What is the first step in brewing coffee? Grind the beans. In recent years, with the rise of the specialty coffee wave, more and more people are fond of drinking coffee. At the same time, more and more people want to fully experience the beauty and leisure time of drinking coffee, so they choose to buy coffee beans and brew them at home.
So a question will arise at this time. Is the coffee I buy different from the coffee I usually drink? It is a bean, not a powder. Therefore, the first step in brewing coffee is to turn coffee beans into coffee powder. No matter what equipment you use to brew coffee, you need to grind the coffee beans before you can brew a delicious cup of coffee. Among them, the most important factor affecting the results of grinding is the degree of grinding.
Why grind coffee beans? The purpose of grinding is to dissolve the coffee flavor quickly. Of course, not all soluble substances in coffee are delicious. To maximize the extraction of delicious flavor substances and avoid the precipitation of bad flavor substances, it is very important to determine the thickness of coffee particles.
Different coffee appliances require different coffee grinding thicknesses.
Different coffee appliances use different grinding levels due to differences in their extraction methods. Take the Pour over(V60) coffee, French press, espresso machine, and cold brew ice dripping that we come into contact with most every day as examples. The coffee grinding degrees they use are arranged from coarse to fine as [French press > hand brewed coffee > cold brew ice drip > espresso machine].
While we understand which types of extractions require coarser grinds and which types require finer grinds. But it is impossible to determine the exact value, that is, how thick the thicker one is, how thin the thin one is, and what exactly this "relative" is compared to.
Grinding Reference Standard
Although each coffee brewing standard has its own unique standards, there is one standard that is recognized in the coffee industry, and that is cupping! The original purpose of cupping is to test the quality of green coffee beans, so this method certainly has its advantages. The cupping coffee grinding degree is 70-75% passing through the No. 20 sieve.
[Popular Science: Front Street Coffee is recommended for everyone to use20No. Chinese standard sieve is calibrated to determine the grinding degree.20The aperture diameter of the Chinese standard screen mesh is0.85mm, a tool used for particle size classification and particle size detection of material particles, as long as the standard sieve meets the factory standards, it is accurate. Coffee grinding calibration is also very simple. Just pour the ground coffee powder into the sieve, cover the lid, shake horizontally until no particles fall out, and then weigh the particles that pass through the sieve, so that you can know the thickness of the grind. For example, grinding20gground coffee, by15.2g, then the grinding degree is20Screen pass rate76%. The higher the pass rate, the finer the coffee grind. 】
Since cupping can rely on standard mesh calibration to determine the grinding degree, the grinding degree corresponding to the coffee brewing equipment we usually use can also be clearly listed using data.
French Press (No. 20 screen pass rate 68-75%)
The extraction method of the French press is very similar to that of cupping. Both are based on soaking, so the grinding degree selected highly coincides with cupping.
Another reason for choosing coarser grinding particles is that French press filtration uses a metal filter, and the gaps are visible to the naked eye. Choosing coarser grinding particles is also for better filtration.
The grinding thickness of coffee beans with different roasting degrees is also different. For medium and light roasted coffee beans, you can choose a finer grinding (pass rate72-75%), medium-dark roasted coffee beans can be ground coarser (pass rate68-71%）。
Hand brewed coffee (20Screen pass rate70-80%）
Hand brewed coffee (No. 20 screen pass rate 75-85%）
The drip type is mainly used. Unlike the soaking type, which takes a long time and can easily produce bad flavor, Pour over(V60) coffee takes a short brewing time of about1points30seconds to2points30seconds. Therefore, the grind size needs to be finer than that used for cupping to fully express the flavor of the coffee. Coffee beans with different roasting degrees require different thicknesses. Medium light roasted coffee is ground finer (pass rate75-80%), medium-dark roasted coffee beans are ground coarsely (pass rate70-75%）。
Cold brew iced coffee (pass rate of No. 20 screen 80-85%)
Because cold-extraction ice drops are extracted with cold water, their penetration ability is poor and the extraction efficiency is very low. Therefore, it is necessary to grind the coffee more finely, but remember that finer is not always better. Grinding too finely will make the cold brew coffee turbid and increase the difficulty of filtering; it will also cause water to accumulate in the powder layer of the iced coffee, making it impossible to pass through smoothly. Therefore the grinding degree is20Screen pass rate80-85%It is more appropriate. If you want to be richer, choose the pass rate.85%, if you want to be more refreshed, choose pass rate80%。
[Note: Because the density and roasting degree of coffee beans are different, even if the same grinder grinds two coffee beans with large differences in density at the same scale, the thickness of the coffee particles ground by them at the same scale may not be the same. For example, Front Street uses EK-43s with a scale of 10 to grind Yirgacheffe coffee beans with a pass rate of 80%, while the same grinding scale of 10 Colombian Rose Valley has a pass rate of 75%. Therefore, if you feel that the grinding thickness is not right, it is best to use the same kind of beans to confirm the grinding degree. 】
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
