How to Brew Sweet-Tasting Pour-Over Coffee: Adjusting Coffee Grind Size and Water Temperature

Just kidding!!!

Jokes aside, since friends have asked about this question, it must be taken seriously.

FrontStreet Coffee has a trivial question: "Whether in coffee roasting or coffee brewing, the focus is always on how to make it sweeter, but never on how to make it more sour or more bitter." FrontStreet Coffee has come up with two reasonable answers: ① Everyone loves sweetness; ② Bringing out the sweetness in coffee is indeed no small feat.

How to Brew Sweet Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee believes the most important thing is that the coffee beans you're brewing must contain sweet substances. Sweet brewing methods are simply about extracting as many sweet and aromatic compounds from the coffee beans as possible while reducing the release of bitter compounds, thereby making the coffee "sweeter."

Therefore, we must clarify one point: brewing techniques can indeed make coffee sweeter, but they are not all-powerful and must be adapted according to the beans.

FrontStreet Coffee categorizes coffee beans into two main types: medium-light roast and medium-dark roast. Below, we'll focus on analyzing the brewing strategies for enhancing sweetness in these two types of coffee beans.

Brewing Strategies for Medium-Light Roast Coffee Beans

Medium-light roast coffee beans typically exhibit fruit-like acidity. Generally, as long as you avoid extracting the bitter flavors from the later stages, the coffee's taste won't be too bad. Therefore, there are many safe brewing approaches, with the general idea being to avoid the easily emerging bitterness by adopting low extraction methods. This makes it difficult to produce objectionable flawed flavors while preserving the main fruit-toned flavors.

However, if you want to maximally express the sweetness of coffee, you also need to take on the potential risk of over-extraction. I believe everyone is somewhat familiar with the sour-sweet-bitter model of coffee extraction.

From this ideal model, to achieve sweetness, you must release the high-sweetness compounds from the middle stage.

So, if you feel that your current brewing method for medium-light roast coffee beans lacks sweetness, you might want to try FrontStreet Coffee's suggestions:

① Increase the water temperature by 2 degrees Celsius. Water temperature is a direct factor affecting extraction efficiency. Raising the water temperature can increase the extraction rate per unit time. Simply put, if you find a coffee too sour, you can choose to moderately increase the water temperature next time you brew.

② Try sieving out the coarse particles. In the past, we often struggled with the issue of fine particles, but if you find a coffee too sour, it's definitely not the fault of the fine particles. FrontStreet Coffee often mentions that the sieve pass rate for pour-over coffee grinding is 80% through a 0.85mm sieve, meaning coffee particles larger than 0.85mm are considered coarse particles.

And coarse particles release compounds more slowly, so sieving them out helps to highlight the coffee's sweetness.

③ Use techniques to avoid risks; based on the situation, choose one of the above two options, and pay more attention to controlling water flow and circular movements when pouring. The pouring can be divided into three stages (including blooming), with water amounts (for 15g of coffee) being 25ml/125ml/90ml respectively.

Brewing Strategies for Medium-Dark Roast Coffee Beans

Medium-dark roast coffee beans generally exhibit flavors dominated by nutty and dark chocolate bitterness, with prominent sweetness being caramel, maple, and fructose. Poorly brewed coffee will taste purely bitter until the throat feels bitter, with an extremely long bitter aftertaste.

Therefore, many people consider brewing dark roast coffee to be "sweet" as part of their brewing journey.

FrontStreet Coffee's brewing suggestion for everyone is high concentration with low extraction to reduce the release of bitterness without sacrificing mouthfeel.

You can choose a slower flow filter - FrontStreet Coffee here chooses the Kono filter. The grind size is 68% through a 0.85mm sieve, with a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:13, and water temperature at 88 degrees Celsius.

The brewing method is also very simple, centered around the concept of "gentleness." First, pour 30ml of water for a 30-second bloom, then continue pouring directly to 195ml using gentle small circular movements to raise the coffee bed, and leave the rest to immersion extraction. Generally, as long as the parameters are correct, the result will be quite sweet.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473