What Does "Body" Mean in Pour-Over Coffee? Brewing Methods to Enhance Coffee Richness and Mouthfeel

Understanding Coffee Body: A Comprehensive Guide

When evaluating whether a coffee tastes good, FrontStreet Coffee believes that in addition to its flavor profile, we must also pay attention to its mouthfeel. Flavor primarily serves our taste and smell, while mouthfeel serves our sense of touch.

FrontStreet Coffee once conducted a survey where we prepared two cups of Kenyan coffee with slightly different flavors and mouthfeels for guests to taste. The first cup of Kenyan coffee had bright, light acidity with distinct small tomato flavors, representing classic Kenyan characteristics. The second cup of Kenyan coffee had rounded, solid acidity with flavors of dark plum and plum.

Eight out of ten guests preferred the second cup, and among these eight, two-thirds believed that while the first cup's flavor was indeed appealing, it lacked texture. In contrast, the second cup's texture provided a very comfortable and smooth sensation.

This texture is actually what we call coffee body. When evaluating whether a coffee's body is good, it's essentially about whether the tactile sensation when drinking the coffee feels pleasant. For example, when we enjoy smooth, full-bodied, and rich mouthfeels, and when these sensations appear while drinking coffee, we can consider the coffee's body to be good. If drinking coffee reveals sandy, rough textures, watery sensations (thin mouthfeel), or astringency, then the coffee's body is not ideal.

What makes us perceive good coffee body is primarily thanks to oils and fibers. That is to say, the finer and richer the coffee's oils and fibers, the better the overall body of the coffee. This is also why Italians love their espresso and why the Japanese prefer using flannel to brew coffee—essentially to retain more oils to enhance the coffee's body.

The Kawano Pour-Over Method

So in pour-over brewing, how can we extract good coffee body? Let's examine how the Kawano pour-over method achieves this.

The Kawano method is a well-known Japanese brewing technique that produces coffee with a very rich body. Here are its key principles:

- Use dark roasted coffee beans. Dark roasted coffee has richer oils, making it easier to extract more oils.

- Use a Kono dripper. Different drippers affect coffee flavor and body differently. For example, immersion-type drippers like Kono and trapezoidal drippers can better extract rich body. Conical-type drippers like V60 and star-shaped drippers can better extract flavors.

- The first stage involves adding water in droplets until the coffee grounds are completely moistened. This can be seen as a blooming process, such as adding water slowly for a relatively long time to allow all gases inside the coffee grounds to escape. This won't affect subsequent extraction of substances (including oils and fibers that benefit body).

- The second stage is the main extraction phase, using large water flow in segmented pours. Because the droplets in the first stage have already expelled all gases from within the coffee, water addition in this stage won't be interfered with, making it easier to dissolve coffee substances. Multiple segmented pours can also enhance the coffee's complexity.

- The entire water addition process is relatively gentle and slow. Because this method requires more time (approximately 3-4 minutes), to counter the risk of over-extraction, the grind will be coarser, the coffee-to-water ratio will be reduced (1:12), and the water temperature will also be lowered.

Key Principles for Enhancing Coffee Body

FrontStreet Coffee introduces the Kawano brewing method not to claim it's the optimal solution for extracting coffee body, but rather because this method only applies to dark roasted coffee beans. Therefore, what's important is understanding the principles behind this approach.

- In equipment selection, besides choosing immersion-type drippers, filtering devices with larger gaps such as flannel and metal filters allow more oils to integrate into the coffee liquid, improving the coffee's body.

- In water addition methods, segmented pours compared to single continuous pours can better express the coffee's body.

- In pouring techniques, using gentle water addition methods more easily produces smooth mouthfeel. When stirring is too vigorous, causing the coffee grounds to tumble and dissolve excessive polyphenols, the coffee's texture becomes rougher and more astringent.

Conclusion

Finally, both the flavor and body of coffee are equally important, so the improvement methods mentioned above are based on applying technique constraints to parameters that can produce a cup of coffee with good flavor—that is, making the coffee's body better without affecting flavor.

If using methods that change brewing approaches, besides affecting the coffee's body, they will also affect the coffee's flavor, increasing the number of factors that need to be balanced.

Important Notice :

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