Pay attention to these details and your brewed coffee will taste just as good as the one from a coffee shop!

You’ve bought the same equipment as the standard coffee shop, but you always feel that the coffee you make at home is not as delicious as the one you drink in the coffee shop?

There may be several reasons for this.

Coffee powder to water ratio—

Do you want strong coffee or weak coffee?

The definition of ratio is - a relationship between two groups or quantities that expresses how much larger one is than the other. So, in our context, how much coffee should you use relative to water. Normally, when using 15 grams of coffee powder, we would use 240 grams of water to brew the coffee.

The coffee powder to water ratio naturally refers to the "ratio of the coffee powder used and the water injected", rather than the ratio to the amount of coffee liquid extracted.

At this coffee powder to water ratio, the brewed coffee is basically correct, with a high sense of balance, and you can also taste the unique flavor characteristics of the coffee. What would happen if you used a different ratio?

Let's use a 1:14 ratio - use the same amount of 15 grams of coffee powder and change the amount of water to 210 grams. Using less water to extract the same amount of coffee will make the coffee liquid more concentrated if other parameters and brewing techniques remain unchanged; on the other hand, if you use a 1:18 ratio (15 grams / 270 grams), you will taste a milder, but lighter and lighter coffee, and you will also feel different in flavor.

When developing specific coffee extraction parameters, you only need to test different coffee powder and water ratios with the same grind settings to find the perfect ratio more quickly.

Remember to have an accurate scale, otherwise the proportions may be out of balance.

#Extraction time determines the grinding scale

As mentioned above, the brewing time of your coffee determines the grind size of your coffee particles. Sometimes, the brewing time tells you how fine or coarse a grind you should use. If you need to use a shorter brewing time (like for espresso), then your grind size should be fine so that the water can extract all the good coffee components in the coffee.

On the other hand, if your brewing method/equipment takes longer (such as a French press), you should grind the coffee coarser so that you don't extract too much of the coffee and extract the coffee's less desirable ingredients.

The best example is the Chemex, which uses a very thick filter paper, but extraction times should be fairly close to other pour-over methods.

Here is a list of suitable particle sizes for some brewing methods:

equipment:

Grinding scale (μm micrometer)

Extraction time (min)

Drip coffee

800-1000

5-10 min

French Press Coffee

700-800

4-5-min

Fully automatic coffee extraction device

500-700

4-6 min

Hand-poured coffee

400-600

2-4 min

Espresso

100-300

20-30 seconds

Turkish Coffee

50-150

Short-term boiling

More extraction also requires a coarser grind.

If you want to double the amount of coffee and use 20g of coffee powder, you need to grind the coffee powder coarser so that the extraction time will not be too long. Of course, this rule only applies to hand-brewed coffee, because the time it takes for water to flow through the coffee grounds bed will be longer after the amount of powder is increased.

#Brewing coffee temperature

Water temperature is often forgotten, but it is crucial when it comes to brewing good coffee. If you brew your coffee at too high a temperature, you run the risk of overextracting, making your coffee taste bitter. On the other hand, water that is too cold may make your coffee flavor flat and too acidic.

Generally speaking, dark roasted coffee prefers lower temperatures because they may have too much bitterness in the coffee liquid extracted at high temperatures. On the other hand, lighter roasted coffee beans require more water power to be extracted because of their higher density. And when extracting coffee, the higher the water temperature, the sweeter the coffee; on the contrary, the lower the water temperature, the brighter the flavor and the stronger the acidity.

#Hand brewed coffee technique is also the key to uniform extraction

When it comes to hand brewed coffee, the brewing method is also a very important aspect. Coffee can easily become bad due to problems with the brewing technique. So, what kind of brewing technique will lead to a bad coffee taste?

You can observe the situation in your coffee filter cup. After brewing, is there a big pit in the middle of the coffee grounds? This crater may be a sign of uneven extraction. An even grounds bed means even extraction of coffee, and even extraction avoids over-extraction or under-extraction in one area.

-The end –

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