Yesterday, when a friend was buying beans at a Front Street store, he discussed the feasibility of re-brewing coffee with Front Street. The reason was that he had recently seen videos from some bloggers on the Internet. The content of the video was that coffee powder that had been brewed once would still taste good after the second brewing. So he asked Front Street if coffee could really be brewed a second time?
To be honest, coffee powder can indeed be brewed a second time after being brewed once. Not only that, you can also brew it a third or fourth time...as many times as you want. But what we need to know is that how many times the coffee can be brewed and whether the brewed coffee tastes good are two different things.
The reason why coffee powder is discarded by us after brewing once is because many times the residual substances in the coffee powder are no longer enough to support us in brewing the next cup of delicious coffee. The soluble substances in coffee are limited, accounting for only 30% of the weight of the coffee beans. These substances will gradually decrease as the brewing process increases. When these substances are dissolved and we brew the coffee powder, we will only get a cup of water with a slight taste.
But generally speaking, when we brew, we do not dissolve all of the 30% soluble matter, but only extract two-thirds of the total amount. Why?
Because the things in solubles are not only positive substances that can bring us a pleasant experience, but also some negative substances that are bitter, impurity, astringent, etc. that affect the experience. The addition of these substances will make a cup of coffee less tasty, so under normal circumstances, the extraction rate of coffee will be controlled at about 20%, and the soluble matter in the coffee powder will remain about 10%.
As mentioned above, this 10% soluble matter contains a lot of less pleasant substances, and there will not be so much pleasant aroma substances such as floral and fruity notes. So even if we brew it a second time, the coffee we get will not taste as rich as the first cup of coffee, and because of the lower concentration, the coffee will still taste very thin. If you don’t have a preference for mild taste, Front Street believes that not many friends will like this kind of cup of coffee.
Here we brew Front Street Chiclaw for this experiment. This is a champion variety from Columbia's Divide Estate. Because it uses double anaerobic sun treatment, it has delicate and sweet aromas of passion fruit, grapes, apricots, etc. When brewed by hand, it is fresh and pleasant, with rich layers.
Follow the video content shared by that friend to perform the second brewing: that is, use the parameters of the first brewing to brew the second time. The brewing process is skipped.
The first cup of Xizhao has a rich experience both in smelling and drinking it. It is sweet and sour, with outstanding flavor. It has the flavor of grape, passion fruit, apricot and floral. The taste is full and smooth. The concentration is 1.49% and the extraction rate is 20.61. %; while the Xiju brewed twice smells only of a very subtle fruity aroma, and when you drink it, you can hardly feel any flavor. There is only a light woody tone and an extremely weak fruity tone. Its concentration is 0.31%, and the extraction rate is 4.24%.
Maybe at this time, some friends will say, if you reduce the extraction efficiency when brewing coffee for the first time, so that too much soluble matter is not dissolved in the first brew, will you be able to brew a second cup of delicious coffee?
That's true, but it's very difficult to actually do it. The reason why coffee must be extracted in one go is mainly because coffee has different water-soluble flavors such as sweetness, sourness, and bitterness. We need to allow these flavors to exist in a cup of coffee at the same time and in appropriate amounts to balance each other. Only in this way can we get a cup of coffee that meets the public's taste or is considered by most people to be delicious.
The dissolution rates of these flavors are different, some are fast, some are slow, sour substances dissolve the fastest, and bitter substances dissolve the slowest. I need to remind everyone here that the dissolution speed is not the order of dissolution. The sweet, sour and bitter substances in coffee all start to dissolve at the same time when they encounter water, but they dissolve at different speeds.
Because sour substances dissolve faster, when we brew coffee, the sour substances are dissolved first, followed by sweet and finally bitter. If we reduce the extraction efficiency, the brewed coffee will have a larger proportion of sour substances and a smaller proportion of sweet and bitter substances.
There are checks and balances between flavors. If there is not enough sweetness and bitterness to balance the sourness, the sourness of this cup of coffee will be more prominent or even overwhelm other flavors, turning it into coffee with only sourness. For many friends, a cup of coffee with only sour taste is not good to drink, and because it does not have sufficient sweetness, the coffee tastes very dull. The second cup of coffee brewed will also be less layered due to the lack of acidity.
It just so happened that Front Street was studying the brewing parameters of Yi Dao Liu Tornado in today’s headline article, and the extraction rate of the coffee brewed with the parameters was somewhat insufficient. The beans used were Shizhao, and the coffee tasted only sour and very monotonous. So Front Street used this pot of coffee to brew it again.
The result was just as Front Street expected, the second brewed Xizhao did not have any layering. If the full score is 100 points, then for the public's taste, the score of these two cups can only be 50 points. They are not unpleasant to drink, but they are not delicious either. Front Street believes that most friends will choose a cup of 80-cent coffee instead of two cups of 50-cent coffee.
Therefore, most of the time, coffee is brewed only once, concentrating all the essence of the coffee powder into a cup in one go. But then again, taste differs from person to person. Some friends like coffee with a less strong taste, so they will choose to brew coffee in small amounts and multiple times like tea. Because of this, Front Street always emphasizes the public's taste when sharing the tasting experience. In short, no matter how you do it, as long as you like it~
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
