinding degree, but only needs to be within a general range.
Because of this, even if different coffee beans are used to make Lungo, there is no need to equip them with a dedicated grinder, one grinder can do it all. This can not only shorten the coffee making time, but also give customers more diverse choices. The flavor performance of Lungo is not inferior to other black coffees, so more and more coffee shops have begun to make long-brew coffee.
It is worth mentioning that making such a long brew/Lungo is difficult. The store owner needs to have a sufficient understanding of beans and extraction. If the understanding is not in-depth enough, the long brew coffee produced will easily have no flavor, weak, or uneven extraction. So it’s still a test of the barista’s strength~
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
