Drip Bag Coffee Brewing Tutorial: Mastering Ratio, Temperature, Time & Extraction

Many coffee enthusiasts love drinking specialty pour-over coffee but find it requires numerous equipment and skills. To address this, FrontStreet Coffee has launched a drip bag coffee series. FrontStreet Coffee's drip bag series offers various regional flavors, such as Sidamo, Brazil, Honduras Sherry, and more. Of course, there are other types of coffee beans, and if customers want to make them into drip bags, FrontStreet Coffee can also customize them according to their needs. For example, a few days ago, a customer tried FrontStreet Coffee's Indonesia PWN Gold Mandheling in-store, was satisfied with the taste, but didn't want to grind it at home, so we made it into drip bags on the spot.

How to Choose Drip Bag Coffee?

1. Production Date: Freshly ground coffee powder is generally the freshest. Drip bag production involves careful roasting and precise grinding, then immediate sealing. You should try to buy products close to the roasting date, as the taste will deteriorate after 2 months.

2. Information Completeness: Coffee bean information includes variety, grind size, origin, roaster, etc.

Advantages of Drip Bag Coffee:

1. Compared to instant coffee, drip bag coffee has richer flavor. Drip bag coffee offers more choices to experience coffees from different origins, processing methods, and roast levels, allowing you to taste more unique specialty coffees.

2. Drip bag coffee contains no additives like fragrances or creamers, making it healthier.

3. It's affordable, quick and convenient to brew, portable, and doesn't require brewing equipment.

FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo coffee has always been deeply loved by everyone. To make daily coffee brewing more convenient, FrontStreet Coffee has made Sidamo coffee into drip bags. To create the best-tasting drip bags, FrontStreet Coffee pays great attention to grinder cleaning, grind size, and packaging.

Grinding

The primary determinant of drip bag brewing quality is flow rate - neither too slow nor too fast is acceptable, and this depends on the grinder's performance. If the grinder quality is insufficient and the grinding quality is poor, it will inevitably create excessive fine powder during grinding, resulting in uneven extraction. During brewing, this causes "traffic jams," slowing the flow rate and leading to over-extraction due to prolonged soaking time. The result is a muddy taste with poor flavor - no matter how good the beans are, they cannot express their proper characteristics.

Grinder Cleaning

Coffee flavor is affected not only by grind size but also by grinder cleanliness. FrontStreet Coffee strictly requires that before grinding drip bag coffee each time, the grinder must be thoroughly cleaned. Moreover, FrontStreet Coffee also regularly checks the grinder's cleaning status and supervises the overall grinder cleaning and packaging process.

Automatic Packaging Machine/Nitrogen Filling

Using mechanical automatic packaging serves two purposes: first, to improve the sealing effect of the outer packaging, and second, to inject nitrogen during packaging to eliminate as much oxygen as possible, preventing oxidation and significantly extending the freshness period of coffee flavor. For manually packaged drip bags without nitrogen injection, the freshness period might only be one month, but with automatic packaging and added nitrogen, the shelf life can easily reach one year.

This time, FrontStreet Coffee introduces two seasonal drip bag coffees and the consistently popular FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Sherry drip bags. FrontStreet Coffee's current seasonal drip bags include FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopia Natural Sidamo drip bags and FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Pulped Natural Red Fruit drip bags.

FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Pulped Natural Red Fruit Drip Bag (with noticeable sweetness, light lemon aroma, rich nutty flavor, and distinct dark chocolate notes in the finish)

Brazilian coffee beans were introduced from French Guiana (a country in northern South America) in 1720. Brazil was a Portuguese colony at that time, while many other South American countries were Spanish colonies, which is why most South American countries speak Spanish while Brazil speaks Portuguese.

The Portuguese officer stationed in Brazil, wanting to bring Guiana's coffee beans to Brazil (exporting coffee to other countries was strictly prohibited at the time), captured the heart of the Guiana governor's wife and successfully brought coffee seeds into Brazil. Since then, coffee quickly adapted in Brazil, spreading from the north to the southeastern state of São Paulo. By 1845, Brazilian coffee beans already accounted for 45% of the world's total coffee beans. Currently, Brazil is the world's largest coffee exporting country.

FrontStreet Coffee not only includes Brazil in its drip bag series but also features Brazilian coffee in FrontStreet Coffee's daily bean coffee series. This shows that Brazil, as a coffee-producing country, is indispensable in classic coffee flavors. FrontStreet Coffee's daily beans are the "flagship" of regional coffee beans because their regional basic flavor recognition is higher, and they are also affordable, high-value coffee beans.

Pulped Natural Processing Method

In the pulped natural processing method, after selecting suitable coffee cherries, the skin and pulp are removed along with some mucilage, leaving a small amount of mucilage for drying until the moisture content reaches 12%.

