With the growing popularity of coffee culture in China, more and more office workers choose to enjoy a cup of coffee before work to refresh themselves, and it has become their daily drink. Many people have also equipped their homes with various brewing devices. However, because the process of making pour-over coffee is relatively cumbersome, many people prefer the more cost-effective instant coffee as their daily pick-me-up.
Similarly, with the development of the coffee market, quite a few coffee enthusiasts who pursue delicious and high-quality coffee have emerged. They enjoy trying single-origin coffee beans from different producing regions and hope to enjoy high-quality coffee at home as well.
Recently, a customer who often makes coffee at home came to the Front Street Coffee shop. After tasting a cup of pour-over coffee, he asked the barista a question: Is there a big difference between freshly ground pour-over coffee and drip bag coffee in the final result?
So next, let Front Street Coffee take everyone to explore this question. If the same coffee beans are used, can the same flavor be achieved through two different brewing methods, drip bags and pour-over drippers? And what differences will there be between them?
First, everyone should know that there is no obvious difference in the main principles between drip bag coffee and pour-over coffee. The drip bag simply saves us many cumbersome preparation steps, making the whole coffee-making process more efficient in getting a delicious cup of coffee.
Without further ado, Front Street Coffee will use the relatively balanced Panama Washed Butterfly coffee beans for comparison, to see what different experiences drip bags and pour-over coffee will bring when using the same beans.
The brewing parameters for the pour-over coffee are: use 15g of coffee beans, brew with a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:15, water temperature of 92°C, grind size with an 80% passing rate through a No. 20 sieve (Front Street Coffee uses an EK grind setting of 10), brew using a three-stage extraction method with a V60 dripper, extraction time of 2 minutes and 15 seconds, and finally obtain 225ml of liquid.
The amount of coffee powder generally used in drip bags is about 10g-15g. So the parameters for this drip bag are: use 10g of coffee powder, brew with a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:15, which converts to 150ml of coffee liquid.
If there is no thermometer, a kettle of 300ml boiling water will gradually cool down, decreasing by about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius per minute. Therefore, we can simply boil the water, then wait for about 1 minute to let the water temperature naturally drop to the required range. In this way, even without a thermometer, coffee can be brewed conveniently.
Specific steps for daily drip bag brewing:
1. Prepare a cup and hot water, open the drip bag, tear off the sealing strip, and hang it on the rim of the cup.
2. After the hot water reaches roughly the intended temperature range, pour it toward the center of the drip bag until the water level reaches half of the drip bag, then wait 10-15 seconds for blooming.
3. Pour water a second time, this time filling the drip bag to 90% full. After the water finishes dripping, pour a third time, also filling it to 90% full. Wait for dripping to finish, then finally pour hot water a fourth time, still to 90% full, until the electronic scale shows exactly 150g.
4. After dripping is finished, remove the drip bag and enjoy the coffee!
After comparing the two, pour-over coffee indeed performs more prominently in aroma and flavor, specifically and relatively obviously, such as the sweetness of passion fruit, berries, and honey, as well as a faint floral note; by contrast, the flavors shown by drip bag coffee are not much different from pour-over coffee.
(The left is drip bag coffee, and the right is pour-over coffee.)
In terms of mouthfeel and layers, because the pouring process of pour-over can control the coffee bed and allow the coffee grounds to be fully extracted, it becomes fuller and rounder, while drip bag coffee is relatively lighter and more refreshing. If there are no auxiliary tools at home to brew a suitable ratio, you can use a cup with markings and then brew according to the above steps. In this way, you can also brew a delicious and convenient cup of coffee.
To further explore the differences between the two, Front Street Coffee then conducted another comparison using dark-roasted Papua Bird of Paradise coffee beans. In terms of flavor layers, the difference between the two was likewise not significant, both having obvious flavors of dark cocoa, cream, chocolate, and almond, but the drip bag coffee was a bit sweeter and more refreshing, while the pour-over was a bit fuller and thicker. There was not much difference in mouthfeel.
Front Street Coffee believes this result mainly occurred because in this experiment, the drip bag, like the pour-over, was ground and brewed fresh, and auxiliary tools such as an electronic scale and thermometer were used, strictly following the target coffee-to-water ratio, which made the flavor of the drip bag coffee similar to that of the pour-over. But many people, at home or in an office environment, brew drip bag coffee without these auxiliary tools, and the amount of water poured and the water temperature are all guessed.
In addition, most of the drip bag products everyone buys are pre-ground, and the aroma dissipates completely as the days of storage pass. Therefore, even with the same coffee beans, the taste of drip bags can still be inferior to freshly ground pour-over.
Therefore, when choosing a coffee extraction method, we can choose according to personal taste preferences and actual circumstances. If you want to experience a richer, more specific and abundant aroma and flavor, as well as a fuller and rounder mouthfeel, pour-over coffee is a good choice. If you want to enjoy convenient, quick coffee with good flavor as well, drip bag coffee is a very good choice. No matter which method you choose, you can easily brew a delicious cup of coffee at home.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
