What is the Best Water Temperature for Brewing Guanxi Coffee? Hand Brewing Techniques for Guanxi Coffee

Introduction to Ethiopia's Natural Process Coffee

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Ethiopian coffees are predominantly characterized by floral aromas and fruit acidity, with light and bright flavors that make you feel like you're drinking a cup of fruit tea. The natural process Coffee Queen is even more fragrant and sweet, bursting with fruit flavors, with a lingering honey-like sweetness in the mouth, as if taking you into a tropical fruit world.

Ethiopia's Famous Coffee Regions

Ethiopia has two particularly famous coffee-producing regions, both of which are specialty coffee regions. One is Yirgacheffe, whose washed Yirgacheffe coffee is Ethiopia's representative coffee and also the entry bean for everyone entering specialty coffee; the other is Sidamo, which mainly uses natural processing methods, with the Coffee Queen from Sidamo being the most famous representative coffee.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, but due to geographical features, climate, temperature, soil microelements, and other factors between different regions, their flavors will have different expressions. To let everyone taste high-quality coffee from various regions of Ethiopia, FrontStreet Coffee has already acquired more than a dozen single-origin coffees from this country, including both natural and washed processes.

The Origin of the Coffee Queen Name

In 2017, Ethiopia's DW green bean company sent their coffee beans to the TOH (Taste Of Harvest) competition organized by the African Fine Coffee Association, where their natural process batch won the TOH Ethiopia championship. This batch of green beans, as a champion, was named "Coffee Queen." A Beijing-based green bean company - Hongshun Company - introduced Coffee Queen to China and named it "Coffee Queen," expressing high hopes for it.

In reality, Coffee Queen only has one name abroad - Hambella, which comes from a small producing area in Sidamo Gigi. At this point, if we pay careful attention, we'll find that only natural process beans from the Buku Abel processing plant are what baristas call "Coffee Queen." To put it plainly, the "Coffee Queen" we talk about is actually a traditional natural process G1 coffee bean from the Hambella region, with "Buku Abel" processing station being its more precise traceability information, located in Dimtu town.

After Coffee Queen became famous overnight, to meet the surge in market demand, DW company added up to 5 independent green bean drying processing stations in Hambella Wamena Wereda, all located within the core producing area of Dimtu town. Besides the original Buku Abel, four other small villages - Buku Saysay, Haro Soresa, Tirtiro Goye, and Seke Bokosa - also joined in the production of natural process coffee beans. It is reported that at this time, the "Coffee Queen" produced annually under DW company had already reached tens of millions of tons.

Since the 2018 harvest season, Coffee Queen (natural process G1 coffee beans) from the same growing area and same processing station has already shown some changes in flavor. FrontStreet Coffee discovered through cupping that although the 2018 and 2019 Coffee Queens had similar flavors to the 2017 Coffee Queen, they were inferior to the "first-generation Coffee Queen" in terms of body, aftertaste, and other mouthfeel aspects. Therefore, to continue selling this natural process coffee from Hambella while making certain distinctions from the original version, domestic green bean trading companies calculated based on 2017 and created X.0 suffixes for each subsequent batch. For example, the 2018 batch was called "Coffee Queen 2.0," the 2019 production was called "Coffee Queen 3.0 and 3.1"... last year's was "Coffee Queen 7.0," and so on. In this way, we can identify which year's batch the Coffee Queen we bought belongs to through this suffix.

Although we see that each bag of Coffee Queen is always described with various tempting floral and fruit aromas, many times we find it difficult to brew them out, because although the recipe records detailed data, you don't understand why it's this data, and the details in brewing cannot be expressed in the recipe. The recipe only records how a dish is under the most normal circumstances. In reality, many accidents occur during the cooking process, and when encountering situations you haven't seen before, it's easy to be at a loss.

Applying this to pour-over coffee, the principle is the same. Getting a set of pour-over parameters doesn't necessarily mean you can brew good-tasting coffee. The most important thing is to understand the parameter logic behind this set of data. If learning basic operations like water pouring is considered entry-level for pour-over, then being able to identify problems in a cup of pour-over coffee and provide parameter adjustment solutions is considered advanced pour-over.

There are many pour-over brewing parameters, but only six parameters have the main impact: dose, ratio, grind size, water temperature, pouring method, and time. These six parameters work together to affect the coffee's flavor, so we need to understand what impact each parameter has on the coffee.

Coffee Dose

What does the coffee dose parameter affect? If other parameters remain unchanged and only the dose is increased or decreased, the most direct impact is the increase or decrease in total water amount, indirectly causing changes in extraction time. The change in dose has relatively small impact on the final coffee flavor, and everyone can adjust the brewing dose according to their own coffee intake.

However, one thing to note is that the filter cup size has certain limitations on the dose. For example, for a V60 01 filter cup, when the dose exceeds 25g, you must change the pouring method because the original plan would cause water to overflow due to being too full. Too little dose is also not good because it's too difficult to pour water. For details, you can refer to the articles FrontStreet Coffee wrote previously.

Coffee-to-Water Ratio

The ratio actually controls two inversely related parameters: extraction rate and concentration. Coffee with a higher ratio will have a lower extraction rate but higher concentration, while coffee with a lower ratio will have a higher extraction rate but lower concentration. Getting the ratio right is actually controlling both the extraction rate and concentration within a range that is comfortable for us to drink.

