Front Street Coffee's pour-over teaching has long been based on the 1-person standard of 15g coffee and 200ml water, but when you need to brew 2 to 3 cups at once, the 01 small dripper can no longer handle it. This article focuses on a brewing test using 30g of coffee and a V60 02 large dripper. First, brewing was carried out with a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, 91℃ water temperature, and a three-pour method, and it was found that the extraction time was too long, causing bitterness to appear. Then, by coarsening the grind and increasing the flow rate, the parameters were corrected, and the extraction time was ultimately controlled at 2 minutes 30 seconds, with the flavor matching that of a single serving. The article also retains recommendations for several Front Street beans and answers the question of whether the 01 dripper can brew a large dose when there is no 02 dripper, making it suitable as a reference for enthusiasts who have already mastered basic pour-over and want to advance to brewing multiple servings.
Front Street Coffee has always used a 1- to 2-person dripper as the production standard, with the coffee dose usually fixed at 15g, so past pour-over tutorials were all designed around a single serving (one cup). Recently, a reader asked: if you want to brew 2 to 3 cups of coffee at once, how should you do it?
Being able to ask this question shows that the person already has some experience with single-serving pour-over and also realizes that increasing the number of cups is not as simple as directly doubling the coffee grounds.
According to Front Street's brewing standard, one cup of coffee corresponds to 200ml of water and 15g of coffee, and two cups means 400ml of water with 30g of coffee. At this point, the 01 small dripper (suitable for 10 to 20g of coffee) is not up to the task. To handle a larger dose, you must switch to the 02 large dripper.
Taking the Hario V60 as an example, the 02 large dripper is like an enlarged version of the 01 and is suitable for doses above 20g. Front Street has always emphasized the five major factors affecting coffee flavor: dose, ratio, grind size, water temperature, and technique. This time only the dose changed, so we conducted a brewing test around this single variable.
The coffee beans can be chosen according to personal taste. If you are afraid of acidity, you can buy Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling or Front Street Blue Mountain No. 1, both of which are medium or darker roasts;
if you want rich layering in the mouthfeel, the first choices are the aroma-forward Front Street Strawberry Candy and Front Street Colombia Strawberry Claw;
if you prefer fresh floral notes, the recommended options are the medium-light roasted Front Street Gudingding Cooperative, Front Street Kafa Forest, and Front Street Butterfly.
Coffee beans: Front Street Colombia · Frontera Estate Strawberry Claw
Dose: 30g
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1/15, i.e. 30/450
Grind size: 80% passing through a No. 20 standard sieve
Water temperature: 91℃
Technique: three-pour method (60/190/200)
Dripper: V60#02
Total extraction time was 2 minutes 53 seconds. With only the dripper and dose changed and all other parameters unchanged, the flavor brewed with 30g of coffee was stronger, and bitterness also appeared. The reason is that the extraction time was stretched too long, causing the coffee to over-extract and turn bitter.
During brewing, Front Street found that after the amount of poured water increased multiple times, the time spent pouring also became longer. Moreover, although the large V60 dripper has a larger drainage hole, clogging still occurred.
To address this problem, Front Street made slight adjustments to the parameters. Since the reason it did not taste good was that the coffee was soaked for too long, and the coffee-to-water ratio and water temperature had little to do with this, the adjustments were made starting with grind size and technique.
After the coffee dose is doubled, the thickness of the coffee bed increases by at least one half, and a thick coffee bed naturally has a stronger water-retention capacity than a thin one, so the grind size needs to be appropriately coarsened to make the water-retention capacities of the two roughly equivalent.
Another factor is the flow rate of the poured water. This involves the relationship among speed (flow rate), time, and distance (amount of water poured). If the flow rate remains unchanged while the total amount of poured water increases, the time required will inevitably be prolonged; to keep the time unchanged, the pouring flow rate must be increased.
Dose: 30g Front Street Strawberry Claw
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1/15, i.e. 30/450
Grind size: 75% passing through a No. 20 standard sieve
Water temperature: 91 degrees Celsius
Technique: three-pour method (60/190/200) with a flow rate of 7-8g/s
Dripper: V60#02
These are the adjusted parameters. In actual brewing, the extraction time was 2 minutes 30 seconds, and the flavor was basically on par with single-serving brewing. Some readers also asked: without an 02 dripper, can the 01 dripper brew a large dose? The answer is yes!
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
