True "Blooming" – How to Brew with Matsuya-Style Pour Over?

What is "False Bloom"

What is "True Bloom"

That's right! They both call it bloom, but how can you "bloom" without a lid~ Just kidding, just kidding! The so-called "true bloom" below actually comes from Japan's "Matsuya-style brewing"!

What is Matsuya-style brewing?

Mr. Matsui Yoshiyoshi from Japan invented this "true bloom" method using a lid, known as "Matsuya-style brewing," in 1962. This method can be described as a very classic Japanese brewing style, but for those seeing it for the first time, this "classic" will surely come as a profound shock! Matsuya-style brewing features three striking elements that directly capture attention: "blooming with a lid," "extremely high pouring," and "super-concentrated coffee that requires additional water"!

The filter holder used in Matsuya-style brewing consists of a metal frame with no ribs for flow guidance, because its purpose is very simple: to support the filter paper - that's all. Because of this, slightly stiffer filter paper is more suitable for it.

(Left is a standard Matsuya-style holder, right is the holder used by FrontStreet Coffee for this Matsuya-style brewing) The reason they use a lid for blooming comes from their desire to: achieve a consistent state for coffee grounds across all time periods. The general idea is that freshly roasted beans and beans stored for a week have different degassing effects. These differences affect subsequent brewing, causing varying degrees of extraction and resulting in significantly different coffee flavors - very inconsistent!

Therefore, they decided to exhaust all the gases at once! This allows today's beans and beans from a week later to completely release their gases during the bloom stage, so subsequent brewing won't result in inconsistent extraction due to different degrees of degassing, ultimately achieving consistent coffee flavor! "Stability" is the core concept behind this brewing method. However, this created new problems: brewing at high temperatures after complete degassing easily leads to over-extraction! To solve this new problem, coffee beans are ground to a coarser grind! Then, when combined with high-temperature brewing, over-extraction becomes less likely!

(Left is regular Golden Mandheling grind, right is the coarse grind used for Matsuya-style) Ideas are always beautiful, but reality deals a heavy blow! Excessive temperature still easily extracts undesirable compounds, so ultimately the water temperature had to be reduced for extraction. However, at that time, there were no thermometers available to measure water temperature, so clever people came up with another idea! Pouring boiling water into the brewing kettle immediately reduces it by 5°C, reaching 95°C, and then raising the pouring height - voila! This solved both the temperature issue and provided sufficient agitation force for stirring! The best of both worlds!

When the above series of operations is applied to brewing, you'll find that flavor compounds can be extracted very easily! Therefore, the coffee-to-water ratio was reduced to a very low 1:5. But as friends probably know, excessive concentration makes flavors too concentrated, causing the taste to become chaotic and difficult to distinguish. This is when "By-pass" comes into play. Add additional water at a 1:10 ratio (or any amount that suits your taste) to dilute this "concentrated" coffee back to normal concentration! And that completes the entire journey of inventing Matsuya-style brewing. Now, let's move on to the practical demonstration and see exactly how Matsuya-style brewing should be done!

Matsuya-style brewing demonstration

This brewing demonstration uses dark roasted Sumatra Golden Mandheling beans. The grind size passes through a #20 sieve at 50% rate. (FrontStreet Coffee uses an EK grinder setting of 12) Water temperature is 95°C, coffee-to-water ratio is 1:5, using 20g of beans, which means 100ml of water, but you need to prepare 300ml of hot water because the subsequent By-pass step will require it. First! Place the folded filter paper into the holder and add the coarsely ground coffee.

Pour 40ml of hot water from a height of 25cm above the filter, spiraling from the center outward.

Cover with the lid and bloom for three minutes.

After blooming, remove the lid and pour the remaining water (60ml) from the same height.

After dripping is complete, remove the filter holder and proceed with the "By-pass" step, adding an appropriate amount of water. FrontStreet Coffee added 180ml of hot water. (But for friends who prefer higher concentration, the By-pass water amount is recommended to be reduced to around 150ml)

And there you have it - it's done!

Tasting notes

Although the color appears slightly light, there's absolutely no sense of under-extraction. Instead, the concentration is just right, and the nutty and chocolate flavors of Golden Mandheling are well-expressed, along with a very distinct dark roast aftertaste. Overall, this is a brewing method worth experiencing!

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

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Tel:020 38364473