Drip Coffee Bags: New Ways to Enjoy! What's the Difference Between Drip Coffee and Instant Coffee?

With the rise of the specialty coffee trend, coffee culture has been continuously spreading. Whether it's coffee equipment or coffee beans, sales volume has been steadily increasing. As a shop specializing in specialty coffee, FrontStreet Coffee not only brews delicious coffee for every guest but also wants to spread coffee culture. If you follow FrontStreet Coffee's official account, you'll find that it updates daily with the latest coffee information. The coffee information you see consists of articles carefully written by every barista at FrontStreet Coffee, aiming to spread coffee culture to more people. A delicious cup of coffee contains more human stories beyond its taste.

However, most people probably don't want to know about coffee culture but rather want to drink a delicious cup of coffee, which is perfectly fine. Drinking coffee, drinking coffee—how can you understand coffee without drinking it? Understanding requires continuous coffee drinking to find your favorite coffee flavors. With the acceleration of life's pace, the rise of drip bag coffee has perfectly met the needs of this group, but choosing a suitable drip bag coffee is not an easy task.

Take FrontStreet Coffee's store, for example, which has at least two hundred types of coffee beans with different processing methods, roasting levels, and countries of origin. Where would one even begin? Few guests can finish all the coffee beans on FrontStreet Coffee's menu. How to help every guest who visits FrontStreet Coffee choose suitable coffee beans is also our challenge.

Recently, many guests have been asking about drip bag coffee-related knowledge: which drip bag tastes the best, how to brew delicious drip bag coffee, and whether drip bag coffee can be brewed multiple times. This article will address these questions about drip bag coffee.

I. Origin of Drip Bag Coffee

The history of drip bag coffee originates from Japan, where UCC Ueshima Coffee invented drip bag coffee, which is extremely convenient and efficient. Nowadays, people don't have extra time to visit coffee shops for a carefully crafted pour-over coffee made by baristas, so when drip bag coffee was promoted in the market, it quickly gained favor among many coffee enthusiasts. Even among guests who come to FrontStreet Coffee for coffee, many ask if the store sells drip bag coffee, which shows how vast the market for drip bag coffee is.

II. Can Drip Bag Coffee Be Brewed Multiple Times?

Drip bag coffee is like agricultural products—agricultural products emphasize freshness, while coffee emphasizes optimal flavor, which is the coffee's best tasting period. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee generally recommends drinking coffee during its optimal tasting period; otherwise, the flavor of drip bag coffee will gradually change over time. You might ask: can drip bag coffee really be brewed multiple times?

FrontStreet Coffee has also noticed that many people compare instant coffee with drip bag coffee. Compared to drip bag coffee, instant coffee is much simpler—you don't need to consider water temperature and can brew directly with suitable boiling water. However, everyone should understand that instant coffee is obtained by evaporating water from coffee extract to create dry coffee extract, which cannot be considered real coffee. The coffee powder used in drip bags is ground from freshly roasted coffee beans, extracting real black coffee through drip filtration. The brewing methods for instant coffee and drip bag coffee are different. Drip bag coffee cannot be poured out like instant coffee, otherwise your cup of coffee will be full of coffee grounds, making it undrinkable and severely affecting the coffee's taste. This brewing method is also incorrect. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends that everyone read the brewing instructions carefully before brewing drip bag coffee.

Generally speaking, drip bag coffee cannot be brewed a second time because only 3% of the flavor compounds in coffee can be extracted, and other flavor compounds are difficult to extract. Generally, coffee can only be extracted once. FrontStreet Coffee has previously experimented with whether drip bag coffee can be extracted a second or even third time. FrontStreet Coffee found that after the first extraction, subsequent coffee basically has no flavor.

In fact, a small pack of drip bag coffee typically contains 10 grams of powder, and 10 grams of powder can generally only be brewed once. When you repeatedly brew the same bag, you might notice that the coffee still tastes strong and should still be drinkable. This is actually not the case, because when you brew drip bag coffee for a long time, the longer the coffee is steeped, the more caffeine is released. This is because the coffee has been over-extracted. Over-extraction releases the bitterness and astringency in the coffee, meaning the optimal flavor of this coffee is basically gone. Even if this coffee is within its optimal tasting period, multiple brewings will dilute its best flavor, so FrontStreet Coffee generally does not recommend guests repeatedly brewing the same drip bag coffee.

