In daily articles, Front Street Coffee often uses "juiciness" to describe a cup of coffee. "What is juiciness?" friends occasionally ask Front Street Coffee after reading.When we taste a cup of coffee, we combine the flavors and aromas we encounter based on our own taste preferences and memories, associating them with concrete flavors. The "juiciness" that Front Street Coffee often mentions is an adjective that combines flavor and mouthfeel characteristics, referring to a cup of coffee that drinks like juice.(At this point, some friends might say: Then why not just drink juice?)So what is a juice-like experience? It usually means we can smell rich fruit aromas from the coffee, the taste is mainly sweet and sour, and the mouthfeel is smooth and full-bodied. The combination of these three makes people think of drinking juice squeezed from a certain fruit—that is what we call coffee juiciness.Although it sounds complicated, it is actually not difficult to brew juiciness into coffee. We just need to choose the right coffee beans and find the corresponding parameters and methods, and we can easily brew a cup of coffee with juiciness~How to brew juiciness into coffee?If you want to brew coffee with a juice-like mouthfeel, the prerequisite is that the beans themselves need to have fruit aromas, and the roast level should also preserve acidity well while highlighting sweetness. This type of coffee bean is actually very common now, and a large portion of the coffee beans sold on Front Street Coffee's bean list belong to this type.For example, Front Street CoffeeKenya · Little Tomato, its brewed flavors include tomato, smoked plum, and berries; or Front Street CoffeeEthiopia · Huakui, its brewed flavors include citrus, strawberry, and berries; or Front Street CoffeeDividing Line Estate · Sidra, its brewed flavors are grape, passion fruit, apricot, floral...So here Front Street Coffee will use Front Street Coffee Kenya · Little Tomato from the bean list to demonstrate for everyone! Coffee beans from the Kenya region are famous for their rich and prominent little tomato and berry notes. Under ideal extraction, it is easier to brew coffee with juiciness.As for parameters, we can have two choices: one is to use a larger coffee-to-water ratio to make the mouthfeel fuller, and the other is to use a smaller coffee-to-water ratio to make the fruit flavors more vivid. Here Front Street Coffee chooses the former, so the coffee-to-water ratio used is 1:14(Friends who cannot drink coffee that is too strong can choose the latter, using a 1:16 coffee-to-water ratio).
In order to better highlight the sweet and sour taste of coffee, we need to reduce the release of bitter substances. Because the sour, sweet, and bitter substances in coffee have different molecular weights, they have different dissolution rates. The fastest to dissolve are sour substances, followed by sweet, and finally bitter. If we want to better highlight the sweetness and acidity of coffee, we need to end extraction before a large amount of bitter substances dissolves, so that the expression of acidity and sweetness in the coffee can be improved. This is something Front Street Coffee often mentions.Therefore, Front Street Coffee chooses to concentrate a large amount of hot water in the early stages, thereby increasing the proportion of sour substances in the coffee. Although the amount of water poured in the final stage is smaller, it is poured over a longer time by reducing the flow rate. This can extend the extraction time and increase the coffee's sweet and bitter substances, thereby improving the coffee's sweetness and body. The coffee will not taste merely thin and sour. The specific brewing parameters are as follows:Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:14(Friends who cannot drink it too strong are advised to use 1:15)Grind size:Ek4310 setting / 80% passing rate on a No. 20 sieveBrewing temperature: 91°CBrewing method: 3 pours (30/130/64)First we pour in 30ml of hot water and start timing, with a blooming time of 30 seconds. After blooming ends, we pour the second stage of hot water. The amount poured in this stage is 130ml. We use a medium-to-large flow rate of about 6ml/s, pouring quickly in circles from the inner ring to the outer ring.After circling to the outer ring, we can stay on the outer ring and continue pouring in circles until the set amount of water is poured. Then we simply wait for the coffee liquid in the dripper to finish dripping, and we begin pouring the third stage of hot water. The amount of water in this stage is 64ml, poured in small circles with a small flow rate (about 4ml/s).It should be noted that because more hot water is allocated to the second stage and less to the third stage, we need to try to avoid raising the coffee bed too much during the second pour. Because in the third stage we pour slowly with a small flow rate, if we raise the coffee bed too much during the second pour, then the hot water poured in the third stage will not be able to reach the coffee grounds at the edge of the dripper that are at a high position, which can very easily lead to under-extraction.Therefore, when pouring the second stage of hot water, we should try not to raise the coffee bed too much. When the coffee bed height reaches three-fifths of the dripper, if there is still a large amount of hot water left to pour, then we can appropriately reduce the flow rate and keep the water level at this position. And when the hot water poured in the third stage has completely permeated, we can remove the dripper to end extraction and begin our tasting! The entire extraction time is about 2 minutes.As Front Street Coffee said, Little Tomato brewed in this way has a very rounded acidity and a solid, juice-like mouthfeel. When tasting, you can very clearly capture the flavors of little tomato and smoked plum, the sweetness of caramel, and the finish is a sweet-and-sour taste similar to berries. Overall, it is like drinking a glass of freshly squeezed little tomato juice, very good.And if you are brewing iced pour-over, you can learn the specific parameters and methods from the article in"Portal", because the overall brewing method and parameters have certain differences, so Front Street Coffee will not introduce them too much here.Front Street Coffee believes that friends who often read Front Street Coffee should find it not difficult to notice that the brewing method is actually not much different from what Front Street Coffee usually shares, only slight adjustments have been made to the parameters and pour amounts. Although the adjustments are not large, this is enough to cause certain changes in the coffee's taste. Because these changes affect the coffee's soluble substances, their quantity, and concentration, the coffee's taste and mouthfeel will therefore be changed.What Front Street Coffee wants to express is that, compared with what parameters and what technique to use, understanding the logic during brewing can actually better help us brew an ideal cup of coffee. So do not be too attached to a specific technique or rigidly apply a certain parameter. Start learning from the basics, so that when facing any beans and any brewing situation, we can brew the cup of coffee we want, and a delicious one, with ease~ The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
