Hand-poured coffee has become a part of daily life for many coffee lovers. The equipment requirements are relatively simple, easy to get started, and there is a sense of ritual. Today, the Coffee Boutique Life editorial department has summarized these 10 practical suggestions for improving the quality of hand-poured coffee. If you find them inspiring, please collect or share them! (Warm reminder: Be sure to watch to the end, there is a live video of the hand-poured coffee show by Master Wang Ce)

People who are serious about hand brewing coffee are so handsome, okay?

① Use good water to make good coffee

In a cup of hand-brewed coffee, up to 98.5% is water. To make a delicious cup of hand-brewed coffee, the first step is to manage the water quality! At the World Coffee Brewing Championship last month, one of the secrets of Du Jianing's winning the world championship was to manage the water quality well. She added an appropriate amount of calcium ions and magnesium ions to the water to increase the water's extraction capacity and bring out more coffee flavor.

In our daily hand-brewed coffee, try not to use tap water directly. Instead, it is recommended to use water purified by a filter or mineral water with a suitable mineral content. Start your hand-brewed coffee journey by using good water! (To learn more about the importance of water quality, please refer to this article: "Which water is best for brewing coffee? Popular Science Article")

Ideal water for brewing coffee

②Use freshly roasted beans

A cup of coffee is also a food. Only good ingredients can make the food delicious, and good beans can make you have an endless aftertaste after drinking it.

Two points should be emphasized here: 1. Use high-quality roasted beans . Hand-brewed coffee is very versatile, and deep-roasted Italian blended beans can also be used for hand-brewed coffee. However, if you really want to enjoy the charm of hand-brewed coffee, it is recommended to use boutique beans with a cupping score of 80 or above, with a detailed bean history (origin, variety, processing method, etc.), and certain flavor characteristics. For details, please refer to this article Why does boutique coffee emphasize origin information? In fact, coffee lovers are quite happy. The price of half a pound (227g) of boutique beans on the market is about 100 yuan, which is much less than the cost of drinking tea and red wine. More expensive ones, such as Geisha, can also be tasted for two or three hundred yuan, and even the top ones will not be outrageously expensive; (Of course, there is also a kind of weird coffee in the coffee market, such as cat poop coffee, which can be described in four words: fake/expensive/unpalatable. It is used to fool rich people who don’t understand coffee. People who really understand coffee basically don’t touch it)

② Choose freshly roasted beans . The higher the quality of the coffee, the more emphasis should be placed on the concept of fresh roasting. Because once the raw coffee beans are roasted into ripe beans, the flavor of the coffee will continue to decrease. First the aromatic substances, then the good flavor substances, will all dissipate with the emission of carbon dioxide; of course, we have all heard of the concept of "raising beans". Freshly roasted beans require a three to five day bean raising period before the overall flavor will be at its best. This best state will last for about 7-10 days. After that, the flavor of the coffee will decay even more. If you drink it again after a month, the flavor will be much bland! Therefore, when buying beans, you must choose a store that pays attention to fresh roasting, and buy in small quantities, and try to drink them within two weeks.

③Choose a suitable filter cup

After talking about the two most important "raw materials" of hand-brewed coffee - water and coffee beans, the next key step is to find a filter cup that suits you. The more popular filter cups on the market, in terms of shape, include V60 funnel filter cup, cake-shaped flat-bottom filter cup, fan-shaped one-mouth or three-mouth filter cup, and the recently popular origami filter cup, diamond filter cup, etc.; in terms of material, there are ceramics, glass, resin, metal, etc.

Through brewing experiments and repeated tests, it is found that these filter cups have great differences in the performance of coffee flavor, acidity and sweetness, mellowness and cleanliness. So if you use a filter cup and can't brew the coffee flavor you want, then resolutely change it, don't worry about it! And when you find a suitable one, just keep using it, and it will depend on it for stable production in the future! A filter cup is a universe ! (In addition, after choosing a filter cup, filter paper is also very important. Please try to use bleached filter paper. Unbleached ones are easy to have a paper smell; and please use No. 01 filter paper for No. 01 filter cup, and No. 01 or No. 02 filter paper for No. 02 filter cup)

④ Reasonably adjust the grinding degree

The importance of grinding degree lies in its impact on the concentration and extraction rate of coffee. The most obvious change in taste is the change in body thickness. Under the same conditions (same coffee powder to water ratio, same water temperature, same water injection method, same brewing time), finely ground coffee has high concentration, high extraction rate, and high body thickness; coarsely ground coffee has low concentration, low extraction rate, and low body thickness.

