How to Prepare Coffee Brewing Water? How to Use Paragon Ice Spheres? Are Tasting Cups an Intelligence Tax?

In coffee competitions, we always see competitors using various unique tools to make their coffee. These tools without exception can enhance the aroma or quality of the brewed coffee. FrontStreet Coffee has tested quite a few of these tools before, and while they do have some impact on coffee, most of their effects are subtle. Without careful comparison, it would be difficult to notice the improvements they bring.

So FrontStreet Coffee realized that if the effects of individual tools aren't obvious, what if we combine these tools like competitors do in competitions? Would that allow us to brew a distinctly different and better-tasting coffee?

Great! Let's conduct an experiment to see if combining multiple tools that enhance coffee can bring significant changes to our brew!

Tool Introduction

This experiment will use three tools that enhance the coffee experience: "Brewing Water Concentrate," "Paragon Ice Sphere," and "Tasting Cup." Before the experiment begins, let's look at how these tools should be used and what kind of "buffs" they provide to coffee!

Coffee Brewing Water

Since this is the first time we're discussing brewing water, FrontStreet Coffee will explain it in detail. We know that water is an important variable that affects coffee's taste. Seemingly colorless and tasteless water actually contains abundant minerals (mostly). These minerals can influence the amount of substances extracted during brewing. Of course, only certain minerals have this capability, such as calcium and magnesium ions. But everything should be in moderation, including minerals! When there are too many minerals, not only does it affect the taste of water, but it also hinders the extraction of coffee's flavor compounds. Therefore, we generally choose water sources more suitable for extraction for coffee making.

Competitors in competitions are even more advanced—they directly prepare water more suitable for brewing on-site. By ensuring the water contains just the right amount of minerals, they can perfectly extract flavor compounds without affecting taste. And this convenient and quick tool is: "Brewing Water Concentrate."

Simply mix this concentrate with an appropriate amount of purified water and stir well, and you can create optimal brewing water with a TDS value of 85ppm (containing mainly the minerals needed for extraction)! We will be using this prepared "coffee brewing water" shortly.

Paragon Ice Sphere

I believe everyone is already very familiar with this little golden sphere, so FrontStreet Coffee won't elaborate too much! Simply place it under the dripper, and it will continuously release the cold stored within it from refrigeration, rapidly cooling the coffee it comes into contact with, thereby lowering the overall coffee temperature to a level where we can better perceive its flavors. (For those who want to learn more about this "little golden sphere," you can check out FrontStreet Coffee's article ~ "Paragon")

Aroma Tasting Cup

Tasting cups are never absent from competitions, and different tasting cup designs have different effects on coffee. To summarize, they can make the overall aroma of coffee easier for human olfaction to capture, and flavors can be amplified, with these effects varying according to different cup designs.

Alright, those are the three tools we'll be using. Now let's move on to our brewing experiment!

Brewing Experiment

This experiment uses the well-known Guji Uraga coffee bean. Since Guji Uraga itself is a bean with weak acidity and high sweetness, and its cleanliness is relatively high, we can more directly perceive the subtle changes that occur in it. Of course, only through comparison can we know whether the combined use of these tools can bring significant changes to coffee, so this brewing experiment is still divided into two groups: one group is conventional brewing without any additional tools—no ice sphere, using regular mountain water, and tasting with a regular espresso cup. The other group uses brewing water for brewing, Paragon ice sphere for cooling, and finally tasting with a tasting cup.

The brewing parameters remain consistent: 15g of coffee, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, 92°C water temperature, three-stage brewing, ground with EK43 at setting 10, with 80% pass-through rate using a #20 sieve, using V60 dripper. That's about it, so let's move on to our brewing session! Brewing process skipped, hehe~

Both groups had the same brewing time of 2 minutes. The temperature of the Guji Uraga brewed without tools was 72°C, while the temperature of the group using tools was 63°C. We tested with a concentration meter, and there wasn't much difference in extraction rate and concentration between the two!

(Left: Guji Uraga from the tool group; Right: Conventionally brewed Guji Uraga) Good, let's move to the tasting session. But for fairness, FrontStreet Coffee had 2 colleagues and 2 customer friends do a blind test and select their favorite coffee.

The results were unanimous—everyone chose the Guji Uraga brewed with tools! The Guji Uraga brewed without tools showed flavors of strawberry, apricot, and fig, with prominent sweetness and gentle acidity, making it an overall sweet coffee with elegant aromas, very pleasant to drink. The Guji Uraga brewed with tools showed consistent flavors, but its acidity was more vibrant, and with the enhancement of bright acidity, the sweetness became even more prominent than before. Additionally, after using the tasting cup, the coffee's aroma was concentrated, so more aroma could be perceived from this cup of Guji Uraga! The difference between the two was very significant—even customers new to coffee could clearly perceive it.

So we can learn that the three tools play different roles at different stages. Although the effect of each tool is minimal when used individually, when combined, they can indeed bring significant improvements to the coffee experience! Personally tested and proven effective. When you have time, you should definitely try them out and experience it for yourself~

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