As we all know, Front Street has recently launched a new Italian blend of floral and fruity beans on Taobao Tmall - Front Street Strawberry Candy Espresso. Perhaps because the flavor is quite pleasing, friends often ask the customer service staff at the backstage: "Your Italian beans are delicious, can they be used for hand brewing?"The answer is obvious, of course. Although espresso beans are focused on the use of espresso machines, they can also be used to make Pour over(V60) coffee. Moreover, espresso and Pour over(V60) coffee are just different forms of coffee extraction, and can naturally extract all coffee beans.But what we need to know is that "whether it can be brewed" and "whether it tastes good" are two different things! If we want to make delicious coffee by brewing Italian coffee beans by hand, we need to find the corresponding brewing parameters based on the characteristics of the coffee beans.Generally speaking, whether it is a single product or a blend of coffee beans, the beans used for Italian style are often roasted darker than the coffee beans used for hand brewing and French press. Regardless of other characteristics, the reason why coffee beans used for Italian coffee need to be roasted darker is because Italian coffee needs to take into account the production of milk coffee.When we need to add milk to coffee, it is not recommended to use beans whose roasting level is too light. Because while light roasting does a great job of bringing out the flavor of the beans themselves, it can’t compete with the flavor of a lot of milk. Especially when making milk coffee with a lot of milk, such as latte, the taste of light roasted coffee is easily masked by the milk. Even if we reduce the amount of milk, the taste of coffee still cannot be expressed well.In addition, the espresso produced from lightly roasted coffee beans will be particularly sour. We all know that in addition to flavor, the lighter the roasting, the more acidity is retained in the coffee, and espresso itself is a very concentrated coffee, and the extremely high concentration will concentrate the taste of the coffee. So, when we use light roasted coffee beans that are mainly sour to make espresso, the espresso will have a very high acidity.Although most of the time we don’t drink concentrate directly, there are always ways to separate concentrate from other ingredients like Herbalife and Dirty. For most people, exposure to high-intensity sour flavors is even more unpleasant than high-intensity bitter flavors. Therefore, the beans used for espresso are roasted slightly darker. This reduces the acidity of the coffee while giving it a burnt flavor that competes with the taste of milk.Because of this, not only blending, but also single-origin coffee, as long as you decide to use coffee beans for Italian style, the roaster will choose a darker roasting curve to cook the beans. So, if we want to use espresso beans to brew a cup of delicious Pour over(V60) coffee, we first need to find a suitable parameter for brewing based on its roasting degree, so that the coffee will not be over-extracted due to excessive extraction efficiency.Front Street in the old street bean listEssai OiranFor example! Front Street’s Oiran sold on Taobao has two roasting levels to choose from, one is a light roast that can well display the floral and fruity aroma of coffee; the other is a medium roast that is more suitable for Italian-style coffee.When brewing the former, because the roasting is shallower and the density is higher, Front Street will use a formula with higher extraction efficiency to brew it. This is the 15g powder brewing formula that Front Street has always shared: water temperature 92°C, grinding degreeNo. 20 screen75%~80% sieving rate, powder to water ratio 1:15, three stages, 2 minutes.The Oiran brewed with this formula performs very well. It tastes mainly sweet and sour, with a clean texture and outstanding flavor, with aromas of berries, citrus, flowers, and oolong tea.But if we use this formula to brew a medium-roasted Front Street Essai Oiran, then the result can be imagined, and there is a high probability that we will get a cup of over-extracted coffee with a complex and bitter taste. Because medium roasting will reduce the difficulty of coffee extraction, the flavor substances in the coffee will dissolve out faster, and the same parameters will naturally dissolve more bitterness.And if we want to avoid this situation from happening, then we need to lower the extraction parameters and reduce the extraction efficiency, so that we can brew a pot of delicious coffee. There are two main parameters that Front Street will adjust here. One is the water temperature, which will be lowered from the original 92°C to 90°C. The other is grinding. The grinding degree will be coarsened from the original 75%~80% sieving rate of the No. 20 sieve to 70%~75%. The purpose is to reduce the surface area of coffee powder in contact with water.Through such adjustments, the brewed coffee can perfectly avoid over-extraction and fully demonstrate its charm. The brewing performance of medium-roasted Oiran is somewhat different from that of lightly roasted Oiran. It has a more solid taste and the taste will be more balanced, no longer dominated by sweet and sour.In terms of flavor, because the roasting is slightly darker, in addition to the floral and fruity aroma, we also taste the aroma of chocolate and caramel, and the aftertaste will be longer than that of lightly roasted Oiran.In the same way, this set of parameters can also be used with the strawberry candy mentioned at the beginning.EspressoOn your body! That is: 15g of powder, water temperature of 88~90°C, powder to water ratio of 1:15, 70%~75% screening rate of No. 20 screen,three-stageBrew, 2 minutes extraction time.The strawberry candy brewed with this set of parameters also performed very well! The aroma is very rich, and the flavor is mainly cream, chocolate, strawberry, and blueberry. The taste is also balanced between sweet and sour, with a mellow taste and a prominent and long aftertaste, which is very good!If the Italian beans you use are roasted to a deeper degree, Front Street will recommend further adjusting the coarse grinding, and then controlling the water temperature in the range of 86°C~88°C to avoid excessive caffeine extraction efficiency and over-extraction~
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
