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How to Use Paragon Ice Puck? Is Pour-Over Coffee Flavor a Mystery? What Are the Reasons for Not Being Able to Smell Coffee's Aroma?

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, "Flavor" is a product of coffee specialization. To be able to taste more flavors in coffee, in addition to improving the quality of the beans themselves, people have invented some auxiliary tools used during extraction. These tools, as the name suggests, can retain more aromatic compounds in coffee, allowing us to taste more

Flavor is a product of coffee specialization. To experience more flavors in coffee, people have not only improved the quality of beans themselves but also invented auxiliary tools for use during extraction. These tools claim to retain more aromatic compounds in coffee, allowing us to experience more defined flavor expressions! For example, the small golden ball "Paragon," popular in coffee competitions, claims to have such functionality.

What is Paragon?

Paragon is an auxiliary tool invented by World Coffee Championship winner Sasa Sestic. As shown in the picture, it's a spherical object covered in "golden armor."

According to Sasa himself, when we add this golden ball to coffee brewing, the resulting coffee aroma will be 40% more abundant than before! This is possible because the Paragon golden ball rapidly cools the coffee liquid as it's extracted, thus preserving more aromatics. Many people might find this confusing: what's the connection between aroma and flavor? Why cool coffee liquid to preserve aromas? Don't worry, FrontStreet Coffee will analyze this step by step.

The flavors we perceive in coffee primarily come from the aromas it releases! When coffee enters our mouth, these aromas are captured through the nasal passage in our mouth, which then triggers our associations with specific flavors.

Although coffee beans produce thousands of aromatic compounds after roasting, most are volatile, so they evaporate significantly during grinding and extraction. Ultimately, very few aromas remain in the coffee for us to detect.

The addition of the ice ball allows coffee liquid to be rapidly cooled after extraction, which reduces the volatility of aromatics, causing them to evaporate more slowly. This enables us to experience fuller coffee flavors.

Sasa also mentioned an important point: the golden ball is primarily used during the early stages of extraction. Research shows that coffee liquid releases the greatest quantity of aromatics at the beginning of extraction. Therefore, by using the golden ball only during the early extraction stages to cool the coffee liquid, theoretically, we can preserve the most aromatic compounds.

Brewing Experiment

So is it really as magical as described? Let's have FrontStreet Coffee conduct an experiment to test it!

This experiment will brew two pots of coffee: one using the small golden ball for "aroma-preserving" extraction, and the other using conventional extraction. Let's see if this Paragon can truly retain coffee aromas and provide better performance! The beans used in this experiment are Hartmann Geisha from the Panama region; 15g of coffee; 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio; water temperature 92°C; ground using Ek43 at setting 9.5, fine sugar grind, with 80% passing through a #20 sieve; three-stage pour-over; V60 dripper.

First, we'll use twice the amount of water for bloom and degassing, for 30 seconds.

After blooming, we pour the second stage of hot water (130ml) using small circular motions with a gentle flow. Then wait for the water level to drop! Once the water level drops to half, remove the golden ball!

When the coffee grounds at the bottom become visible, we pour the final stage of hot water using a large flow in small circular motions, then wait for the dripping to complete before removing the dripper and finishing extraction!

Using a thermometer, we can see that the conventional extraction coffee without the golden ball assistance had a temperature of 66.7°C, while the coffee with the golden ball had a temperature of 55°C, a difference of about 10°C.

Tasting Results

Now for the tasting! The conventionally extracted Hartmann Geisha displayed flavors of bergamot, passion fruit, and pineapple juice, with prominent overall sweetness and acidity, and a distinct Earl Grey tea aftertaste. The Hartmann Geisha brewed with the golden ball did show slightly more defined flavors, but the difference wasn't significant. The overall acidity was more pronounced, but this was mainly influenced by the temperature drop.

In conclusion, we can determine that the golden ball does provide a slight improvement in coffee flavor perception (due to temperature effects), but the difference isn't very noticeable. Therefore, whether to purchase one should be based on your personal pursuit, as one isn't cheap either. If you don't have particularly high requirements for coffee flavors, the golden ball isn't necessary. However, if you want to experience coffee flavors more delicately, then you might consider investing in a golden ball.