How Many Times Can Drip Bag Coffee Be Brewed? Flavor Characteristics of Drip Bag Coffee Beans - Can Drip Bags Be Rebrewed?

What Is Drip Bag Coffee?

Drip bag coffee is ground coffee sealed inside a filter bag with two cardboard flaps on either side that hook over the rim of a cup. Once it has brewed, the bag is thrown away. The format was developed in Japan and is a patented product. Because it brews like a drip filter, it is also called a hanging-ear drip bag. It is a kind of instant freshly ground coffee, ready to brew and drink immediately.

How to Brew a Drip Bag

a. Open the outer packaging carefully along the tear notch.

b. Flatten the drip bag and tear open the inner seal. Spread the two flaps and hang the bag over the mouth of your cup.

c. Prepare a pot of boiled water, preferably purified. Once it has boiled, let it sit for about a minute before pouring. Pour evenly into the filter bag, taking care not to pour too fast or too heavily or it will overflow. Wait for the level inside the bag to drop, then pour again. When the coffee in the cup reaches about 7/10 full, or whenever you prefer, carefully lift out the drip bag and discard it, minding the heat.

d. Drink it straight away. Sugar or fresh milk can be added to taste.

Important Notes

a. Freshness is the foundation of quality, so use each bag as soon as you reasonably can.

b. Store drip bags in a dry, cool place, and keep them away from strongly scented items such as spices or seafood.

c. Brew with water between 85°C and 95°C.

d. A drip bag is a single-origin product, so drink it as it is; additives will mask the origin character.

e. To get the intended flavour from every bag, discard each one after a single brew.

The Flavour Story Behind the Bags

Sherry coffee has been a popular variety this year, and FrontStreet Coffee now offers it as a drip bag as well as whole beans. Many customers specifically asked for Sherry in drip bag form, which says a good deal about its following.

Honduras sits in Central America, bordering Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. These are all major coffee producers, and because their elevations are similar their coffees tend to share flavour characteristics: prominent spice notes and tropical fruit, expressed as complex, layered profiles. FrontStreet Coffee recently received a new batch of beans from Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, which will go through roast adjustments, cupping and pour-over testing before any decision is made on listing them. The aim is to present a diverse range of coffee flavours, so beans without standout character do not appear on FrontStreet Coffee's menu.

Back to the Sherry bean from Honduras: it comes from the city of Masaguara in the southwestern Intibucá province. FrontStreet Coffee's menu also carries another barrel-aged coffee from Moca Estate, Lychee Orchid. Sherry leans toward whisky and sherry wine flavours, with rich vanilla cream and a persistent nutty chocolate finish. Lychee Orchid leans toward brandy, with slightly less layered flavour than Sherry but the same lingering nutty chocolate finish. On FrontStreet Coffee's sales ranking, Sherry is indeed the more popular of the two.

Refined Washed Whisky Sherry Barrel Fermentation

Freshly picked cherries are first given a refined wash, then placed into barrels that previously matured sherry wine for low-temperature fermentation over 30 to 40 days, at roughly 15 to 20°C, before shade drying.

Sherry barrels are those used by sherry wineries in the whisky industry for ageing. Sherry production includes a maturation step called the Solera system, a method of blending and ageing fortified sherry wines of different vintages, and it is what produces the distinctive sherry character.

Brewed as a drip bag, the Sherry coffee shows rich vanilla cream aroma, chocolate and fermented wine notes, and a creamy mouthfeel.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Gutingding drip bag is the light, floral option. The beans come from Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe region and are washed after picking. When Ethiopia introduced Central and South American washing technology in 1972 to raise coffee quality, the jasmine florals and bright citrus and lemon acidity of Yirgacheffe became cleaner and more transparent, and it rose to become one of the world's representative specialty coffees. The lot is grown at 1900 to 2300 meters in the Gedeo Zone from local heirloom varieties, graded G1, and shows citrus, berries, lemon, cane sugar and green tea.

FrontStreet Coffee's sun-dried Huakui drip bag is the fruit-forward choice. It is one of the best-selling bags, with pronounced tropical fruit aroma and a black tea finish, high sweetness and low bitterness. The coffee grows in Ethiopia's Guji region above 2300 meters, where the sharp swing between day and night temperatures lets the cherries take up more flavour compounds, and it is carefully sun-dried after harvest so the fruit stays intact and the sweetness is pushed higher. Expect berries, flower tea, honey, lemon and black tea.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Queen Manor drip bag is the round, comforting one. Queen Manor sits in the Mogiana region of São Paulo state and, unlike Brazil's volume-driven regions, its higher ground creates a distinct microclimate, and the estate hand-picks cherries at the right ripeness and processes each lot in small, careful batches. Yellow Bourbon is the estate's pride, and it has won multiple Brazil Cup of Excellence awards. Given a medium-dark roast, it shows the classic Brazilian body and the variety's own sweetness: black chocolate, cream, peanut, sugarcane and nuts, with a clean sweetness on the finish.

FrontStreet Coffee's Indonesia Mandheling G1 drip bag covers the dark, low-acid end. Mandheling is one of the world's best-known Arabicas, also called Sumatra coffee, and unlike the fruit acidity of African coffee it carries herbal, spice and woody notes of its own. Roasted dark to draw those out, it delivers spice, nuts, chocolate and caramel, strong but not bitter, sweet and full-bodied, with the herbal quality of the Lintong region on Sumatra at 1100 meters, from the Tim Tim variety, wet-hulled, showing black chocolate, toasted bread, hazelnut and caramel.