In front street yesterday"How to Achieve Perfect Steaming"After this tweet was posted, some friends were curious about this question - "Can Pour over(V60) coffee be made without steaming?"Needless to say, of course it can! However, this "can" requires certain conditions. First of all, we need to clarify one thing, that is the purpose of steaming.In previous articles, Front Street mentioned that steaming is an exhausting behavior for better extraction of coffee. Because in many cases, coffee powder will be rich in carbon dioxide. When these carbon dioxides exist, it is difficult for hot water to dissolve the flavor substances in coffee, and the brewed coffee is very easy to be weak and tasteless. You can take a look at the brewing comparison done in front of the street below!The content that Front Street wants to compare here is: "The difference between brewing Pour over(V60) coffee with steaming and without steaming." To do this, we need to use the same beans and the same parameters to brew two pots of coffee. The only difference is that one pot will have steaming and the other pot will not have steaming. Finally, compare the differences between them through tasting and concentration measurement.Then Front Street will use the two beans with the fresher dates to brew two sets of coffee! One is the light roasted coffee beans in the Front Street bean list - Front Street Ethiopian Oiran, while the other is the dark roasted coffee beans in the Front Street bean list - Front Street Sumatra Golden Mandheling. The extraction parameters are as follows:Amount of powder used: 15gPink to water ratio: 1:15Grinding degree: 85% screening rate of No. 20 meshBrewing time: 1 minute 50 secondsBrewing water temperature: Light Roasted Oiran 94°C/Dark Roasted Golden Mandheling 90°CBrewing method: one knife flowBrewing process: skip it! Let's get straight to the results.The oiran who is not stuffy:The extraction rate of the non-steamed Oiran is 17.86%. It tastes very fresh, with a touch of fruit acid and a touch of tea aroma. The flavor is not very prominent, the taste is not very strong, and the overall taste is sour.There is a steamy oiran:The extraction rate of the steamed Oiran is 19.25%. In comparison, the taste is very full and the flavor is also very prominent. You can clearly taste citrus, berry, white floral, and oolong tea flavors. The overall taste is smooth and the taste is balanced, very good~Golden Mandheling without steaming:The extraction rate of Golden Mandheling that has not been steamed will be relatively low, which is 16.19%. The taste is thin, with just a layer of nutty flavor.There is steamed golden mandheling:The extraction rate of steamed Golden Mandheling is 18.27%. It tastes much mellower and has a more prominent flavor. We can clearly capture the sweetness of caramel, the aroma of chocolate, and the aftertaste of spices and pine wood. It's just that because it is a one-stage drink, the taste is not as mellow as the three-stage drink.It can be seen that whether it is dark roasted or light roasted coffee, even if the beans, time, grinding, water temperature and other parameters are the same, the taste of the version without steaming is far inferior to that with steaming. Then we can also clearly see the difference between the two in terms of extraction rate, especially the group with deep roasting and sufficient carbon dioxide content, the difference will be greater. This is enough to illustrate the importance of steaming for Pour over(V60) coffee under regular brewing.However, this does not mean that Pour over(V60) coffee must be steamed. Under certain conditions, steaming can be omitted! It’s just that this condition will be very harsh, referring to both the beans and the parameters.Under what circumstances can hand brewing be used without steaming?As mentioned earlier, the function of steaming is to expel carbon dioxide that hinders extraction. Then, when there is no carbon dioxide in the coffee beans that hinders extraction, there is naturally no need to steam the coffee beans.But generally we don’t wait until this time to start brewing! Because as everyone knows, the existence of carbon dioxide is not entirely negative. In addition to hindering the effect of extraction, its existence will also bring a lot of positive blessings. For example, allowing the flavor substances of coffee to stay in the coffee beans longer, or slowing down the penetration rate of water flow, extending the extraction time and increasing the extraction efficiency...In addition to brewing coffee beans without carbon dioxide, there is another situation where you can brew coffee without steaming - even if you use a brewing method without steaming.As we all know, there are many ways to brew Pour over(V60) coffee, many of which do not involve steaming. For example, drip method,One shot, stirring method, etc.The reason why these brewing methods do not require steaming is because they use some extreme methods or parameters to release and ignore the impact of the presence of carbon dioxide.For example, in the dripping method, the first half of the dripping method is dripping water, and then seamlessly connects to the normal water injection and brewing, without the action of steaming. But in fact, when the water is dripped into the coffee powder, all the carbon dioxide has been emitted. Because it takes a long time to infiltrate coffee powder, many coffee powder that has been wetted by water will complete the discharge of carbon dioxide during this time;There is also the stirring method and the one-pitch method! The stirring method uses manual and powerful stirring to quickly stir out the flavor substances and carbon dioxide in the coffee powder. Naturally, there is no need for long-term steaming to remove carbon dioxide; while the one-throw method uses high water temperature and fine grinding to increase the extraction efficiency and speed up the removal of carbon dioxide, so there is no need for a special steaming step.In addition, there are many similar methods, Front Street will not list them all. But what we need to know is that these brewing methods will more or less test the barista’s understanding of brewing. Whether it is the use of parameters or the proficiency in controlling water, brewing will also be more troublesome, so few people use them.To sum up, Pour over(V60) coffee can be brewed without steaming, but the conditions are relatively harsh. The brewing method with steaming can help us brew a pot of delicious coffee simply and stably, so this is why the current mainstream brewing methods include the steaming step~
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