Even if the drip bag coffee is still within its tasting period, FrontStreet Coffee does not recommend brewing the same coffee multiple times because drip bag coffee is designed as instant brew coffee that can produce a rich, aromatic black coffee anytime, anywhere, allowing you to perfectly taste the acidity, bitterness, and mellow aroma in coffee. The flavor of repeatedly brewed drip bag coffee is basically lost.

III. How to Choose a Suitable Drip Bag Coffee for Yourself

When drinking coffee, of course, you want to drink your favorite coffee flavors. Some people might like the lemon and citrus notes of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, others might prefer the rich body of Indonesian Mandheling, or the intense floral aromas and fruit juice-like mouthfeel of Panama Geisha—all of which are excellent choices. However, FrontStreet Coffee has a prerequisite on this basis: the drip bag coffee you purchase must be fresh and正好处于咖啡的最佳赏味期 (正好处于咖啡的最佳赏味期 = just entered its optimal tasting period). Otherwise, no matter how delicious this coffee is, you cannot truly taste a delicious cup of coffee. Generally, experienced baristas or even enthusiasts can judge how long coffee has been stored by its smell, but for ordinary coffee enthusiasts like us, it's better to honestly identify whether coffee is fresh through the following methods.

1. Check the Production Date

First, when buying drip bag coffee, look at the roasting date on the coffee's drip bag packaging. The roasting date indicates when the coffee beans were marked from the oven. When we talk about whether coffee beans are fresh, we generally look at the roasting date rather than the expiration date.

2. Check the Best-Tasting Period on the Packaging

Coffee bean packaging will have a degassing valve added, with the purpose of allowing carbon dioxide inside the coffee packaging to be released to prevent the packaging bag from expanding and bursting. FrontStreet Coffee's drip bags do not have degassing valves because although degassing valves can be squeezed to smell the coffee aroma, squeezing them simultaneously causes the coffee to release aroma and shortens its lifespan. Therefore, even if drip bags are equipped with degassing valves, it only increases the cost of drip bag coffee but cannot extend its optimal tasting period.

FrontStreet Coffee also recommends not buying several months' worth of drip bag coffee at once just because bulk purchases offer discounts. Drip bag coffee emphasizes freshness. If you buy too much drip bag coffee and can't finish it, it will pass the coffee's optimal tasting period, and the brewed coffee definitely won't taste as good.

3. Choose Your Favorite Coffee Flavor

Drip bag coffee is a simplified pour-over coffee, so like pour-over coffee, the final coffee flavor is determined by the coffee beans inside the drip bag. Drip bag coffee can be either single-origin or blended coffee. However, the drip bag coffee sold by FrontStreet Coffee is generally single-origin coffee, with less blended coffee. Generally, drip bag coffee packaging will indicate the coffee's flavor, such as jasmine aroma, citrus, lemon, cream, etc., which generally describes the flavor tendencies of drip bag coffee.

For example, FrontStreet Coffee has a Brazilian Red Fruit Coffee that carries the unique nutty, chocolate, cream, and peanut flavors characteristic of Brazilian coffee. There's also a Panama Butterfly Coffee, which is a blended bean with 70% Geisha heritage and small amounts of Caturra and Catuai. When brewed, it has a particularly strong floral aroma, with high citrus, floral, honey notes, and sweetness. There's also coffee from Kenya with cherry tomato-like bright acidity, all of which are very suitable for making into drip bag coffee.

Some guests at FrontStreet Coffee also choose suitable drip bag coffee based on coffee processing methods. There are many coffee bean processing methods. For example, Brazil often uses the natural process to handle coffee beans. The natural process can better preserve the flavor of coffee beans, enhancing their aroma and sweetness. The reason why Brazil's Queen Estate has high sweetness is precisely because it uses the natural process. There's also the washed process, like Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee, which uses the washed process and has a very clean taste with distinct lemon and citrus notes and a faint jasmine aroma. There's also Costa Rica's honey process, like the Musician Series from Costa Rica available at FrontStreet Coffee, which uses raisin honey processing—selected coffee cherries are dried like raisins, then hulled, and the processed coffee beans are air-dried. Therefore, Costa Rican coffee beans have a relatively rich body and sweet taste.