The grind suitable for hand brewed coffee is medium-fine to medium grind (the particles are the same size as a mixture of granulated sugar and fine white sugar), using a commercial single-origin grinder Ditting KR804, between 6 and 8. You need to think about the flavor you want to express when brewing, and then adjust it to make sure. Of course, sometimes in order to express extreme flavors (for testing high extraction rate experiments, etc.), a finer scale such as 5 will be used, but in general, if you want to achieve the standard of gold cup extraction, it is more appropriate to adjust between 7±0.5 degrees.

Bean grinder scale indicator and knob

⑤ Reasonably set the powder-water ratio

The powder-water ratio is a very critical factor in hand-brewed coffee. Different powder-water ratios (the ratio of powder amount to water amount) will greatly affect the flavor of the coffee. We all know that in the process of hand-brewed coffee, aromatic substances and acidity are extracted first, followed by sweetness and caramelized substances, and finally bitterness, astringency and miscellaneous flavors come out. Therefore, we can control the powder-water ratio to bring out the best flavor of the coffee.

In general, coffee beans with extremely high quality (such as micro-batch beans with a market price of more than 200 yuan for half a pound) are suitable for a high coffee powder to water ratio (1:16-1:18); for ordinary fine beans (half a pound with a market price of around 100 yuan), it is recommended to use a coffee powder to water ratio of 1:13-1:15; for ordinary commercial beans, if you want them to be drinkable and not bitter, it is recommended to use a coffee powder to water ratio of 1:10-1:12. For beans with very poor freshness (for example, they have been roasted for three months), the good flavor of the coffee has almost gone, so you might as well try using a ratio of 1:8-1:10. If the original beans are of high quality, the sweetness will still be retained.

⑥ Reasonably control the water temperature

Water temperature will affect the extraction efficiency of coffee. High water temperature leads to faster extraction, while low water temperature leads to slower extraction. For example, ice drip coffee takes three to five hours to complete. Lightly roasted, high-quality beans can be brewed at 90-95 degrees to better show their acidity and sweetness. Medium-roasted fine beans can be brewed at 85-90 degrees to show the good flavor of the fine beans. For beans of average quality and medium-deep roasted beans, it is recommended to use 80-85 degrees water to brew them. As long as they are clean and free of odors and have a moderate body, they are acceptable.

In short, don’t limit yourself to using just one water temperature to brew coffee, but set it based on the quality/roasting of the beans and the flavor you want to achieve.

⑦Control the steaming time

Steaming (soaking) is the first step in hand-brewed coffee. Through steaming, the coffee powder is fully soaked, the extraction channel is opened, and carbon dioxide (freshly roasted beans) is discharged, providing a good environment for the formal extraction below.

How long should the steaming time be? Many people will set it to 30 seconds, which is a relatively applicable reference value. You also need to make adjustments based on the roasting degree/roasting time. The darker the roasting degree, the longer the steaming time required (1 minute is also possible). The fresher the beans, the more "vigorous" the exhaust during steaming, and the larger the "bulge" visually. You can observe that when there is no more steaming/the powder surface becomes darker, you can start the formal water injection later; for stale beans, after fully soaking, wait for about 5 seconds until the extraction channel opens, and then you can officially inject water. You don't have to wait until 30 seconds later, remember!

⑧Central water injection is more stable

After talking about the above influencing factors, the next issue is the brewing technique (the professional term is stirring/turbation/English Turbulence). Hand-brewed coffee circles also have many "weird tricks". In fact, as long as you understand the principles of brewing, you can understand their brewing logic.

Here we only emphasize one way of pouring water that can produce stable products, that is center pouring. This is also what some masters usually use when participating in competitions. Abandoning all kinds of tricks, just quietly pour water in the center, you can also get a cup of good coffee, and it will taste equally good every time!

⑨It tastes good even after adding water

Is it over after the coffee is brewed? Of course not. You must take a sip with a small cup before brewing. If you think the concentration is too high, adding an appropriate amount of bypass water (BYPASS) to dilute the coffee liquid to a palatable concentration is a great way, especially when using low-powder water to brew ordinary quality coffee. This trick is very useful.

⑩Record good habits

The last point is that I hope everyone can develop a good habit of recording. Every time you brew, record key information such as bean information, powder-water ratio, grinding degree, water temperature, and brewing time, so that you can refer to or make adjustments the next time you brew.

In short, hand brewing coffee is very playable, and everyone should try to break the inherent thinking, the goal is only to brew a better cup of coffee. After reading this article, I think it is useful, share it, and encourage each other.

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I am Afei, I have been engaged in promoting coffee culture for more than 6 years. I have been to coffee farms in Indonesia, Yunnan, Taiwan, and coffee consuming cities in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. I love specialty coffee and want to make friends who love coffee as much as I do. Welcome everyone to follow my Toutiao account and my new book "Fall in Love with Coffee in 3 Minutes", where I will share and exchange knowledge about specialty coffee, latte art, and store opening. Love coffee, let's get together. Share a wonderful life with you every day.