A reader submitted a contribution: they recently bought a bunch of drip coffee bags during a sale and wanted to try brewing them in different ways. Then they found a rather tricky approach—brewing with milk. But since they had never tried it, they worried it might go terribly wrong, so they came to ask Front Street whether it was feasible. For this kind of thing that helps coffee lovers, Front Street has always been No problem. Without further ado, let's dive right in～

Is it feasible to brew drip coffee bags with milk?

Actually, milk as the main extractor for coffee is not the first time it has appeared in Front Street's experiments. Last year we published an article "Is it feasible to brew pour-over coffee with milk?", which mentioned that because milk contains too many substances, its extraction ability is hard to compete with regular hot water. Also, if heated to boiling, it will lose a large amount of protein and lactose substances, making the taste worse. So directly applying conventional parameters and techniques to brew drip coffee bags with milk clearly won't work.

To solve the problem of milk's insufficient extraction ability, Front Street plans to first use hot water for blooming, that is, letting the coffee grounds absorb water to help better release flavor substances in the later stage, then heat the milk to 75℃, and then pour in two stages.

To avoid the brewed milk coffee from drip bags tasting sharply sour or bland, Front Street still recommends prioritizing categories labeled medium and dark roast, such as Front Street's Bird of Paradise, Queen's Estate, Golden Mandheling, and Front Street Huilan. Because these coffees have obvious caramelized aromas, they coordinate better with hot milk;

But if you are more sensitive to bitterness, then fruity-acid drip bags with a fermented feel are more recommended, such as Front Street's Sidra, Big Belly, Strawberry Candy, Sunflower Warm Sun Blend, etc., because these coffees combine candied fruit, fruity notes, fermented winey notes, and certain caramelized flavors, making them suitable to drink with milk.

How to brew drip coffee bags with milk?

First, prepare a tall glass and a pack of fresh Front Street Strawberry Candy drip coffee. Tear it open and hang it on the rim of the glass (for a more intuitive reference, Front Street will include timing and weighing during this brewing process).

For the first stage, use hot water at 90–93℃to pour into the drip bag until the filter bag is half full (after boiling, turn off the heat, leave the lid open, and let it sit at room temperature for 1 minute). The water amount is about 25g. Try to keep a small stream; if using a gooseneck kettle, you can appropriately add circling.

After the coffee liquid finishes dripping, begin pouring the second stage, using 75°C hot milk (hot enough that you can't hold your hand on it) poured into the coffee bed until the filter bag is 9 parts full. When the coffee liquid is about to run dry, you can continue pouring the next stage to 9 parts full. The total amount of water and milk is 150g.

Visually, the whole cup of coffee appears a thick milk-tea color. As for the coffee's taste alone, Front Street thinks both the intensity and aroma pass the test. Tasting it directly gives flavors of strawberry jam, raisins, and cream. Whether drunk directly or with ice, it has a good mouthfeel.

However, because after the coffee contacts the milk, the fine particles expand faster, thereby clogging the gaps in the filter bag, so during the second-stage extraction you can see the flow rate slow down greatly. The total drip time was 11 minutes.

In addition, plus the preparation time for various ingredients, Front Street's Big Belly drip bag took 20 minutes in total before the milk coffee was barely in hand, and you still have to clean the tool used to heat the milk. Obviously, this somewhat runs counter to the original purpose of drip bags—convenience. So, for friends who want to quickly make milk coffee with drip bags, Front Street does not quite recommend choosing this direct-pouring method.

Since drip bags have developed in China for many years, people have also explored many novel ways to pair them with milk in daily life. Front Street happens to have two here. One is to first use hot water to extract a strong black coffee, then mix inan appropriate amount offresh milk according to ratio. For specific operations, you can refer to this article "How to make latte coffee with drip bags?". Front Street won't repeat too much here.

The other is not only more suitable for friends who love iced milk coffee, but the steps are also very simple. As long as you have a drip coffee bag, a bottle of milk (fresh milk tastes better), and a refrigerator, you can easily achieve "latte" freedom after a sleep.

The operation is very simple. After taking out the drip bag, there is no need to tear it open. Directly peel off the paper shell on the packaging, then throw it "bare" into the milk. Tighten the bottle cap, then shake vigorously up and down, with the purpose of letting the milk soak the coffee powder inside. Because it is low-temperature extraction, Front Street thinks the ratio of coffee to milk does not need to be too rigorous; it just needs to roughly fall between 1:12 and 1:15. For example, here Front Street will add 150ml of fresh milk to a 10g drip coffee bag.

Next, we put the milk with the drip bag soaking in it into the refrigerator to chill overnight. The next morning (taking about8～12hours), you can take it out and shake it vigorously a few more times, take out the drip bag, and the milk coffee is ready.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.