Of course, all of the above are very suitable for making into drip bag coffee. Some coffees using special processing methods are also very popular when made into drip bag coffee, such as the Honduras Sherry Coffee available at FrontStreet Coffee, which uses refined washing and then ferments in whiskey barrels. Coffee beans processed this method carry a rich fermented wine aroma. Honduras's Lychee Lan follows the same principle, but Lychee Lan coffee beans are placed in brandy barrels, so the flavor differs significantly from Sherry coffee. The wine aroma of these Lychee Lan coffee beans tends towards brandy, with a hint of tropical fruit lychee flavor, making it another excellent choice for drip bag coffee.

IV. How to Brew a Delicious and Mellow Drip Bag Coffee

At this point, you should have a general understanding of your taste preferences. Next, you need to learn how to brew a delicious drip bag coffee. Before this, FrontStreet Coffee suggests you also understand the grind size of drip bag coffee. The coarser the coffee powder, the lower the extraction efficiency, and vice versa. However, the coarseness of coffee powder also affects sweetness. Coffee powder that's too coarse will result in under-extraction, making it taste like you're drinking water, while powder that's too fine will cause over-extraction, making the coffee difficult to swallow. FrontStreet Coffee has explored multiple times for the grind size of drip bag coffee and finally adopted a medium-fine grind size for drip bags, which is more conducive to brewing aromatic coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee considers drip bag coffee equivalent to simplified pour-over, and brewing time, temperature, and water amount have certain requirements. Water temperature for drip bag coffee is quite particular and is determined based on different origins' flavors and roasting levels. For dark roasts, FrontStreet Coffee's drip bags are best brewed with water at 88°C, while light roasts are best with water at 90-92°C. However, friends don't need to worry about not being able to identify coffee roasting levels—FrontStreet Coffee's official account has published relevant knowledge about drip bag coffee and brewing methods, so feel free to purchase with confidence.

Additionally, FrontStreet Coffee will provide the brewing method for drip bag coffee.

Drip Bag Coffee Brewing Process

Step 1: Warm the Cup

Prepare the cup and first pour some hot water to warm it. The purpose is to prevent the brewed coffee from cooling too quickly. Coffee's flavor continuously changes as temperature drops. If it cools too quickly, you'll miss many different taste experiences.

Step 2: Water Temperature

First, we need to prepare sufficiently hot water because only high enough water temperature can release more aromatic substances from the coffee powder. When brewing pour-over coffee, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using water at 86-93°C. If the temperature is only around 80°C, the brewed coffee tends to be bland and tasteless, while boiling water easily extracts burnt bitter flavors. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee lets boiled water sit uncovered at room temperature for 1-2 minutes to let the temperature drop slightly to around 90°C.

Step 3: Hang the Coffee Bag

First, gently shake the drip bag to let the coffee powder settle, avoiding spillage when tearing it open. Then pour out the hot water from the cup. After tearing open the seal on the drip bag, open both paper hangers, shake to level the coffee powder, and finally hang it on the cup rim.

Step 4: Pre-wet

The amount of water for the first pour should be just enough to wet the coffee powder—too much or too little will affect the flavor. Then wait 20 seconds to let the coffee powder fully absorb water. The strength of the coffee can be adjusted by the pre-wetting time—extending to 40 seconds will result in stronger coffee.

Step 5: Pour Water

The second pour can fill the filter paper to 80% full. It's best to use a thin, steady stream of water. Wait until the water level drops to the pre-wetting height, then continue pouring to 80% full until you've extracted 150-180cc. Once extraction is complete, you don't need to wait for all the water in the filter paper to drain—just discard it directly.

Step 6: Enjoy Your Coffee!

Remember that you can taste different flavors as the temperature changes!

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473