How to Make Drip Coffee - Is Drip Coffee the Same as Pour-Over Coffee - Differences Between Drip and Pour-Over Coffee

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Understanding Drip Coffee and Pour-Over Methods

Currently, the most common drip coffee brewing method is pour-over coffee. Of course, besides pour-over coffee, coffee made using American-style coffee machines (drip coffee machines) can also be called drip coffee. What's the difference between drip and pour-over coffee? In one sentence: Drip coffee includes but is not limited to pour-over coffee, while pour-over coffee is just one brewing method within drip coffee.

Optimizing Drip Coffee Machine Brewing

A drip coffee maker: plug it in, use ground coffee powder, fill it in the filter basket, use filter paper or a metal filter screen for filtration, the water temperature remains almost constant, if you're serving more people, use more powder, conversely, use less powder, turn on the power, and drip-drip-drip coffee falls into the glass pot or thermal carafe...

For brewing with drip coffee machines, with fixed water temperature and fixed flow rate, FrontStreet Coffee believes there are several opportunities for optimization:

The Right Water-to-Coffee Ratio: 1:18.18

As the SCAA tirelessly emphasizes, we still recommend using a 1:18.18 ratio, meaning 1 gram of coffee beans paired with 18.18 milliliters (c.c., cubic centimeters) of water. However, since drip coffee makers recommend using cold water for filling, we suggest first measuring the correct volume in a measuring cup before adding it to the coffee maker! This ratio will produce coffee that most easily falls within the Golden Cup range! Concentration: 1.15%-1.35%, extraction rate: 18%-22%.

Of course, if you don't have a measuring cup at home, I recommend using a scale. Here we directly suggest using this ratio: 15 grams of coffee powder for one serving, paired with 225 grams of cold water (or 265.4 milliliters by volume). This is the ratio used at FrontStreet Coffee's store, and we encourage everyone to give it a try! We've already converted the density of hot water at 93-96°C between volume and mass, under one atmosphere of pressure and room temperature of 25°C, directly recommending the gram amounts for both coffee and water.

The right water-to-coffee ratio won't make you waste coffee powder. During the coffee extraction process, we hope to directly extract acidity, sweetness, and bitterness from the acid, sweet, bitter, and astringent extraction process, while completely avoiding over-extraction of the remaining bitterness and astringency! Correctly extracting the flavor compounds from coffee will further help your coffee achieve the right flavor profile.

To avoid having to bring out a bunch of equipment every time you use a measuring cylinder or scale, we suggest putting a piece of tape on the water level observation window of your drip coffee maker. Treat the 225 grams or 265.4 milliliters of water just mentioned as the basic unit per cup, measure out one cup, two cups, three cups... pour the water into the coffee maker, and mark segment by segment on the observation window. This will make it convenient to quickly pour the correct amount of water according to the number of people when making coffee next time.

Stirring

Generally, when brewing drip coffee, after scooping the powder into the filter basket and leveling it, you immediately turn on the power. However, if your beans are too fresh? Or if your powder is ground too finely? Or if you need to brew three to four times the usual number of cups? Today's brewing target is light roast beans? Then stirring comes into play!

The purpose of stirring is to help extraction! The result of stirring will show many CO2 bubbles emerging, helping the coffee powder to soak in water, allowing hot water to drip onto the coffee powder, facilitating the perfect extraction of the entire coffee.

Therefore, if the coffee powder is too fresh, or you've chosen medium-dark roast coffee powder, or you find that hot water seems to only drip to the lower pot; or you find that coffee powder leaks out of the filter basket; or if it's ground too finely but you still want to brew it without waste? If you encounter any of the above situations, we suggest starting to stir when the hot water first drips onto the coffee powder (recommended water amount equal to the coffee powder amount). Ensure all coffee powder and water are evenly adhered, then stop stirring immediately. The stirring time is recommended to be 5-10 seconds! (Because if you keep stirring, the coffee powder will become too bitter and astringent due to your stirring!)

Therefore, the problems mentioned above could actually be avoided from the start, possibly because you ground too finely, so we suggest grinding a bit coarser!

But when should stirring be recommended? I recommend it for light roast beans. If the brewed taste lacks 'sweetness', then add an extra step - stir a bit! Help the coffee machine increase extraction a little more, making the overall flavor more outstanding. Of course, if you over-stir... the 'astringent' flavor will come out... believe me, after practicing a few times, you'll become very skilled!

Pre-infusion

Generally speaking, drip coffee machines don't have pre-infusion! And what is pre-infusion?

The purpose of pre-infusion is to allow a waiting period for the coffee powder before it's fully moistened by water. During this time, hot water is poured onto the coffee powder, and during the moistening process, the coffee powder heats up and continuously releases CO2 gas. Afterward, it can accept the baptism of hot water and fully extract flavor compounds.

When doing pour-over, you first pour some hot water onto the coffee powder, wait for a while, then start pouring water! Different schools have different approaches - some wait 30 seconds, some wait until the surface of the coffee powder loses its shine! Or as the surface falls, immediately add water, while others use a continuous pouring method but with slower water flow at the beginning... All these methods demonstrate the necessity of pre-infusion!

