Is brewing coffee by hand not good? Three basic conditions for brewing good coffee

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"I also make it by hand at home, but why isn't it as delicious as yours?"

Many people think that hand brewing is an advanced technique, and that any coffee will taste good if it is brewed with the right brewing technique. In fact, to make good coffee, you need not only the right brewing technique, but also high-quality coffee beans and the right utensils. Without good coffee beans, it is impossible to make good coffee!

Brewing coffee is like cooking. You need good ingredients to have a good flavor. For example, you are unlikely to make a delicious salmon sushi with a smelly salmon. Of course, hand brewing is definitely one of the best ways to show the delicate flavor and layers of coffee, but even the best chefs need good ingredients to perform at their best.

So what are high-quality coffee beans?

• From green coffee beans with excellent flavor and very few defects

• Proper baking

• Fresh Baking

How to identify high-quality green coffee beans is usually the job of cuppers and roasters, and it is usually difficult for consumers at the brewing end to understand and master it. So why do we mention it? Because the above principles are still applicable and important. No matter how good the roasting technology is, it is difficult to replace the quality of the raw materials! The main difference between general commercial coffee and specialty coffee is mostly here.

Green coffee beans need to be roasted before they can fill the room with fragrance. Whether it is light roasted or dark roasted, there is a flavor that is exciting and worth appreciating. However, how to make the roast light without being raw, or dark without being burnt, depends on the experience and skills of the roaster.

Although light roasting is popular now, good light roasting has elegant floral and fruity acidity, but too light roasting or improper roasting may make light roasted coffee taste extremely sour and sharp. Good dark roasting can be as sweet and smooth as high-end chocolate with a long aftertaste, but over-roasting can make it bitter, irritating and tasteless.

Fresh Grind

In addition to tasting its "flavor", drinking coffee is more about tasting its "aroma".

If you don't have a grinder to grind coffee beans today, you usually have to ask the store to grind them for you. In this case, most of the precious aroma of the coffee will dissipate into the atmosphere and become an air freshener.

Therefore, in order to retain more aroma to be brewed into the cup, a qualified grinder is necessary! Even if the grinding quality of the grinder is poor, freshly ground coffee is much more flavorful than ground coffee powder that has been oxidized for several days.

Proper Proportion & Correct Measurement

Have you ever made desserts yourself or read a recipe to cook? Today's recipe tells you to add two spoons of salt or sugar, but he said small teaspoons, and you used a large spoon, then the taste must be very "rich". This method will definitely produce very different products each time, and it is easy for you to not know whether you put too much salt or too few eggs today.

The same is true for coffee. If the amount of coffee powder and brewing water used today are different from the past, the strength will be very different. More often than not, you will not know what went wrong. Is it because the temperature is not high enough, so it is weak? Or is it because the water flow is too fast and too much?

Therefore, using a digital scale to help you measure how much coffee beans you use for brewing today or how much more water you use for brewing can effectively help you stabilize your brewing results. If you don't have a digital scale at hand, using a fixed-size coffee bean spoon and a measuring cup with a measuring scale can also help.

Just be aware that coffee beans of different roasting degrees have different densities. A flat spoon of light roasted coffee beans may weigh 1-3 grams more than a dark roasted coffee beans. If you use two flat spoons per person, the difference can be 2-6 grams. You have to be careful! If you use two flat spoons per brew, remember to use the same spoon and the same brewing amount every time to avoid large and small changes.

Of course, there are many details to pay attention to in order to brew delicious coffee stably, such as water quality, equipment structure, etc. Continuous practice is also necessary, but if you can master these three basic conditions, brewing a cup of smooth and delicious coffee is not difficult.

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