With the barista's patient explanation, I bought a pack of coffee beans and took them home. I followed the brewing recommendations, but found that the coffee I brewed was very different from what I drank in the store. After thinking about it, you still don't know where the problem lies... It's probably caused by overlooking a certain detail.
In fact, for newcomers who are just starting to learn manual brewing, mastering the details is the key to successfully getting started, rather than fancy brewing techniques or tricky extraction parameters. If you have encountered the above problems and are troubled by bad coffee, you might as well take a look at these details that are most easily overlooked by novices.
Detail 1: Before the beans are officially ground, there is no "washing and grinding", resulting in coffee odor.
Regardless of whether you use a hand grinder or an electric grinder, every time you grind coffee, there will be more or less fine shavings stuck to the cutter disc. Many friends do not have the habit of disassembling and washing, and the frequency of use is not high, so the fine powder accumulated in the gaps will oxidize and deteriorate over time, producing a wood smell or a fuel consumption smell.
Detail 2: The wet filter paper does not fit the filter cup
Wetting the filter paper is a default action that many people perform before brewing. Firstly, it is to make the filter paper and the filter cup fit "tightly", and secondly, it can also preheat the filter cup and the lower pot. Some newcomers only know how to "water" the filter paper with water, but ignore the importance of fit.
Detail 3: After pouring the powder, tap the filter cup too many times
I believe everyone knows that uneven powder layer can easily lead to uneven contact between powder and water. Therefore, after pouring in coffee powder, we will gently tap or shake the filter cup to make the surface of the powder layer even. But be aware that if you tap too hard or too many times, a large amount of smaller, very fine powder will fall from the gaps to the bottom. At this time, the upper layer of powder will become loose, while the lower layer will be compacted and tightly packed, making it difficult for hot water to penetrate, eventually causing the problem of clogging at the end of brewing.
There is also a skill in pouring the coffee powder. We can first aim at the center point and slowly pour out the coffee powder. This will prevent the coffee powder from being too biased to one side. Just shake the particles gently and the coffee powder will be evenly distributed at the bottom of the filter cup.
Detail 4: The inspection work before water injection is not in place
I have brewed thousands of pots of coffee in Front Street, and I know all the parameters by heart, but occasionally I still make some low-level mistakes. Therefore, if I want to avoid an irreversible situation, it is very important to check before filling with water. First, please check whether the water that just washed the filter paper and flowed into the sharing pot has been poured out, and whether the water in the kettle is enough. After grinding the coffee powder, reset the electronic scale to zero before pouring it in to reconfirm the gram weight to prevent the grinder from "eating powder".
Detail 5: Check the water temperature early, but still don’t start flushing
This is a problem that many home friends ignore, and it is also the most common problem that appears among novices. They are used to confirming the water temperature first, closing the lid and then doing other things. In fact, by the time the water is actually filled, the temperature has already dropped, so Front Street recommends leaving the confirmation of the water temperature to the last two steps. If you are using this type of non-temperature controlled water filling kettle, you can consider its heat absorption effect, choose hot water a few degrees higher than the brewing temperature, pour it in, wait for it to slowly drop to the target temperature, and then start filling the water immediately.
Detail 6: During steaming, part of the coffee powder is not moistened
Waiting for 30 seconds with twice the amount of water for the coffee powder is a simmering formula that everyone knows, but in fact it also has another premise, which is to ensure that the coffee powder is fully soaked and the gas can be discharged at the same time. If you only focus on the amount and time of steaming water and are not very skillful in controlling the flow, it is easy for the powder layer to be dry on one side and wet on the other. Judging from the experience of hand-washing in the past, if you can't get all the powder in 2 times the water, you might as well "appropriate" a little water (5-10 grams) in the later stage to pursue a better steaming effect.
Detail 7: Brewing parameters are not strictly implemented
Before brewing a coffee, we will formulate a corresponding brewing plan, including powder volume, water volume, temperature, grinding degree, water temperature, water injection distribution and other parameters. Only by brewing strictly according to the original values, if the coffee tastes wrong in the end, can adjustments be made to the original extraction framework during review.
Detail 8: Only focus on the electronic scale and ignore the changes in the powder bed
Detail 9: Drink the coffee without shaking it well
Mastering these details may not make the coffee taste ten times better immediately, but if you do it well, you can eliminate various unstable factors from the source and more intuitively find out the reasons why the coffee does not taste good, whether it is the grinding, water temperature, powder-to-water ratio, water injection method, etc.
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