Drip coffee machines have the advantage of being electric! When to add water, stop water, add water - all can be controlled through switches. Therefore, if you want to maximize the efficiency of your drip coffee machine, we suggest starting to use the pre-infusion technique! Two-stage water addition: turn on the machine, start the first water addition with water volume approximately equal to the coffee powder volume, turn off the machine, (patiently) wait 30 seconds, turn on the machine until brewing is complete, then turn off the machine.

Grind Size

In pour-over brewing, grind size affects flavor changes, but in drip coffee makers, there's another factor - the speed of water flow.

During coffee extraction, acidity, sweetness, bitterness, and astringency are the order in which coffee flavor compounds are washed out (that is, the order of coffee flavor flow). Therefore, grind size is a means of extracting flavor. The finer the grind, the larger the contact area of the coffee powder (as we learned in middle school about factors affecting the speed of material changes, one of which is surface area), so the faster the flavor compounds flow out, and conversely, the slower! Among all flavor compounds in black coffee, the one we least want to encounter is 'astringency.' So how to achieve a 'correct' extraction? Well, this depends on your taste buds! If the brewed coffee tastes 'astringent' to you, it means the coffee powder is ground too fine - you should adjust it coarser. Conversely, if your brewed coffee doesn't taste sweet enough?! That means you can make the coffee a bit finer!

The extraction rate mentioned above, recommended by SCAA to be between 18%-22%, and the method used in SCAA Golden Cup courses uses VST, an optical refraction concentration measurement instrument, to first find the concentration of the coffee water solution, then combined with SCAA's 'Coffee Brewing Control Chart', you can find the current extraction rate of the coffee. However, this is a method for finding Golden Cup brewing, and moreover, everyone's taste and definition of good coffee differ. Therefore, here we suggest determining your required grind size based on your own taste! So, is the extraction correct!? Using such instruments to measure here seems like 'making a mountain out of a molehill'! Of course, if you're a candidate taking the Golden Cup exam, you must take it seriously!! Additionally, the purpose of this article is not to explain or calculate concentration and extraction rates, so we'll briefly touch on this!

Next is water flow: Too fine coffee powder will cause hot water to unable to pass smoothly through the coffee powder layer into the lower coffee pot. Therefore, appropriate grind size that allows water to pass through smoothly and conduct extraction at an appropriate flow rate is also a research topic!

In fact, you can still find a balance between water flow and flavor, depending on the observation and taste preferences of the person brewing the coffee!

Intermittent Water Extraction

Want to enhance flavor? This technique must not be skipped!

If you're a heavy pour-over user, you must know the importance of pre-infusion. Pre-infusion is a necessary means to help extraction; while the use of intermittent water method is another technique to enhance flavor. Generally, two-stage and three-stage intermittent water methods are what more people are trying!

You can also apply this method to drip coffee machines! What is intermittent water? It's turning off the power! Want to interrupt several times? Then turn it off several times! Of course, not for fun, but to enhance flavor!

So how long to wait before turning it back on? We suggest, if possible, observe the water in the filter cup of your drip coffee maker. When all the water has seeped down, that's the time to add water again! If you can't see it?! Use the counting method - about 10-15 seconds should be sufficient. Why only 10-15 seconds? Because we're afraid the coffee powder will cool down, which would be unfavorable for extraction. So 10-15 seconds will do!

We recommend this method for relatively 'fresh' beans, such as beans roasted 1-3 days ago, or beans with a 'light roast' level!

Of course, intermittent water is to increase 'good' flavor. If you find that flavor doesn't increase after using it, you can skip it! Generally speaking: sweetness will increase! However, if astringency increases, it means: too many interruptions! Or perhaps no interruption is needed at all!

Cold Brewing

Young folks, you probably haven't tried this before, have you!?

Can drip coffee machines make iced coffee? But how do you make it?! Please note! Remember the water-to-coffee ratio rule! That's the key to success!

Generally speaking, if you brew coffee following SCAA brewing principles, 1:18.18 is the easiest way to brew Golden Cup coffee! 1 gram of coffee powder to 18.18 milliliters of water... volume or grams? This often confuses many enthusiasts, but actually, any tool you find convenient to use is a good method!

FrontStreet Coffee's recommended water-to-coffee ratio uses a mass-to-mass approach. Assuming: 15 grams of coffee powder to 225 grams of water (this involves density conversion of hot water at 91-96°C under one atmosphere of pressure, which we won't elaborate on here, focusing only on the derived numbers), first place 110g of ice cubes in the lower pot, put 110g of water in the drip coffee machine, and what about the 15g of coffee? Of course, it goes in the powder compartment! But!!!!!! Please remember, because half of your coffee water hasn't extracted the coffee powder, meaning only half of your water can extract coffee, representing that you must make this hot water extract more efficiently. How? Of course, by grinding the coffee powder... a bit finer than usual!

And how fine should it be? Well, you'll need to try a few times, but generally, adjusting 1 'mark' finer is more than enough! However, it still depends on your testing results!

