What Are the Precautions for Brewing Coffee? What Are the 5 Major Factors Affecting Pour-Over Coffee Flavor?

As the saying goes, "You can't call yourself an expert until you've made some mistakes." On the path of brewing coffee, it's inevitable to encounter various "disasters." When problems occur, don't be afraid - the most important thing is to find a solution. In some cases, you can still save that cup of coffee.

What if you grind beans at the wrong setting - do you have to throw them away?

You've definitely encountered this situation: when grinding beans, you didn't see the setting clearly, or you forgot to adjust it back after someone changed it. The coffee grounds are the wrong consistency, and you have two choices: either throw them away regretfully, or proceed with brewing anyway, hoping for a miracle.

When FrontStreet Coffee explains hand-drip coffee grind size, we recommend using a fixed standard. For example, FrontStreet Coffee advocates using a #20 sieve to determine consistency, with hand-drip grind size having a 70-80% pass rate through a #20 sieve. This grind size most easily brings out the coffee flavor in hand-drip brewing.

If you discover after grinding that the consistency is wrong, don't rush to throw it away - it might still be salvageable. First, confirm how much the ground coffee differs from your usual grind size. You can make a preliminary judgment by observing the largest particles of the coffee grounds, or determine it based on the grinder's setting.

In FrontStreet Coffee's analysis of coffee brewing factors, parameters like grind size, water temperature, ratio, and technique must work together to produce good coffee. When the grind size changes but other parameters remain the same, the balance is disrupted, and the coffee's flavor naturally becomes off. However, we can neutralize the difference in grind size by changing other parameters.

We know that coffee beans are ground to increase the surface area of contact with water. The finer the grind, the larger the surface area of the coffee beans, making it easier to extract flavor. And the other participant - water - has different levels of activity at different temperatures. Higher water temperature more easily dissolves coffee substances, while lower water temperature makes it more difficult to extract coffee compounds. The same principle applies to time - the longer the steeping time, the stronger the coffee flavor; the shorter the time, the lighter the flavor. In hand-drip brewing, this can be controlled through technique.

Therefore, if the coffee beans are ground too coarse, you can适当 increase the water temperature, extend the pre-infusion time, and use a small water flow to extend the steeping time. If the coffee beans are ground too fine, you can lower the water temperature, shorten the pre-infusion time, use a larger water flow, or reduce the water amount bypass. Even if you've ground it to espresso powder, isn't there still the "one-shot" method!

Should you continue brewing when you notice the coffee bed isn't blooming during pouring?

Sometimes when pouring water, you notice the coffee bed doesn't puff up, looking as if it's expired. Should you continue brewing or not? Well, if you don't brew, you might waste the beans; if you do brew, you might waste the water. In this situation, you should continue brewing, but with some justification. First, make a simple judgment - before brewing, check the roast date. If the coffee beans haven't exceeded one month, you can basically rule out freshness issues.

If it has been more than a month, you can smell the dry aroma of the coffee and the fragrance during pre-infusion. If you can still smell the coffee aroma without any peanut skin-like or aged flavors, you can continue brewing. If such off-flavors are present, you can give up the struggle and discard it.

In fact, some harder, light-roasted coffees don't bloom easily during pre-infusion. This is because these beans have higher density, water penetrates more slowly, and gas also releases more slowly, so they won't form a noticeable dome. For example, Panama's Geisha coffee beans. These non-blooming coffee beds all share a characteristic - they easily clog the drainage holes, causing over-extraction and bitterness.

When facing this non-blooming phenomenon, during brewing, you need to pour in smaller circles as much as possible, raise the water level, reduce the thickness of the bottom coffee bed, and lower the risk of clogging.

Of course, there are many situations on the edge of disaster where you need to think on your feet to pull the coffee back from the brink.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473