How Does Handle Temperature Affect Espresso? How Is Coffee Aroma Influenced by Temperature?

How Does Portafilter Temperature Affect Espresso Extraction?

At the 2016 World Barista Championship, competitor Tse-Lin Wu from Taiwan used a chilled portafilter for espresso extraction and won the championship. This operation completely subverted everyone's understanding at the time. Everyone, like the commentator present, questioned: "Can the portafilter temperature really affect the coffee itself?"

Since the operation was very simple, many friends tried it with skepticism, including FrontStreet Coffee. The experimental results proved that the portafilter temperature does indeed affect the coffee itself. As friends recently mentioned this topic again, FrontStreet Coffee will now analyze in detail why portafilter temperature affects coffee.

How does coffee portafilter temperature affect espresso? Today, FrontStreet Coffee restarted the experiment, using a hot portafilter, room temperature portafilter, and frozen portafilter to extract a cup of espresso each, with parameters set at 20g of coffee powder for 32 seconds to extract 40ml of espresso liquid. After separately measuring and tasting the three cups of espresso, FrontStreet Coffee concluded that the three indeed have certain differences. Particularly, the espresso extracted with the frozen portafilter differs significantly from the other two in all aspects!

Hot portafilter: The espresso extracted with the hot portafilter had a temperature of 68°C, with richer aroma compared to the other two cups. In terms of flavor, it was balanced between sour, sweet, and bitter, exhibiting notes of whiskey, vanilla, butter cookies, and a hint of berries.

Room temperature portafilter: The espresso extracted with the room temperature portafilter had a temperature of 65°C. The aroma was slightly weaker than the hot portafilter, but otherwise identical to the former.

Frozen portafilter: The espresso extracted with the frozen portafilter had a temperature of 35°C. The aroma was inferior to the previous two, but its taste was more prominent (mainly sour and sweet), and the flavor profile was more outstanding: whiskey, berries, vanilla, and butter cookies. The texture was less rich than the previous two but smoother.

It's evident that whether in aroma or taste, the three have distinct differences, which is the result of different portafilter temperatures. The reason for these differences is mainly that the portafilter temperature affects the temperature and aroma of the coffee liquid.

As we all know, coffee aroma is one of the main components that constitute flavor. Most aromas are volatile and are affected by ambient temperature, which changes their volatilization speed. When the temperature of the coffee liquid is higher, the movement of aroma molecules in the liquid becomes more intense, and the rate of dissipation and volatilization is relatively faster; conversely, when the coffee temperature is lower, the movement of aroma molecules slows down, the release rate decreases, and relatively more aroma is retained. The principle of the frozen portafilter is the same as that of the Paragon small golden ball that FrontStreet Coffee often shares, except that the object affected has changed from the small golden ball to the coffee portafilter.

In addition to coffee aroma, coffee taste is also affected by temperature. From the above experiment, we can know that when the coffee temperature is higher, the sourness of the espresso is not as strong, while the espresso at a relatively lower temperature will have more prominent sourness. This is the change that temperature brings to our taste buds. Since FrontStreet Coffee just explained this in detail yesterday, we won't elaborate further here. In summary, we can understand how portafilter temperature affects coffee taste. If you're interested, you can also conduct your own experiments. But!!! Regarding conducting the experiment, there are two points we must pay attention to.

1. Selection of Portafilter

The reason the friend mentioned at the beginning brought up this topic was that his experimental results showed almost no difference, and the coffee even tasted thinner, with extraction not being as complete as before. The main reason for this situation is that he used a bottomless portafilter.

The portafilter temperature does indeed affect coffee extraction, but the premise for this effect is that a certain part of the portafilter can contact the coffee liquid and then conduct heat transfer. The bottomless portafilter is named because it has no bottom. Even if we freeze or heat it, the coffee liquid will not contact any object after extraction, so the temperature of the coffee liquid will neither be taken away nor given, and the final coffee liquid will not be affected too much.

Therefore, when we plan to conduct the experiment, it's best to choose a spouted portafilter to ensure that the experiment can be accurately implemented.

2. Whether to Keep the Portafilter Basket

Secondly, if you want to freeze the portafilter, it's best to remove the portafilter basket. Although freezing it together with the basket can achieve a better cooling effect, the coffee extraction will be affected as a result.

FrontStreet Coffee previously mentioned that when extracting espresso, the hot water doesn't necessarily flow straight down through the coffee puck but will prioritize finding channels that flow easily! Even if the coffee puck itself has no holes, the areas where the puck contacts the portafilter basket all have gaps, and hot water will flow from there first before extracting the coffee. Therefore, when we freeze the portafilter together with the basket, the initial extraction water temperature will be affected to some extent. If we want to obtain complete coffee extraction, we need to adjust our parameters (the previous article was affected by this factor, resulting in incomplete coffee extraction).

Preview: The final event before the New Year will start tomorrow evening. Friends, please stay tuned~

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

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