Precautions for brewing ear-mounted coffee｜What should I do if the ear-mounted coffee is blocked and cannot drain? How to brew ear-mounted coffee pods without wasting them?

After reading the title, I believe some friends have already shouted "Yes, yes, I am the same" again and again, and quickly scrolled down to clear up their doubts.

Obviously I followed the steps in the tutorial: tear it open - hang it up - boil water - fill it with water - wait until it drips... However, it seems like a long time has passed, why is the water still floating on top and the coffee powder soaking at the bottom? Do you want to use a stirring stick to stir it up, or should you continue to wait for it to drip slowly?

Why do ear-mounted bags get clogged?

Like hand brewing, hanging coffee is filter extraction. The coffee beans are ground into powder in advance, sealed and stored in a non-woven filter bag, and can be opened and brewed when needed. The entire ear-hanging bag only consists of the protagonist (coffee powder) and the supporting role (filter bag). The filter bag acts as a filter cup and filter paper. The flow rate directly depends on the resistance of the hot water. If you want to know why the earplugs you flush are always blocked, we can start from the following points.

The filter bag of ear-hanging coffee is usually made of non-woven fabric. Its structure is similar to that of a metal filter. It consists of a layer of coarse mesh non-woven fabric and a layer of fine non-woven fabric. The principle of draining the ear bag is to filter the coffee liquid through the surrounding pores.

Front Street did a comparative test and injected 50g of water into the empty bag of the ear filter bag and the No. 01 filter cup with filter paper (KONO) at the same time. It takes about 35 seconds for the conventional filter paper set to drip completely, but the water in the filter bag does not drip clean until 2 minutes later. It can be seen that the filtration speed using the filter bag will be significantly slower.Better soaking effect when brewing。

During actual brewing, there is ground coffee powder on the bottom, so when the water level is higher, the water will flow out from the holes around it, and the faster the liquid will penetrate into the lower pot. If the injected water level is too low, most of the pink-water mixture will accumulate at the bottom of the bag. Due to the influence of gravity, most of the hot water can only drip down along the sharp corners of the bag, and the water will fall slower.

In addition to water level, problems with the method of filling water in circles can also lead to "flooding" consequences. Many ear-mounted brewing guides will mention that if possible, you can imitate the circular technique when brewing by hand, and try to rinse all the coffee powder to ensure even extraction. However, if the water flow in the last circle is not controlled well and "sprays" onto the filter bag, washing all the powder to the bottom, it will naturally cause blockage and no drainage. At this time, the coffee is often accompanied by the bitter flavor of over-extraction.

If you have some experience in brewing by hand, you should know that one of the biggest factors affecting the speed of water dispensing is the fineness of grinding the coffee powder. The coarser the particles, the smaller the resistance to the water; the finer the particles, the more difficult it is for water to pass through smoothly. If the coffee grounds remain in the same muddy state after each flushing of your hanging ear, it means that the coffee powder is ground too finely, causing difficulty in draining the water.

When describing the details of hand brewing, Front Street once analyzed that if the filter cup is tapped more widely (the more times), the fine powder will more easily fall from the gaps to the bottom, causing the water to become blocked during brewing. The same is true for ear-hanging coffee. Some friends are accustomed to vigorously shaking the filter bag before opening the package. The higher the frequency of shaking the filter bag, the greater the probability of fine powder sinking to the bottom, and the easier it is to cause water blockage in the tail section.

When we take out the coffee ear-hanging bag, try to avoid shaking the package hard. Just tear open the non-woven pocket along the dotted line above, pull the two ears apart, shake the powder out gently, and hang them over the rim of a cup or sharing pot.

If you buy an ear-hanging bag, it will be clogged every time you drink it, and the coffee grounds after dripping will be muddy, and the taste will tend to be dull. It is almost certain that the merchant adjusted the grinding degree too finely when making it. You might as well explain the situation to the other party and adjust the coarse powder appropriately.

In terms of water injection method, compared to the hand-pour filter, the ear-hanging bag provides very little space for the tumbling of coffee powder, so we need additional stirring to speed up the tumbling of these particles. Front Street recommends using a large flow of water throughout the process, injecting it in small circles or in the center multiple times. While the coffee powder is fully washed, the water level can be raised to 9 minutes. Injecting water in this way not only allows the flavor substances to be fully extracted, but also provides more pores for the coffee liquid to seep out, avoiding over-extraction caused by soaking for too long.

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