Why is Pour-Over Coffee Under-Extracted Recently? What's the Right Water Temperature?
Why Does Coffee Taste Different When Temperature Drops?
Recently, several friends who purchased beans asked FrontStreet Coffee through Taobao's backend: "FrontStreet Coffee, FrontStreet Coffee, is there something wrong with your bean quality control lately? Why doesn't the brewed coffee taste as good as before?"
Frankly speaking, our roaster is already burdened with the question "Are the beans roasted too dark?" - they can't handle another black mark!
Actually, this phenomenon follows the same principle as the recent frequent coffee powder adsorption issue - "temperature drop." Do you remember if FrontStreet Coffee wrote an article about temperature drop precautions two months ago? It roughly described the impacts that cooling would bring. So today, we'll elaborate in detail why temperature drops have such a significant impact on coffee taste!
Increased Heat Loss Rate
After the temperature drops, the heat loss rate naturally increases significantly. What does the heat loss rate affect in extraction? That's right - it's the hot water we use during brewing. It doesn't maintain a continuously insulated state. At room temperature around 20°C, 500ml of hot water will drop in temperature at approximately 3°C per minute. When we brew a pot of coffee using a three-stage method, the water temperature has actually dropped to 89°C by the third pour.
And now that room temperature has dropped below 10°C, hot water loses heat even faster! Compared to before, 500ml of hot water now drops in temperature at approximately 5°C per minute. Therefore, if we use the original water temperature to brew coffee, the extraction rate will naturally be lower than before. When the extraction rate decreases, the flavor won't be as full-bodied. So, we can improve these changes brought by temperature drops through several aspects!
Methods to Improve Cold Weather Brewing
1. Preheat the Kettle Spout
Surprised? The first suggestion isn't to increase water temperature! Before brewing, the kettle spout is at room temperature and won't heat up automatically just because there's hot water in the kettle. So, before brewing, we can pour out a little hot water to preheat it, reducing its impact on the hot water during blooming.
2. Increase Water Temperature
Since the cooling speed is so fast, we might as well increase the water temperature to correct its impact. On the basis of the water temperature used in regular brewing, increasing it by 1-2°C can correct the temperature drop and bring extraction back on track. For example, if we originally used 92°C hot water for brewing, we can increase it to 93°C when room temperature is lower!
3. Increase Water Volume
The cooling speed of hot water is affected by water volume - the more water, the slower the cooling speed! As mentioned above, 500ml of hot water drops about 5°C per minute at 10°C room temperature. If we increase the water volume to 700ml, the temperature drop per minute will be around 3°C. However, note that the increased water volume must be controlled within your physical handling capacity.
4. Lower the Pouring Height
Do you remember the Matsuya-style brewing invented by Mr. Yoshihiro Matsushita? It's that brewing method that uses a lid for blooming! Besides this unique blooming method, his pouring height is also an impressive aspect. Because his pouring height is about 20-30cm!
The reason for extending the pouring height is to allow hot water to contact more air and reduce temperature! What we need to do after understanding this principle is to lower the pouring height to reduce the hot water's contact with cold air!
The water temperatures we mentioned earlier are all measured before brewing. The moment it leaves the kettle spout and contacts air, it starts to cool! The larger the surface area of the water column exposed to air, the more obvious the temperature drop, which is why we need to lower the pouring height slightly.
If you're worried that pouring too low will reduce the water flow's impact, we can increase the kettle's tilt angle to compensate for the reduced impact force~
- END -
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