(Note: As many people tend to disagree about ratio comparisons, FrontStreet Coffee uses the principle that the larger the denominator, the smaller the ratio. That is, comparing 1:10 and 1:15, 1:10 is a higher ratio, and 1:15 is a lower ratio. If your understanding is opposite, just reverse your understanding of the explanation)

1:15 is the commonly used coffee-to-water ratio at FrontStreet Coffee, but it's not the only standard. For example, during the period when Japanese and Taiwanese coffee were popular, ratios of 1:10 to 1:13 were typically used, making the coffee taste richer. Meanwhile, in America during the same period, ratios of 1:17-1:20 were used, making the coffee less stimulating and relatively soft and comfortable. Current pour-over coffee mostly falls between 1:15-1:16.

If you find the coffee too light, with unnoticeable acidity and relatively balanced, it's possible that too much water was used. If you find the coffee too strong and uncomfortable, with a brief aftertaste, it's possible that too little water was used.

Grind Size

In immersion coffee, grind size is relatively easy to understand. First, there's the issue of grind uniformity. If the particle size distribution of coffee grounds is relatively concentrated and uniform, then these coffee particles will release substances relatively consistently at the same time. If the particle size distribution is scattered (i.e., uneven grinding), then some coffee grounds will release quickly while others will release slowly during the same time period, easily causing uneven extraction - this is a grinding quality issue. Many friends find blockage when brewing coffee and think it's a grind setting problem, but it's actually caused by poor grinding quality. The solution is to sift out the coarsest or finest coffee grounds.

Secondly, there's the issue of particle size, which is also easy to understand. The smaller the coffee particles, the larger the total surface area, so the faster they contact water to release coffee substances. Conversely, the larger the coffee particles, the longer it takes for water to fully penetrate the coffee particles, and the extraction speed will be slightly slower.

When it comes to drip coffee, there's an additional impact of extraction time. Because in drip coffee, extraction and filtration occur simultaneously. If the coffee particles are relatively coarse, water will easily pass through the gaps, making the extraction time shorter. If the coffee particles are relatively fine, water will pass through the coffee bed more slowly, making the extraction time longer.

Therefore, if this parameter is changed, it will affect extraction time. For example, if some coffee shows bitter and miscellaneous flavors due to too long extraction time, you can make the grind coarser. If you find a bland taste due to too short extraction time, you can make the grind finer. (For time parameters, see below)

Water Temperature

This parameter is also a tool for adjusting extraction speed. The higher the temperature, the easier it is to extract coffee substances, but the maximum water temperature is only 100 degrees, so it's not as unlimited as everyone thinks that "you can make the grind coarser (finer) and increase (decrease) water temperature to compensate."

Generally, 100-degree water is not used to brew coffee because it's very easy to brew out burnt and bitter flavors. Currently, more conservative water temperatures are between 86-93 degrees. The benefit of adjusting water temperature is that it doesn't affect other parameters. For example, if you feel that the ratio, pouring method, and extraction time are all fine for a cup of coffee, but the coffee still shows some undesirable flavors, then you need to adjust the water temperature.

Pouring Method

Popular pouring methods include single pour, double pour, triple pour... Simply put, it's segmented pouring - single pour creates two segments, double pour creates three segments... The main impact of segmentation is on extraction time. Under the premise that other parameters remain unchanged, single pour has the shortest extraction time, followed by double pour, and finally triple pour.

FrontStreet Coffee believes that the pouring method is a parameter that can be adjusted according to circumstances. The distribution of water for each segment, and how many segments to divide into, can be adjusted during the extraction process by predicting the total extraction time. For example, if you plan to finish extraction in 2 minutes and originally planned to divide into 4 segments, but during actual extraction, when you finish the second segment, you find that following the plan would exceed the time by quite a lot, then you can merge the last two segments into one pour.

Time

In pour-over coffee, extraction time is not an actively adjusted parameter but rather a verification parameter. Extraction time doesn't have a fixed, accurate number - it's not that 2 minutes is good and 2 minutes 30 seconds is over-extracted. It's used to verify whether all parameters that can affect time are reasonable, such as ratio, grind size, and pouring method.

For FrontStreet Coffee, under conditions of 1:15 ratio, medium-fine grind, and three-stage pouring, 2 minutes is a time standard for verification parameters. Everyone can also use the extraction time from their previous good-tasting brewed coffee as a judgment standard.

FrontStreet Coffee's brewing parameters for natural process Coffee Queen:

As a medium-light roast Coffee Queen, FrontStreet Coffee chose: V60 dripper, water temperature 90°C, coffee-to-water ratio 1:15, dose 15g, grind size (80% pass-through on China #20 standard sieve)

Using segmented extraction, bloom with twice the amount of water as the coffee dose, that is, bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds. The reason for the blooming process is to allow the coffee grounds to release internal carbon dioxide gas, thereby making the later extraction more stable. Pour in a small circular motion to 125g, then continue pouring to 225g and stop. Remove the filter cup after the water has finished dripping. Start timing from the beginning of pouring, extraction time is 2'00". Next, pick up the entire cup of coffee and shake it evenly, then pour it into cups for tasting.

【2025 New Harvest Natural Process Coffee Queen Flavor】Floral and fruit aromas are very prominent, with citrus, passion fruit, strawberry, oolong tea, and high sweetness.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473