Want to become a master of hand-poured coffee? How should you practice the technique of hand-poured coffee?

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Many hand-brewed coffee enthusiasts, after leaving the novice stage, often become numb and confused, not knowing how to advance and how to improve. Try different types of beans? You may not like them all; try different combinations of utensils? If you keep buying, your family will suspect you of taking drugs! After thinking about it, the only thing to do is to practice the "technique" - but everyone's "technique" is different, how to practice? What to practice? This is the topic we are going to discuss today: How should the technique of hand-brewed coffee be practiced?

Each school of brewing has its own brewing techniques. The main reason is that they each have different settings for brewing goals and different interpretations of the physical phenomena that occur during the extraction process. Under the premise that the equipment is fixed, some corresponding adjustments are made to the techniques. These adjustments will help them achieve their set goals.

Adjustments must be based on something, and how to find the way to adjust is what this article will tell you. The content of this article will focus on ideas about brewing, not directly feeding you answers, but providing you with a reference direction, but you still have to find your own answers. In terms of content, this article may not be suitable for pure beginners to read. You should wait until your brewing has a certain degree of stability and proficiency before reading this article again, and you may be more rewarding.

What is the technique of hand-poured coffee?

There are basically three key points to the flavor setting of hand-brewed coffee:

The first is the raw beans, which include breeding ability, microclimate conditions of the planting area (rainfall, altitude, slope, soil quality, drainage, sun exposure, temperature, etc.), the planting methods of the estate (shading, fertilization, pruning, etc.), the quality of post-processing, whether the grading is accurate, the variety of the coffee itself, and the storage conditions during transportation and storage.

Next is coffee roasting, including the characteristics of coffee roasting machines and the skills and concepts of coffee roasters.

Finally, it is the setting of brewing parameters. What is the technique of hand brewing coffee? It is the setting of brewing parameters! In addition to the "hard core" parameters such as water temperature, grinding, coffee powder water ratio, the biggest variable in brewing parameters is you, how you plan to add water, how much to add, how to make circles, when to cut off the water... In simple terms, it is the "brewing system" mentioned before. The reason why it is called a "system" is that even if only one parameter is changed, the other parameters will be affected.

This part is also the main area of ​​research for friends who are currently playing with hand brewing, from choosing the type of grinder, hand brewing filter cup, filter paper, setting the roasting degree of coffee beans, setting the conditions for grinding coffee powder and adjusting the water supply method, to the final way of serving the cup.

Before learning hand brewing, you must understand one point: the brewing technique can only fine-tune the flavor direction, but it cannot create flavor itself. The flavor of a cup of hand brewed coffee is determined when the beans are roasted. Similarly, the quality of the raw beans is determined by how much can be done when roasting the beans. The above content is basically available in coffee books or articles found on the Internet, and everyone should be able to recite it, but knowing it is one thing, whether you can apply it, or whether you believe it or not, it depends on the individual.

1. Thoughts on the grinder

The key to determining the ratio of aroma to taste is the characteristics of the coffee roaster. The coffee roaster will generally roast coffee beans of a certain flavor based on the style that the coffee roaster is good at. The roasted coffee beans are the starting point for setting the flavor when brewing. Only the flavors in the roasted beans can be brewed. If the roasted beans don't give you the flavor, it's useless even if you shout at the top of your lungs.

If we simply look at it from the perspective of the brewer, the grinder is probably the first key factor. This is basic common sense that everyone who plays specialty coffee knows. The grinder has a decisive influence on the flavor of the coffee. Everyone also knows that the grinder is the most cost-effective investment (the premise is that the investment is in the right direction). The types and performance of grinders are not what this article is about, but to give readers of this article a direction to think about. When you are setting the flavor performance, the grinder is a very important key point.

Some grinders are good at expressing aroma, some are good at expressing taste, and some are balanced. When you set the flavor performance, the most basic factor is to first decide which blade system your grinder will use, whether to choose a thick cone blade, a flat blade with a bold aroma, or a ghost blade with a mellow taste.

There are two different ways of thinking when choosing a grinder. One is to maximize the flavor of the coffee based on the characteristics of the grinder. The other is to create a completely different flavor based on the characteristics of the grinder.

The first example is easier to understand, it is basically the combination of the two. The second example may take some time to explain, and the easier example to understand should be KONO's drip method, which uses a flat-blade grinder to express the aroma of coffee, and then uses the subsequent water injection method to create an extreme sense of thickness, so that the overall cup feels balanced between taste and aroma.

The settings of various brewing parameters are roughly similar, but the impact of variables is basically not as great as that of the grinder. From the perspective of hand-brewed coffee equipment, basically if the coffee beans are roasted correctly, the grinder is correct, and the filter paper is correct, the final taste will theoretically be correct.

2. Don’t worry about the filter cup, just watch your water flow

In recent years, there have been an endless stream of hand-poured filter cups, which are simply dazzling. The unique physical properties of each are also the point of discussion: in addition to the impact of the filter cup material on brewing, there are also flow rate comparisons between various filter cups, differences in powder layer distribution, etc. Those discussions should be respected to a certain extent, after all, they are the results of everyone's hard work and careful verification, but the editor recommends that everyone simply regard the factors affecting the filter cup as a fixed value or constant.

