Before Front Street opens for business every day, the espresso extraction parameters will be adjusted before going about other things. This is because other espresso coffee produced in the Front Street store requires espresso as the base, so a good cup of espresso is very important.
Espresso is made using a fully automatic/semi-automatic espresso machine. Under appropriate conditions (high temperature, high pressure), hot water passes through finely ground coffee powder under huge pressure to quickly extract a liquid with rich oil, rich aroma and thick taste.
After a friend tasted the fragrant espresso in a coffee shop, he hoped to restore it at home, so he asked Front Street how to adjust the parameter ratio of espresso at home. Setting up the espresso extraction plan is to make our coffee taste better. Although many times the performance of household equipment is not as good as that of commercial machines, as long as we find the corresponding powder-to-liquid ratio, extraction time, and grinding degree, we can extract delicious espresso.
Before talking about extraction, Front Street recommends choosing a bag of fresh blended coffee beans with moderate roasting degree and full aroma. We know that the flavor of coffee comes from the origin, variety, processing method, roasting degree and other factors of the coffee beans. Roasters understand the unique tonality of coffee beans, combine beans from two or more production areas and use the corresponding roasting degree. In this way, our espresso flavor is more stable, the taste is more balanced, and the extraction error tolerance is higher.
Every time Front Street sells a cup of Italian coffee, you can see a dense layer of oil floating on the top, which we call Cream, exuding a rich aroma of wine, which is a sign of freshly roasted coffee beans. The coffee is ground into powder and extracted under high pressure. The carbon dioxide in the coffee powder is wrapped by the oil in the coffee to form dense small foam. After roasting, blended coffee beans require 4 to 10 days of exhaust and cultivation time before entering a stable tasting stage. Blend coffee beans with darker roasting degrees usually require 10 days of exhaust. The coffee beans shipped by Front Street are all freshly roasted within 5 days. When you receive them, they may still be in the relatively fresh bean-growing period, so Front Street recommends keeping them for a few days before extraction.
Coming back to extraction, a delicious cup of coffee should have moderate soluble aromatics brought out of the coffee liquid. The Golden Cup Guidelines believe that the coffee extraction rate is in the range of 18-22%, and the extracted coffee substances are relatively delicious. Therefore, we need to control the powder-liquid ratio, time, and grinding degree to adjust the amount of extracted substances.
The extraction ratio is the ratio of powder volume to liquid weight. In fact, the extraction ratio does not have a completely fixed parameter and needs to be adjusted according to different situations. The espresso extraction ratio is generally controlled between 1:1.5 and 1:2.5. The Front Street store uses a ratio of 1:2. The Front Street store coffee machine is equipped with a double powder bowl with a capacity of 20 grams. When producing, 20 grams of powder will be used to extract 40g of coffee liquid, and then adjusted up or down according to the concentrated extraction state of the day.
The increase or decrease in the amount of powder can change the firmness of the coffee powder cake, thereby determining the flow rate of the concentrate. The firmer the powder cake will be, the slower the flow rate of the coffee liquid will be, and the longer it will take to extract the same amount of coffee liquid, the corresponding coffee liquid will be thicker and the extraction rate will be higher. Normally, you need to decide how to increase or decrease the amount based on the flow rate and flavor judgment.
Usually during the extraction process, when other parameters remain unchanged, the shorter the extraction time, the less coffee substances are dissolved, and the longer the extraction time, the more coffee substances are dissolved. When we fix the powder-to-liquid ratio at 1:2, controlling the extraction time to 25-30 seconds is the fastest way to adjust the espresso by adjusting the grinding degree and powder volume.
Since espresso extraction amplifies the flavor of coffee, the grinding requirements are very strict and the adjustment range is relatively small. The thickness of the grind is difficult to judge with the naked eye, and is generally reflected in the flow rate and flavor of the espresso. If the grinding degree is too coarse, the coffee powder particles will be larger, the powder cake will be looser, and the time for water to pass through the coffee powder will be shorter, which will lead to insufficient extraction and the coffee flavor will be weak and sour. If the grind particles are too fine, the coffee will be easily over-extracted, resulting in a bitter and sharp taste.
Friends who have come to the Front Street store to drink Italian coffee should know that Front Street has always used its own roasted "Front Street Sunflower Warm Blend Coffee Beans", which is a blend of 30% Front Street Yirgacheffe sun-dried red cherries and 70% Front Street Honduran sherry.
Front Street will use 20 grams of coffee powder, and extract 40 grams of coffee liquid under a pressure of 9 bar according to a powder-to-liquid ratio of 1:2, and the time will be controlled in 30 seconds.
The flavor of espresso has a rich whiskey aroma, with the sour aroma of berries. As the temperature drops slightly, the flavors of vanilla and cream begin to emerge, with a dark chocolate aftertaste. The overall taste is uniform and the taste is rich and smooth.
Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account cafe_style)
For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat, WeChat ID: qjcoffeex
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
