What to do if your pour-over coffee is too sour, too bitter, too strong, too weak, too astringent, too complex, too burnt, or tastes terrible?

Professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information. Please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)

As the specialty coffee trend sweeps across the globe, more and more customers enjoy buying roasted coffee beans to brew at home. Among them, many raise questions like, "Why can't I brew the same delicious coffee at home that I drink at FrontStreet Coffee?" This article by FrontStreet Coffee will analyze and answer these questions one by one.

Coffee Bean Consistency

First, ensure that the pour-over coffee beans you drink at FrontStreet Coffee are from the same batch as the coffee beans you purchase. For example, if you drink PWN Gold Mandheling from the October harvest at FrontStreet Coffee, you should buy the October harvest PWN Gold Mandheling from FrontStreet Coffee. Coffee beans are agricultural products, not industrial assembly line products, and their flavors will have subtle differences between different years or batches. Some stable large production regions can maintain long-term consistency in coffee quality, while emerging farms or small production regions cannot maintain stable coffee flavors - one batch might be excellent, while the next batch might be slightly inferior.

Certainty of Brewing Parameters

Usually after tasting in the store and purchasing coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee will share the brewing parameters for these beans. Among the many parameters, coffee-to-water ratio, water temperature, coffee amount, and brewing technique are relatively easy to understand and synchronize. The following parameters deserve special attention.

1. Water Quality

The essence of coffee extraction is water dissolving flavor compounds from the coffee, making water the most important factor. pH Value — Alkaline water will reduce acidity, while excessively high pH values will make coffee taste alkaline; conversely, acidic water will increase acidity, while excessively low pH values will make coffee taste harsh.

TDS — PPM that is too high (above 225) will cause under-extraction, preventing flavors from being released; TDS that is too low (below 75ppm) can easily cause over-extraction, leading to bitterness in coffee. The optimal TDS value should be between 125-175ppm (SCAA standard). Different coffee shops use different water sources, so their TDS values naturally won't be the same. Therefore, when pondering home brewing, you can pay attention to this parameter, or ask your favorite coffee shop what water source they use. FrontStreet Coffee uses water filtered through a filter to meet drinking standards, with a TDS value of 139ppm, and does not recommend using unfiltered tap water directly for brewing.

2. Grind Size

This is an important reason why many problems occur in coffee brewing. Perhaps the shop will provide a grind size and reference objects, but each grinder is different. We also need to pay attention to whether our grinder grinds evenly, the amount of fine particles, particle state, etc. Even with the same model of grinder, the state of ground coffee will be different (duration of use will cause grinding deviations), let alone using a different machine than the merchant. FrontStreet Coffee uses a BG conical burr coffee grinder, which is more precise than needed for home use. So how to choose a coffee grinder? Frontsteet recommends two types of burrs suitable for pour-over coffee grinding here for everyone's reference.

Conical Burrs: These grind coffee beans into particles through crushing, so their shape is mainly blocky. They are commonly used in manual grinders. Because they use a "crushing" method, when coffee beans are crushed and burst, a large amount of dust-like fine particles is produced. The normal coffee particles are also irregular block shapes, but overall tend to be uniform. The conical burrs produce particles close to granular, resulting in longer water absorption paths and more time in contact with water, so initially less soluble substances are released and the concentration won't be too high, but long-term extraction of woody parts absorbs less water and is less likely to produce off-flavors and astringency, making it suitable for pour-over coffee grind size. Expensive conical burrs and cheap conical burrs also differ greatly in grinding effect.

Flat Burrs: These grind coffee beans into particles through grinding, so their shape is mainly closer to spherical. However, because they can grind one coffee bean into several small spherical particles, the edge waste (fine particles) produced by grinding spheres will also increase. But the difference between large particles is the smallest overall. Suitable for pour-over grinding.

Regarding grind size, FrontStreet Coffee uses national standard #20 (850 micron) standard sieves for screening calibration. According to SCAA cupping standards, cupping grind size has a 70-75% pass rate through #20 standard sieve. FrontStreet Coffee's pour-over light roast coffee grind size is generally in the 75-80% range, while medium-dark roast grind size is in the 70-75% range.

3. Water Temperature

Pour-over coffee water temperature is generally recommended between 86 to 93 degrees Celsius. Lighter roasted coffee beans use temperatures between 90 to 93 degrees Celsius, while darker roasted coffee beans (such as Gold Mandheling) use lower temperatures (between 86 to 88 degrees Celsius). FrontStreet Coffee uses 90-91°C water temperature for medium-light roasted coffee beans, and 88°C-89°C water temperature for medium-dark roasted coffee beans.

4. Coffee-to-Water Ratio

FrontStreet Coffee recommends a coffee-to-water ratio between 1:14 to 1:18. The smaller the ratio, the more concentrated the flavor; the larger the ratio, the lighter the flavor. FrontStreet Coffee's shop mostly uses a 1:15 brewing ratio for most coffee beans, typically using 15 grams of coffee beans with 225 grams of water.

5. Brewing Technique

Next, let's analyze FrontStreet Coffee's most commonly used three-stage pouring technique. First, make preparations (warm the filter cup and server, grind coffee, prepare water at appropriate temperature), pour in the coffee grounds. Begin the first pour while starting the timer. The first pour uses 30 grams of hot water, pouring from the center outward in circles. The coffee grounds absorb water and slowly expand, forming a puffed "coffee dome."

Stop pouring when reaching 30 grams of water, wait for 30 seconds of bloom time. At the 31st second shown on the electronic scale, begin the second pour, pouring from the center outward in circles, keeping the water flow stable and vertical. When the water column impacts the coffee ground layer, foam will appear. This brewing stage allows the coffee foam to be released, covering the entire surface of the grounds, with the liquid level rising to the root of the ribs. The water amount for this stage is 100 grams.

When the liquid level drops to the 1/2 mark, begin the final pour. This stage also pours 95 grams from the center outward in a "smelling" motion. The original dark brown foam transforms into light yellow coffee foam, and the liquid level returns to the same height as the second pour. When all the coffee liquid has flowed into the server, remove the filter cup to end extraction.

What are the advantages of FrontStreet Coffee's love for three-stage extraction?

Enhanced Coffee Flavor: During extraction, it can more fully extract the flavor compounds from coffee, enhancing the layered complexity of the coffee.

Strong Compatibility: It can well express the flavors of most coffees from different origins and roast levels. For brewers, if the initial pour is too much and they find the water level rising too quickly, they can adopt分段 (staged pouring), extend the brewing time, let the water level drop before continuing brewing, which can avoid under-extraction caused by too-fast water flow.

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat, WeChat ID: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473