The purpose of comparing filter cups is to let you know the characteristics of a particular filter cup and what kind of flavor you hope to achieve with these characteristics during the brewing process. Conceptually, it is more like the characteristics of a coffee roaster. Some machines are good at creating a taste but the aroma is dull, while some machines roast beans with a good aroma, but they always feel too clean after drinking. Therefore, when it comes to brewing, the role of the filter cup should be the same.

It is unlikely that you will change the filter cup during the brewing process in pursuit of a certain flavor, nor is it possible to set a different filter cup brewing plan for each bean. Therefore, adjusting the water injection method is more practical than adjusting the filter cup combination.

The most difficult part of adjusting the flavor by changing the filter cup is that your water injection must be stable enough that the method of injecting water into each cup is close to or exactly the same. After completely eliminating the unstable factors of water injection, you can truly use the filter cup to adjust the flavor, because at this time the only decisive factor affecting the flavor is the difference in the filter cup.

But if you have the ability to make your water flow as consistent as a machine, then adjusting the water injection method during the brewing process will not be a difficult task for you. So why do you need to frequently change the filter cup to express different flavors?

Moreover, in order to achieve a certain flavor, once you change the filter cup, you will have to adjust the powder amount, scale or filter fine powder, or even the baking method. Therefore, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try different filter cups before the water injection capacity is stable.

If the equipment really plays such an important role in the extraction process of hand-brewed coffee, then in the competition, as long as you use the same equipment as the world champion, you will basically be invincible, right? But the truth is of course not that simple. The key to truly affecting the flavor of a cup of coffee does not lie in the equipment you choose, but in your proficiency in using these equipment, that is, your ability to control the water flow.

3. Cut off the water flow

The starting point of hand brewing is when the coffee powder meets the hot water, but there are two end points. The first is when the brewing amount reaches the target amount, and the second is when the threshold of coffee powder extraction is reached. When brewing, all we can do is to try to get the maximum value within the threshold of coffee powder extraction before reaching the target amount.

We know that the main hand brewing process can be roughly divided into steaming and several water injections after steaming. The flavor of the whole cup of coffee is the sum of the coffee liquid obtained from these several water injections. Therefore, we can use the time point of water cut-off to confirm the breakpoint of flavor development during coffee extraction, and further estimate how the flavor development profile of coffee is between water cut-offs, so as to find the direction to further adjust the brewing method.

By using this technique, we can more clearly identify when a certain flavor in the coffee begins to develop, and further know how to correct the way the water is supplied. Then you can amplify, emphasize or weaken the performance of certain flavors by adjusting the technique.

If you want to make more accurate records, you may need to add a timer to record the time of each water injection. With time as a more accurate basis and the existing smart scale to record water volume changes, you will have more basis when adjusting the water injection amount.

How much water should be added during steaming? How long should steaming take? How to find the right time to cut off the water? How long should the water be cut off? How much water should be added? How long should it take to fill it? How to fill the water? No matter what kind of equipment you use, it will eventually come back to these questions.

Take Kanazawa's drip method as an example. Basically, the flavor is doubled during steaming, and the final water addition is to dilute the flavor of the previous over-extraction. Conceptually, the initial extraction may be three times the concentration, there will be a normal concentration in the middle, and the final part is one-third of the normal concentration or lower. By mixing different concentrations, you will eventually get a cup of coffee with the default aroma and taste.

In fact, veteran coffee drinkers should know that the flavors released by coffee at different extraction stages after it meets hot water are completely different. The flavor during steaming, the flavor of the first water injection, and the flavor of the second water injection, even if you try to keep the water column and the circle fan the same, the flavor of the coffee brought out by hot water will never be the same.

What is the fun of hand-brewed coffee? The editor believes that what is fun is to accumulate evidence of the development of coffee flavor from repeated brewing experiences, and then use these experiences to judge when to cut off the water flow, when to resume the water flow, and in which situations to let go for a while.

Simply put, I think the flavor setting and adjustment ability of hand-brewed coffee is based on your understanding of the flavor development of coffee powder at different time points after it meets hot water. As a brewer, can you fully grasp it and adjust the water injection method in time according to those signs? When you can judge the state of coffee powder, no matter what equipment you use, it will be the same for you. Once you learn this, all equipment will be the same.

First, practice the basic skills well. Before each brewing, you can at least guess what the coffee will taste like after it is brewed. When you start trying to enhance the floral aroma of a cup of coffee or try to remove some overly stimulating fruit acids, these goals will be your flavor settings.

The brewing experience you have accumulated over a long period of time will naturally tell you how to proceed with the next brewing to achieve the goals you set. Slowly, as your stability in using the equipment increases and your brewing experience becomes richer, the chances of achieving the brewing flavor settings will become higher and higher. At the same time, your ability to taste coffee will also improve, and the goals set for flavor settings will also be adjusted accordingly.

You will find that you are on the road to becoming a master of hand-punching.

【Recommended reading】：

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[Beginner's Advancement] Can't practice hand pouring well? Three key points to pay attention to when practicing hand pouring

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