Pour-Over Coffee Extraction Techniques: How to Brew Juicy Flavors from Kenyan Coffee Beans

Recently, a friend complained to FrontStreet Coffee: "Every time I buy coffee beans, the flavor description is filled with fruit notes, but when I brew it myself, it's either over-extracted or just weakly acidic." So they asked FrontStreet Coffee for tips on how to brew coffee with a juicy mouthfeel.

Understanding Juicy Mouthfeel in Coffee

When tasting a cup of coffee, everyone develops different associations and understandings of flavors based on their personal taste preferences and memories. The juicy sensation in coffee typically comes from the fruity aroma detected through orthonasal olfaction, combined with the acidity and sweetness from retronasal olfaction after swallowing, enough to evoke the experience of eating certain fruits.

The Foundation: Quality Beans Matter

As the saying goes, even the most skilled housewife can't cook without rice. To brew coffee with a juice-like mouthfeel, the beans themselves must contain floral and fruit aromatic compounds, while the roast level must appropriately preserve acidity and highlight sweetness. There are many types of juice-like flavors, including citric acid, malic acid, tartaric acid, lactic acid, and more. Common fruit flavor descriptions include citrus, lemon, passion fruit, apple, honey pomelo, berries, grapes, apricot, peach, plum, and so on. Here, FrontStreet Coffee has selected a typical representative of juicy coffee—Kenya Assalia coffee beans—for demonstration.

Kenyan coffee beans are known for their distinctive and complex berry notes. When ideally extracted, they offer both dense acidity and rounded fruit sweetness, with a smooth and viscous coffee liquid that provides a sensation similar to biting into a tomato and experiencing its juice burst.

Brewing Parameters for Enhanced Juiciness

Considering that this coffee bean has rich acidic fruit flavors, FrontStreet Coffee hopes to make the fruity aroma more distinct, so they've increased the powder-to-water ratio to 1:16. Using FrontStreet Coffee's standard single-cup dose of 15 grams as an example, this means injecting 240 grams of hot water. This is paired with a V60 01 dripper, 91°C water temperature, and a grind size similar to fine sugar (EK43s setting 10, with 82% pass-through rate on a #20 standard sieve).

Multi-Stage Extraction Technique

During the multi-stage extraction process, different components within the coffee grounds extract at different rates, with flavors releasing in the sequence of acid, sweet, then bitter. To achieve a higher proportion of acidity and sweetness in the coffee, the second pour after the bloom needs to use the most water to extract a large amount of the acidic compounds from the early stages. At the same time, reducing the water amount in the final stage helps balance, mainly supplementing sweetness and adding body-enhancing compounds. This approach makes it easier for the coffee to express vibrant and dense fruit acidity while not lacking in richness.

According to FrontStreet Coffee's brewing experience, coffee brewed with large water flow has richer layering and more prominent acidity, while coffee brewed with small water flow emphasizes softer, rounder sweetness. Therefore, to highlight the coffee's fruity acidity and sweetness along with rich layering, without causing too short aftertaste or too thin mouthfeel, FrontStreet Coffee uses a large-to-small water flow for extraction. Coffee grounds: 15g; Total water: 240g; Water distribution: First segment 30g, second segment 130g, third segment 80g.

First, inject 30g of water and start timing, blooming for 30 seconds. For the second segment after the bloom, FrontStreet Coffee uses medium to large water flow (greater than 7g/s), quickly pouring in a large circular pattern to inject 130g of water. After all the coffee liquid has dripped into the lower server, use small water flow (less than 4g/s), slowly pouring in small circles to inject the remaining 80g of hot water. Once all the coffee liquid has dripped into the sharing pot, end the extraction at 2 minutes (with 10-second margin).

Important Technical Considerations

It's worth noting that the water distribution in the second segment is relatively large, and if the pouring is too rapid, it can easily build the powder wall too high. After the water level drops, particles at the edge of the dripper become difficult to be reached by the hot water in the final segment, potentially leading to under-extraction. Therefore, the final water level that rises step by step should be properly controlled without pursuing too high a level. Here, FrontStreet Coffee tries to control the water level at about 3/5 of the dripper's height after completing the second segment.

Iced Brew Variation

If using iced brewing, you need to compensate for the shorter extraction time caused by reduced water volume and extract coffee compounds more quickly, so the grind needs to be adjusted finer. FrontStreet Coffee uses 9.5 here. If judged by a #20 sieve, the iced brew grind has a pass-through rate of 82-83%. Similarly, using 15g of coffee grounds with a powder-to-water ratio of 1:11 corresponds to a total water injection of 165g, with 75g of ice added. Water distribution: 30g, 90g, 45g.

Tasting Results

With this brewing method, the hot hand brew highlights the dense berry acidity of Kenyan coffee, with juiciness leaning toward small tomatoes. Meanwhile, the iced hand brew is more like a chilled dark plum juice, with an aftertaste carrying the refreshing sweetness of ripe blueberries, making it perfect for summer.

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