What to Do When Dark Roast Coffee Tastes Too Thin? How to Achieve Richness in Pour-Over Coffee?

Understanding Coffee Body: Enhancing Your Deep Roast Experience

In yesterday's article about flavor descriptions, the section on "body" generated significant discussion among coffee enthusiasts. Some friends inquired about methods to improve the body of their deep roast coffee, which tends to taste rather thin when brewed.

Let's revisit the concept: body refers to the weight of coffee liquid in your mouth—whether it feels light or full-bodied. This is closely related to the concentration of the coffee liquid. Lower concentration results in a thinner texture, while higher concentration creates a fuller body. Deep roast coffee beans, due to their more porous structure, are easier to brew into a full-bodied coffee.

Therefore, if your deep roast coffee consistently tastes thin, you should observe your brewing data to identify issues and make adjustments.

Coffee Roast Levels: From Light to Dark

Traditionally, to highlight rich, full-bodied coffee flavors, roasters commonly employed deep roasting, which also helps mask defective flavors. With the emergence of specialty coffee, emphasis shifted to unique regional flavors, advocating for clean-tasting coffee with pronounced acidity and sweetness, leading to the growing popularity of light roasts. Increased roasting depth promotes more caramelization, so lighter roasts are preferred to preserve more fruit acidity and floral notes.

Coffee beans commonly available in the market can be roughly categorized into three roast levels: light roast, medium roast, and deep roast.

Light Roast: Rich fruit characteristics with sweet and sour floral-fruity aromas, exhibiting pronounced acidity. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe Gedebb Cooperative coffee beans.

Medium Roast: Nutty characteristics, primarily caramel, cocoa, and malt notes. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Queen Estate coffee beans.

Deep Roast: Slight chocolate bitterness, lower acidity, rich caramel sweetness, with spice, woody, and smoky notes. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans.

Four Methods to Enhance Coffee Body

1. Coffee-to-Water Ratio

FrontStreet Coffee adjusts the ratio to 1:14-1:15 when brewing deep roast coffee. Once the water proportion exceeds 1:15, it dilutes the concentration, resulting in a thinner texture. Therefore, controlling the brewing ratio at 1:15 is most appropriate.

Since everyone's perception of texture, flavor, and concentration varies, if you find this ratio still produces weak, thin-tasting coffee, reducing the water ratio to 1:13-1:14 is acceptable. Alternatively, the issue might be with timing control.

2. Brewing Time

Even after adjusting the ratio multiple times, if your deep roast coffee still tastes thin, it's likely under-extracted. You can observe the brewing time—if using more than 15g of beans with a brewing time around 1 minute and 30 seconds, the grind might be too coarse, causing water to flow too quickly.

In this case, you can adjust the grind to be finer, controlling the brewing time to the 2:00-2:30 minute range. This allows for more thorough extraction, naturally resulting in a fuller body.

3. Dripper Selection

When brewing deep roast beans, FrontStreet Coffee doesn't use the common V60 dripper but instead opts for a Kono dripper. This is because the V60's rib design allows for faster water flow, making it more suitable for light to medium roast coffees. These roasts require finer grinds to extract more layered flavors, and slower extraction speeds can easily lead to over-extraction, which is why the faster-flowing V60 dripper is better suited for light to medium roast coffee beans.

Deep roast coffee beans have a more porous structure and higher extraction efficiency (aromatic compounds are easily extracted), so they require a coarser grind compared to light to medium roasts to reduce extraction efficiency (preventing over-extraction). Using the faster-flowing V60 dripper at this point would easily result in under-extraction.

The Kono dripper's rib design only extends to the lower portion, which effectively slows water flow and prolongs the coffee grounds' immersion extraction time. This is why FrontStreet Coffee uses the Kono dripper for brewing deep roast coffee beans—to achieve more complete extraction and a fuller body.

4. Pouring Technique

The pouring technique mentioned here doesn't refer to whether you use a three-stage or single-pour brewing method, but rather emphasizes avoiding pouring water directly against the dripper walls during brewing. What problems occur when water hits the dripper walls?

That's right! Water flows directly down along the walls, and what reaches the bottom server isn't extracted coffee liquid but plain hot water. This reduces extraction while diluting other coffee liquid in the bottom server, resulting in a thinner texture. Therefore, when pouring in circular motions, try to minimize contact with the walls to ensure a satisfying final texture.