As we all know, hand-pressed coffee machines areIt can be said to be very popular in recent years. Although it is not as comprehensive as a semi-automatic coffee machine, it can also extract a similar high concentration of coffee! And with its affordable price and the convenience of not needing to be plugged in, hand-pressed coffee machines have successfully gained a place in the coffee circle.Therefore, many friends are curious. The price difference between hand-pressed and semi-automatic coffee machines is at least 10 to 20 times. With such a price gap, is there really no big difference in the coffee extracted by them?So let’s compare Front Street today! Look at the difference in the concentration produced by these two coffee machines, which are 20 times different in price between hand-pressed and semi-automatic coffee machines!(Front Street needs to emphasize here: the whole process is not Guangdong, not Guangdong!)
The hand-pressed coffee machine used in the front street is an antique purchased in 2022, Xinglisan! According to reminders from friends who often visit the store, the Front Street model has been discontinued;The semi-automatic coffee machine used in the front street is Lelit V3, which is used to produce the Italian products in the store.The content of the comparison is very simple. Front Street will use Xingli San and Lelit V3 to extract 3 portions of coffee each, then measure their concentrations and extraction rates respectively, take the average value for comparison, and finally taste the difference to see the taste.The coffee beans used this time are still beans produced in the store: Nuanyang Blend. The extraction parameters are as follows: powder volume 19.5g, grinding to 1.0 scale of Galileo Q18, and target liquid weight of 38ml.Just skip the extraction process! Front Street tasted the coffee immediately after extracting it, then measured the concentration and extraction rate and averaged them. Let’s take a look at the concentration and extraction rate first: the average concentration of Xingli San’s coffee is 10.04%, and the average extraction rate is 20.27%; while the average concentration of Lelit V3 is 10.60%, and the average extraction rate is 21.41%.In terms of concentration and extraction rate, they are relatively close. And it actually tastes the same! After tasting Front Street, I found that there is only a slight difference in taste and texture between the two. The coffee produced by the three-extract coffee from Star Grain will have a slightly thinner taste, but everything else is fine.The flavors are well represented: whiskey, butter cookies, berries. The taste is also relatively balanced, not sour or bitter! At the same time, it can also extract a relatively rich amount of oil, which is enough to show that hand pressing can provide enough pressure! You can guess which one of the following is the oil extracted from the hand-pressed coffee machine, and which one is the oil extracted from the semi-automatic coffee machine~The answer is revealed: The one on the right is extracted by a semi-automatic coffee machine, and the one on the left is extracted by a hand-pressed coffee machine. Did you guess it right? From the above, we can know that regardless of other functions, the coffee extracted by a hand-pressed coffee machine is indeed comparable to that of a semi-automatic coffee machine in terms of taste and texture.But after all, the price difference is so big, so the function of hand pressing cannot be as versatile as that of a semi-automatic coffee machine, and the stability will be relatively low. But if you don’t have a large cup capacity and don’t have extreme requirements for coffee, then a hand-pressed coffee machine will be a very good replacement tool!(Note: Front Street here refers to the not-so-expensive 100-yuan hand press machine! And I emphasize again: this is not an advertisement!)Many friends have actually accumulated a lot of questions after seeing this! Because if you have searched for relevant reviews on the Internet, you will find that many bloggers are using this type of hand-pressed coffee machine.(A 100-yuan machine that costs less than 1,000 yuan)The car overturned all the time. Either the extracted coffee is not strong enough, or there is no oil! Even if there are, they are more like rough bubbles that have been squeezed out.The main reason why such a rollover occurs is that the correct parameters are not used! Pressure, water temperature, grinding, water volume, and powder volume are all important parameters to create a cup of coffee with high concentration and rich oil. If not used correctly, the resulting coffee will be as thin and light as water, and the oil will be as rough as fake.It doesn’t matter, Front Street is here to share with you some details you need to pay attention to when using hand pressure! First of all, what we need to know is that the hand press is not like a coffee machine. Its pressure and extraction method are quite different from those of a coffee machine!Without modification to pneumatic hand pressure,The pressure it uses when extracting coffee is not that stable. So if you don't plan to modify the hand pressure, then the use of other parameters must be a little more extreme!Front Street chose a more extreme water temperature, 95°C, which can increase the efficiency of hot water in dissolving substances! And because hand pressure requires us to add water manually, we need to prepare an additional water boiling tool to boil the hot water before adding it. However, it should be noted that when using the hand-pressed coffee machine for the first time, it is best to preheat the water tank with hot water, and then pour the hot water for extraction into it. The purpose of this is to reduce the temperature draw of hot water from the water tank so that the water temperature during extraction can be more stable.
When it comes to grinding, Front Street recommends using the same grinding size as your coffee machine! Because the formation of pressure requires resistance, when the resistance provided by the powder is higher, we can apply more pressure during extraction. Therefore, when using a hand-pressed coffee machine to extract, we can be more careful in terms of grinding. Then, in the same way as the extraction of the coffee machine, in order to avoid the channel effect, we try to spread and press the powder evenly after filling the coffee powder.Hand-pressed coffee machines generally have an adjustable pressure valve, such as Xingli San, which is controlled through a dial at the bottom. Under normal use, Front Street generally recommends turning the dial to the bottom and turning the pressure to the maximum.The last thing is the amount of water. The amount of water determines the concentration of the coffee.If we want to extract a cup of high-concentration coffee, Front Street recommends that we strictly control the amount of water used or the weight of the extracted liquid. The powder-to-liquid ratio we use when extracting a cup of espresso is 1:2. If we want the coffee extracted by the hand-pressed coffee machine to have a comparable concentration to the espresso, we can also use the same powder-to-liquid ratio. When converted into a powder-to-water ratio, it is 1:3.5~4.Okay, the above is the general content. If you are interested, you can research different brands of hand-pressed coffee machines by yourself. I will only introduce them here on Front Street~
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
