According to Front Street, cold brew coffee is one of the most suitable iced coffees to make at home, because it is not only suitable for most coffee beans, but also has a very low production threshold. Even if you don’t have any special brewing equipment at home, you can still make good-tasting iced coffee, which is quite trouble-free.
Because it is soaked in a low-temperature environment, the extraction efficiency of soluble substances in cold brew is very low. Compared with coffee brewed with hot water such as hand-brew and espresso, its compatibility is significantly higher, so the corresponding parameters have a large adjustable range. Generally speaking, as long as you don't use a particularly extreme combination of parameters, you can actually meet the basic extraction needs, and making a cup of iced coffee with good taste is a piece of cake.
Take the cold brew recommendations often used by Front Street as an example. The grinding degree should be similar to that of hand grinding (the sieving rate of China's No. 20 mesh is 70-85%, which is the level of sugar according to the naked eye). The ratio of powder to water is 1:10-1:13, and the soaking time is 8-18 hours. We can obviously see that among the three parameters, the "soaking time" has the widest span. There is a full ten hours difference between before and after, so wouldn't there be a big difference in flavor?
To this end, Front Street conducted a cold brew experiment with time as a variable, mixing the same amount of powder.Front Street Red Cherry Coffee, grind with fine sugar (EK43s electric grinder scale - 9.5 grids / C40 hand grinderScale - 22 grid) and a powder to water ratio of 1:10, soak for 4 hours, 10 hours, 16 hours, and 22 hours respectively, then filter and taste.
Finally, it was found that among the four groups of coffee, the red cherry cold brew brewed for 4 hours had the characteristics of under-extraction, while the coffee brewed for 22 hours showed signs of slight over-extraction. The two groups of coffee brewed for 10 hours and 16 hours had the best flavor. The latter tasted richer than the former. Whether drank directly or with ice cubes, the aroma and tonality of the beans themselves could be displayed.
Soak for 4 hours: citric acid, slight tea taste, average taste, weak aroma
Soaked for 10 hours: Bright berries are sour and sweet, with a refreshing taste and moderate aroma.
Soaked for 16 hours: citrus is sour, sweet and mellow, and the overall balance is very balanced
Soaked for 22 hours: thick taste, obvious strong tea flavor, slightly astringent, and a rustling aftertaste.
As mentioned above, in cold brewing, the temperature is already a set parameter, and the ratio of powder to water determines the intensity of the coffee, so the remaining two factors (grinding degree and time) determine the final flavor of the coffee. In other words, the finalcold brew coffeeWhether it is lighter or thicker depends on the combination of grinding degree and soaking time.
No matter which extraction method is used, the finer the coffee powder is ground and the longer the contact time with water, the more substances will be released from the coffee powder into the water, and the taste of the coffee will be thicker or richer; on the contrary, the coarser the powder is ground, the shorter the soaking time will be, the less the total amount of flavor substances will be dissolved, and the taste of the coffee will be thinner.
However, for cold brewing, due to its very low extraction efficiency, and the fact that the coffee powder and water are in a relatively static state without external driving force, if you want the sugars and organic acids and other compounds in the coffee powder to be more fully dissolved, so that it can be more balanced and fuller in terms of acidity, sweetness, body and other characteristics, you must first extend the soaking time appropriately.
However, experience tells us that the more coffee substances are dissolved, the better. When the water extracted exceeds a certain threshold, the good taste will turn into a negative effect, making the coffee taste like wood, bitterness, straw, etc. Therefore, in order to ensure that the coffee is neither under-extracted nor over-extracted, the parameter of time must beJustJust find an insurance range. Based on Front Street’s years of production experience, coffee that has been soaked for 8 to 18 hours is the most reliable. So how long should it be soaked?
Considering that many people usually make cold brew for convenience, Front Street here only lists two cold brew coffee consumption scenarios based on the most common situations in life. We only need to adjust according to our actual situation.
Scenario 1: If you want to be able to take a cup of iced coffee out from 7 to 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, then tonight you can put the cold brew in the refrigerator to brew before going to bed (about 9 to 12 o'clock), and filter it the next morning, so that the extraction time will fall within the safe range of about 7 to 12 hours.
Scenario 2: Some friends feel that it is too tiring to go through the long filtering process early in the morning, and they are too lazy to calculate the time. So Front Street recommends that you start making cold brew at 8 to 9 o'clock in the morning, and then take it out at about 6 to 8 o'clock at night. The final time can also be controlled within the range of 9 to 12 hours.
Not only that, cold brew coffee that is filtered and put back into the refrigerator will go through amaterial precipitation andThe fermentation process makes the flavor more rounded and the mouthfeel cleaner.
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
