Someone once said that there is no difference between hot American medicine and Chinese medicine when it comes to suffering. If you insist on finding a difference, it is that Chinese medicine can be covered by medical insurance, but hot American medicine has to pay for it yourself.
In essence, both iced Americano and hot Americano are black coffee diluted with Italian espresso. However, people generally have a bad impression of hot Americano. There are also many critical comments about hot Americano on the Internet. Many office workers drink it to refresh themselves while deriding themselves as "miserable people". So what is it about hot Americana that makes it so unpopular?
Hot American, where’s the “bitter”?
In the past article "What should a good American coffee taste like?", Front Street once mentioned that different coffee beans, concentration state, extraction ratio, amount of water (ratio of ice water), water temperature, and water quality will affect the final taste of American coffee.
Regardless of whether it is a cold drink or a hot drink, a cup of excellent American style must first select high-quality coffee beans, and also make a reasonable extraction of the coffee beans, and at the same time prepare a moderate proportion and temperature. Based on this, there are three main reasons why hot Americano tastes more "bitter" than iced Americano:
1. The influence of temperature
In the content of coffee tasting, Front Street repeatedly emphasized that our taste buds perceive sweetness and sourness differently at different temperatures.
When using the same coffee beans, the reason why Iced Americano does not feel bitter is mainly because the lower temperature brings an icy taste, which reduces our perception of bitterness; while Hot Americano has a higher temperature, which not only increases the sensitivity of taste buds to bitterness, but the hot water also brings out the rich and mellow taste of espresso, making the coffee taste more sweet and bitter.
2. The influence of coffee beans
In order to ensure a stable product and make the concentrate have both aroma and oil, most coffee shops will give priority to using blended coffee beans with medium to dark roasts to produce Italian style. For example, Front Street Commercial Italian blended coffee is a category specially launched for store use. It uses nuts, cocoa, and caramel as the main notes, and can easily extract rich oil. It is a very classic dark roast Italian formula.
When extracting this type of dark roasted coffee beans to make a hot Americano, first of all, the concentration itself will have obvious roasting, caramel aroma and strong coffee bitterness. Secondly, the oil will also be mixed with some very fine powder. So when we drink the hot Americano, we can feel the sweetness and bitterness brought by the oil, and secondly, the mellow taste of the combination of caramel aroma and bitterness. In addition, the volatilization effect caused by high temperature will further amplify our impression of the "bitterness" of the hot Americano.
3. The influence of proportion
No matter what kind of coffee is made, the parameter of proportion affects the final taste to a greater or lesser extent. For American style, it depends on the flavor characteristics of the beans used in each coffee shop. In order to highlight the characteristics of the beans, stores usually customize different standards for iced American style and hot American style.
For example, to make an iced Americano using Front Street Commercial Coffee Beans, you will use a 350ml glass, 90g ice cubes + 150g drinking water + double espresso; to make a hot Americano, use a 250ml ceramic cup, 160g warm water + double espresso.
From a comparison point of view, hot Americano does use more water than iced Americano. Theoretically, the concentration should be the same. However, with the help of ice cubes, iced Americano has a smaller proportion of concentration, and the concentration will continue to decrease as the ice cubes melt. Therefore, the concentration of hot Americano coffee is often higher than that of iced Americano, so naturally it will have a more concentrated, low, and thick taste, and the bitterness will be heavier.
How to make a hot American style that’s fragrant but not bitter?
Although temperature does amplify the taste buds' perception of "bitterness", Front Street believes that high temperature does not equal bitterness. What really regulates the taste of coffee is the beans themselves and the ratio of espresso to water. Therefore, if you want to get rid of the "bitterness" of hot American coffee, you must start with the latter two.
Coffee beans used in espresso machines are mainly divided into two categories, one is espresso blending and the other is SOE.
For those who like to balance the taste but want to avoid bitterness, it is recommended to give priority to medium roasted types. For example, SOE has Front Street Queen's Manor (fried peanuts, creamy chocolate), Front Street Bird of Paradise (nuts, sweet and sour balance), and the recently launched Front Street Blackberry (grape, floral, berry). For Italian blending, you can choose Front Street Strawberry Candy espresso, which has the sweet and sour aroma of grapes, dried blueberries, and fruit gummies, with almost no bitter taste.
For espresso, we can avoid some bitterness by extracting only the front and middle parts. For example, use 20g of Front Street commercial blended coffee powder for 30 seconds to extract 30~33g of coffee liquid, so that the American taste after watering is softer; or place a round filter paper at the bottom of the powder bowl before extraction, which can appropriately reduce the extremely fine powder and thereby reduce the bitterness of the coffee.
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