FrontStreet Coffee believes that the pulped natural processing method is actually similar to honey processing. Costa Rica, for example, is famous for honey processing. Honey processing is simply Costa Rica's way of defining pulped natural, but Costa Rica has refined honey processing even further, dividing it into yellow honey, red honey, black honey, etc. As a result, the term "pulped natural" gradually became less famous than "honey processing." However, when FrontStreet Coffee cupped Costa Rican honey-processed coffee beans, we found obvious differences compared to Brazilian pulped natural coffee beans. Although both show significant sweetness, Costa Rican sweetness tends toward dried fruit sweetness and is relatively light, while Brazilian sweetness tends toward chocolate sweetness and is relatively rich.

FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopia Natural Sidamo (light floral notes, rich berry acidity, with fermentation notes)

The Sidama region is located in southern Ethiopia. Agriculture dominates the local industry, with coffee growing areas situated around the Great Rift Valley. The largest town in Sidama province is Hawassa, an important local coffee export hub. Sidama's coffee flavors are very diverse due to different soil compositions, regional microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties, creating obvious differences and characteristics in coffee produced by each town area. Ethiopian Sidamo has balanced flavors with higher sweetness, and its body thickness is also higher than Yirgacheffe, especially the wine-like acidity and sweetness produced during the natural drying process of the coffee pulp.

Natural Processing Method (African Drying Beds)

Coffee cherries are directly spread on cement floors or drying racks to dry, with the aim of making the coffee dry and easy to store. The drying time typically takes 2-4 weeks, depending on weather conditions.

Coffee intended for commercial use is usually dried on cement floors, requiring constant timely turning of the coffee cherries to ensure even heating on all sides, facilitating drying while also preventing mold from prolonged contact with the ground. Hand-selected cherries and beans used for specialty coffee are processed using African Beds for natural drying. Coffee cherries are spread on breathable, mesh-like beds to enjoy sunbathing, with the spreading thickness varying according to local conditions.

FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Sherry Whiskey Barrel Drip Bag (noticeable wine aroma, vanilla, cream, balanced, cocoa aftertaste, moderate acidity)

This FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Sherry coffee bean comes from Masaguara, a city in the Intibuca province in the southwest. FrontStreet Coffee's bean list also includes another barrel-aged coffee bean from Mocha Estate - FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Lychee Lan. Sherry coffee bean flavors tend toward whiskey sherry taste, with rich vanilla cream and persistent nutty chocolate notes in the finish. FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Lychee Lan tends toward brandy notes, with slightly weaker flavor layers than FrontStreet Coffee Sherry, but also has persistent nutty chocolate notes in the finish. From FrontStreet Coffee's sales rankings, FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Sherry is indeed more popular than FrontStreet Coffee Honduras Lychee Lan.

Refined Washed Whiskey Sherry Barrel Fermentation

First, freshly harvested coffee cherries undergo refined washing, then are placed in barrels that have previously aged sherry wine for low-temperature fermentation for 30-40 days (temperature approximately 15-20°C), followed by shade drying.

Sherry barrels are those used by sherry bodegas in the whiskey industry for aging. The sherry production process involves the Solera System aging procedure. This process refers to the practice of blending sherry of different vintages for aging after fortification, which is also what creates sherry's unique flavor characteristics.

Drip Bag Coffee Brewing Method

1. Taking FrontStreet Coffee's drip bags as an example, the coffee powder weight is 10g.

2. Tear open the outer packaging bag, take out the drip bag inside, tear open the drip bag's opening, and pull the small "ears" on both sides to hang it on the cup.

3. When choosing a cup, try to select one with a not-too-wide mouth, otherwise the drip bag's two ears might not hang properly. FrontStreet Coffee uses cups with a mouth diameter of approximately 8-9cm.

4. The brewing technique for drip bags is actually the same as pour-over coffee, just not as strict, but basically water temperature, blooming, and circular pouring are still necessary. FrontStreet Coffee's drip bag brewing parameters can be referenced as: water temperature 90°C, bloom for about 10 seconds, and bloom water amount consistent with the coffee powder amount.

5. After blooming ends, pour water directly until completion. For more precision, you can also pour in two stages. The amount of water is determined by the selected cup. FrontStreet Coffee uses a 300ml glass cup, pouring in small circular streams, stopping when the cup is 7/10 full.

After brewing is complete, remove the drip bag - it can only be used once because the substances in the coffee powder have already been extracted. Brewing again would have nothing to extract, resulting in a watery taste. Don't feel that using it only once is wasteful. The drip bags sold on the market today basically guarantee fresh grinding, and the prices are also very attractive.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473