Heard There's a Formula to Make Coffee Taste Sweeter?

The Pursuit of Sweetness in Coffee

Whether the subject is cultivation, roasting, or brewing, everyone wants to know how to coax more sweetness out of coffee. Hardly anyone asks how to make coffee more sour or more bitter, which tells you how much people enjoy the pleasure sweetness brings. So some readers may well ask: is there a way to make brewed coffee taste sweeter?

Understanding Sweetness in Coffee

The answer is yes, but there's an important point to keep in mind. The sugar in coffee beans is almost entirely converted and broken down during roasting, and the sweet molecules that remain are too few for our sense of taste to pick up, because other prominent flavors mask them. When we do perceive sweetness in coffee, it means the concentration of the flavors that mask sweetness has dropped, letting the sweetness register on our taste buds.

Brewing for Enhanced Sweetness

How do we brew a sweeter cup? Normally, as long as we avoid extracting too many bitter substances, we get a basic level of sweetness, which is why we generally use more conservative brewing methods. If you want even higher sweetness, though, you have to risk over-extraction, because the greater the risk, the greater the reward. The following image makes this easier to understand.

As the image shows, sweetness is released in large amounts during the middle and later stages of extraction. So when the coffee from your current technique isn't sweet enough, try shifting the focus toward full-segment extraction. That approach yields a more balanced cup in which acidity and bitterness are not too prominent, which lets sweetness come forward.

Fortunately, there happens to be a formula online that fits these brewing requirements. It extracts more aroma in a short time without being too acidic or over-extracted, ultimately producing a cup with high sweetness. The formula is: High-Fine-Large-Fast. Strange as it sounds, let's put it to the test using light-medium roast beans.

The High-Fine-Large-Fast Formula

Fine: Grind finer. FrontStreet Coffee commonly uses light-medium roast beans at an EK43 setting of 10. To chase higher sweetness, adjust slightly finer, from 10 down to 9.5, which increases the surface area of the grounds and lets hot water penetrate faster for extraction.

High: Raise the water temperature. After grinding finer, increase the temperature. For example, raise the usual 92°C by 2°C to 94°C to lift the extraction rate during the bloom. Stronger extraction during the bloom lets the hot water poured afterward reach the aromatic substances hidden in the grounds more quickly.

Large: Increase the water flow. When brewing begins, use the conventional three-stage method: 15g of beans at a 1:16 coffee-to-water ratio, with water amounts of 40/120/80ml for the three stages, poured with a large flow each time. A large flow lifts the coffee bed, increasing its surface area and letting hot water extract more acidic and sweet substances in a short time.

Fast: Extract quickly. Because the whole pour uses a large flow, paired with a V60 dripper whose ribs guide the water for faster drainage, the total extraction time runs a little shorter than the conventional mix of large and small flows. That ensures enough sweetness is extracted while preventing an excessive release of bitter substances. Once brewing is done, you'll have a coffee sweeter than a conventional brew, provided it isn't over-extracted.

High-Sweetness Brewing for Medium-Dark Roast Coffee Beans

The principle of high-sweetness extraction for medium-dark roast beans is the same, but these beans are somewhat delicate, with a looser texture, and cannot take the aggressive method described above. For dark roast beans, FrontStreet Coffee recommends High Concentration, Low Extraction: raise the brewing concentration while lowering the extraction rate. This effectively reduces the bitterness released in the later stages, which naturally leaves more sweetness.

Use 15g of beans, ground at an EK43 setting of 10.5 (75% passing through a #20 sieve), with the coffee-to-water ratio adjusted from the conventional 1:15 to 1:13, brewing water at 88°C, in a Kono dripper.

The brewing method is the simplest one-pour technique. After blooming with 30ml of hot water for 30 seconds, pour the remaining 165ml down the center with a gentle, slow motion, drawing small continuous circles, to get a highly sweet dark roast coffee.

Conclusion

FrontStreet Coffee has laid out the principles of high-sweetness extraction here in simple terms. Around that same principle there are many other methods that can raise sweetness, such as variable temperature brewing, which uses different water temperatures to reduce the release of acidity and bitterness. Nothing is absolute, so by all means explore the different experiences the many extraction methods can bring.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Because sweetness in the cup tracks the roast so closely, a medium roast is often the sweet spot for drinkers who want balance. FrontStreet's Strawberry Candy Geisha blend is a fine example: it combines a honey-processed Costa Rican coffee with a washed Panamanian Geisha, and a medium roast lets it show both orange-blossom honey notes and a rounded sweetness. It works well for cold brew, pour-over, and espresso alike.

If you would rather skip acidity and bitterness altogether, FrontStreet's Brazil Queen's Farm is a gentle place to land. Grown from the yellow bourbon variety in Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, it tastes soft and quietly sweet, and after a medium roast it offers aromas and sweetness of cream peanut, chocolate, toasted bread, and sugarcane. It brews well as pour-over, and it also suits a moka pot or an espresso machine.