By Pass

The 'Cold Brewing' mentioned above is actually a type of By Pass. Its definition is to first reduce a certain amount of water from the original water-to-coffee ratio that should pass through, to shorten extraction time, and after extraction is complete, add the water that hasn't passed through the coffee powder back into the already extracted coffee liquid.

It seems to be brewing stronger coffee, then adding water to make it thinner, achieving a lighter concentration! And this concentration is still the concentration we preset.

In the United States, this method has been widely used, especially by larger enterprises as a way to save brewing time. To extract relatively concentrated coffee liquid, in drip coffee machine brewing methods, you need to grind the original coffee powder finer, or use multiple intermittent water methods, or even add stirring techniques! The goal is to obtain more concentrated coffee liquid! Therefore, the benefit of this By Pass method is saving time and quick serving!

After obtaining more concentrated coffee liquid, the next step is adding water! Of course, the amount of water added must also comply with the Golden Cup ratio provided by SCAA! For example, the 1:18.18 mentioned above. Therefore, if you use a coffee extraction method that reduces water, add back the originally deducted water, and if it tastes good! Then you've found the right brewing method! Of course, what's considered 'right' still depends on your personal taste! If there's astringency, adjust the grind setting coarser; if not sweet enough, adjust the grind setting finer! In summary, without tools to measure concentration and extraction rate, it's all about your personal taste!

(Quasi) Cupping

Cupping is an extremely professional topic that most people, except for enjoying coffee, probably never encounter.

Cupping is an extremely important technique for evaluating coffee. Farmers need to cup to understand how their own grown coffee tastes; bean seekers need to cup to understand how much this bean is worth? Should they buy the entire batch? Roasters need to cup to understand how this roasted bean tastes? Is the taste the same as last time? Green bean judges need to cup to understand which bean is most impressive? The deserved champion? Coffee brewers also need to cup to understand how well they brewed this bean? How to enhance the bean's characteristics? Consumers also need to cup to understand their own beans? Is it what they love? Is it really the 'magical' flavor claimed by the shop?

Cupping uses a 1:18.18 ratio, clean, odor-free hot water at 200°F, grind setting... grind setting calibration... water TDS... cupping spoon... four minutes... crust breaking... slurping... eight minutes... dry aroma... wet aroma... with seemingly very strict and meticulous regulations and scoring!

Drip coffee machines are actually very convenient and simple cupping tools. Although the coffee powder isn't continuously soaking in hot water, for general consumers, without such strict requirements, it's already more than sufficient! Suppose every time you buy new beans back, without hesitation, grind coffee powder at the 'same' grind setting every time, then brew coffee at the 'same' water-to-coffee ratio every time, then brew coffee using the 'same' method every time - no stirring, no intermittent water, then taste the coffee within the 'same' time frame every time... Then, using this method to judge and taste, if you 'like this bean', you can slowly add some new brewing variables, such as stirring, intermittent water, cold brewing, By Pass... Then 'liking this bean' will, believe it or not, become even stronger. Conversely, if you 'don't like this bean', believe there's no need to add any variables, because if you didn't like it originally, no matter how much you process it, it still won't add much...

Enthusiast's Introduction to Bean Blending

Single-origin beans, single estate, specialty beans! This is the spiritual indicator of the third wave of coffee!

Blending? What's that...

The purpose of bean blending (blended beans) is to compensate for weaknesses and enhance strengths, hoping to combine all the desirable characteristics of coffee you like into one! I hope it's not too acidic, but very sweet, with rich floral aroma, and if possible, adding chocolate flavor would be even better; but... to present all these characteristics in the same coffee, unless using roasting techniques, it's difficult to find all of them in ordinary coffee!

In fact, if you have too many beans at home, you can also do this - according to your preferences, add different proportions of beans, readjust, and create your own special flavors!

You can do this: First, brew each pre-mixed bean type using the same water-to-coffee ratio, then prepare several cups, pour different coffees into the cups according to different proportions, stir thoroughly, taste, record, and then based on your records, mix different types of beans by weight to create your exclusive 'blended coffee beans'. Next time you want to drink, grind and brew!

You can also do this: Directly 'intuitively' blend different varieties of coffee beans, mix them directly, grind, then use American-style brewing, taste, and record; and from your records, find your exclusive personal blending recipe!

Coffee is inherently alive; how to define it often depends on human interpretation. Especially the specialty beans emphasized by the third wave are meant to highlight the original terroir flavors of the beans! But because of this, it gives us the opportunity to create more possibilities! In previous World Barista Championships, some competitors didn't use a mix of beans from different estates, but boldly used single beans from a single estate, yet mixed them using different roast levels. The results were highly praised by the judges!

Although we don't participate in competitions, we can use simple brewing equipment to experience the wonderful symphony of different estates working together! The beauty of the United Nations! The beauty of world unity!

Come on, it's your turn to try...!!

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, while also providing online store services.

https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Related recommendations: Can espresso blends be used for drip brewing? What are the differences between coffee beans for American coffee and espresso coffee

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473