Pour-over Coffee: Is It Better Hot or Cold? What's the Difference Between Cold and Hot Pour-over Coffee?

Why Pour-Over Coffee Should Be Drank Hot to Experience Full Flavor

"If you want to experience a more complete flavor profile, then FrontStreet Coffee suggests drinking pour-over coffee hot." This is the recommendation FrontStreet Coffee gives whenever friends hesitate between choosing iced or hot pour-over coffee.

Why Pour-Over Should Be Drank Hot

FrontStreet Coffee has shared the reasons why pour-over should be drank hot several times before, but because it wasn't intuitive enough, many friends didn't understand the difference. Therefore, today FrontStreet Coffee will do a side-by-side comparison to help everyone see more intuitively: why pour-over coffee should be drank hot to experience the flavor! (It's worth mentioning that this is also closely related to why some coffee shops charge extra for iced pour-over)

Everyone can first take a look at the parameters FrontStreet Coffee uses when brewing both:

Hot pour-over parameters: 15g coffee grounds, Ek43 setting 10, 92°C water temperature, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio (which means 15g coffee grounds with 225ml hot water), brewing time about 2 minutes.

Iced pour-over parameters: 15g coffee grounds, Ek43 setting 9.5, 92°C water temperature, 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio (which means 15g coffee grounds with 150ml hot water), coffee-to-ice ratio 1:6 (which means 15g coffee grounds uses 90g ice cubes, but these ice cubes won't completely melt), brewing time about 2 minutes.

As you can see, the main difference between the two lies in water amount and grind size. Iced pour-over uses less water because it needs ice cubes to achieve rapid cooling. For this reason, we need to increase the concentration of the coffee liquid by reducing the water amount, so it won't become a cup of bland "coffee water" due to the melting of ice cubes. However, because of the reduced water amount, the same brewing method can no longer allow the coffee to achieve sufficient extraction. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee adjusted the grind finer to appropriately increase the extraction rate. So we can know that the source of the difference mainly comes from using different amounts of water.

Because pour-over coffee doesn't have pressure assistance like espresso machines, when the water amount isn't sufficient, it's difficult to completely extract the flavor compounds we need through brewing and dripping alone. FrontStreet Coffee will use an experiment below to help everyone better understand this statement. Of course, friends can also try this at home when they have time, because it can indeed directly show the difference between the two.

Comparison Experiment

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will use 1:15 and 1:10 coffee-to-water ratios to brew two pots of coffee, with parameters consistent with what FrontStreet Coffee listed above, but the difference is that the 1:10 pot of coffee won't have ice cubes added, but will have hot water added for dilution. The purpose of this is to make the temperature and concentration of the two pots of coffee similar, better showing the differences caused by different extraction water amounts.

The coffee beans used this time are FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Gudding Gudding coffee beans. Because the brewing method was introduced in yesterday's article, FrontStreet Coffee won't elaborate here. Just after brewing is complete, we need to measure the liquid weight of the two pots of coffee separately.

Through measurement, the liquid weight of the pot using 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio is 195ml, while the liquid weight of the pot using 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio is 120ml. We each take a spoonful of coffee liquid (about 1ml) to test their extraction rates, then add 70ml of 65°C hot water to the pot using 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio for dilution, making its concentration similar to the 1:15 pot, and finally taste them.

Experiment Results

No joke, the difference is really obvious. The extraction rate of the pot using 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio is 20.6%, its layers are very rich, the taste is sweet and sour full-bodied, with flavor notes of: citrus, strawberry, cream, berries. After swallowing the coffee, there's a significant aftertaste of honey. The extraction rate of the pot using 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio is 18.1%, its layers are relatively not as rich, the taste is more突出的 sweet and sour, with almost no bitter notes. Flavor notes: strawberry, berries, citrus. After swallowing the coffee, there's no aftertaste, but even so, it still falls into the category of good tasting. FrontStreet Coffee then served both pots to customers and friends in the store for tasting and blind selection, and everyone unanimously chose the 1:15 pot. The conclusion is that both taste good, but the 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio pot has a fuller flavor and tastes better.

Common Questions and Answers

Seeing this, some friends might ask: since it's because too little water causes insufficient dissolution of substances, can't we just make the grind much finer and increase the water temperature to compensate for the extraction efficiency lost due to insufficient water? In terms of extraction logic alone, this is indeed correct. However, in actual operation, we not only need to consider the relationship between parameters, but also worry about other issues beyond parameters, such as: fine powder.

Although a finer grind allows coffee grounds to have more surface area in contact with water, it also leads to more fine powder. Fine powder dissolves substances faster than regular particles, which means they more easily dissolve all bitter substances. (The same applies to water temperature) FrontStreet Coffee has tested grinding as fine as Ek43 setting 7, then keeping all other parameters unchanged, using 1:10 ratio for brewing, and the extraction rate reached 20% in the golden cup extraction range. Although it looks like it would be a good-tasting coffee, the actual taste is not so. Because it didn't show any obvious flavors, mostly bitterness and off-flavors.

So, when the grind is too fine, coffee is easily over-extracted due to too much fine powder. And reaching the standard extraction rate is just because the calculated extraction rate is an average - it cannot measure how many sweet, sour, and bitter substances are in it (so golden cup extraction can only be used as a reference). Therefore, most coffee shops' iced pour-overs, for stability, only make slight adjustments based on the original hot pour-over, and won't try extremely unstable extraction methods for more prominent flavor performance. (Unnecessary) Some coffee shops, to make extraction more complete, will increase the water used for extraction by adding more coffee grounds. The result can naturally achieve the goal, but this will increase costs and selling prices, so most coffee shops won't use this method for making iced pour-overs.

Conclusion

In summary, everyone can now understand why pour-over coffee should be drank hot to experience the flavor. Because hot brewing has enough water to dissolve the flavor compounds in the coffee, the flavor performance will be more complete. (It's worth mentioning that flavor presentation is not the purpose of iced pour-over's creation, so iced pour-over having inferior flavor to hot pour-over doesn't mean iced pour-over is worse than hot pour-over~)

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473