How many times can drip bag coffee be brewed? Why can tea be steeped multiple times but coffee can't?

Recently, more and more friends have started purchasing drip bag coffee. This is not only because drip bag coffee is convenient and portable, but also because it can produce a relatively high-quality cup of coffee. Most importantly, one drip bag costs much less than buying a cup of coffee from outside. This has attracted many friends who have never tried coffee making before to start purchasing drip bags and experimenting with coffee preparation.

However, precisely because many friends are complete beginners to coffee making, they often encounter numerous problems during preparation. Questions like: How do you brew drip bag coffee? What causes drip bag coffee to taste weak? How long can drip bag coffee be stored?...

Since FrontStreet Coffee has previously shared the above types of issues, we won't elaborate on them here. This time, FrontStreet Coffee is sharing another relatively popular topic: How many times can drip bag coffee be brewed?

How Many Times Can Drip Bag Coffee Be Brewed?

Theoretically speaking, as long as you want, drip bag coffee can actually be brewed many times—as many times as you wish. This is because the flavor of coffee mainly comes from soluble substances in the coffee, and a single coffee bean contains as much as 30% soluble substances. So as long as these 30% of substances haven't completely dissolved, you can continue to brew flavorful coffee.

But fundamentally speaking, whether it's drip bags or other coffee preparation methods, coffee is typically brewed only once. Why? Because coffee, unlike tea, has nearly half of its soluble compounds as chlorogenic acid. Chlorogenic acid is a natural polyphenolic compound and one of the main "suppliers" of acidity, bitterness, and astringency in coffee. Chlorogenic acid gradually decomposes and transforms into other substances as the roasting degree increases. The lighter the coffee roast, the more chlorogenic acid is retained; the darker the coffee roast, the less chlorogenic acid is retained.

However, whether it's chlorogenic acid or its derivatives, their flavor detection thresholds are very small, so their presence can be easily detected by us. Chlorogenic acid belongs to small molecular compounds and dissolves relatively quickly during the extraction process. Therefore, if you intend to brew once and drink once like tea, this cup of coffee will become difficult to swallow in the initial stages due to the large amount of chlorogenic acid—unless you're brewing dark roasted coffee beans. Otherwise, the coffee will have an unpleasant experience that is both bitter, astringent, and slightly acidic (what we commonly call under-extraction).

If you don't want to drink such coffee (no mandatory requirement here, it's okay if you like it), then you need to dissolve other substances in the coffee to mask the presence of chlorogenic acid with their flavors. Typically, we extract about two-thirds of the soluble substances. This amount not only allows the coffee to have excellent flavor performance but also because the remaining portion mostly consists of unpleasant substances that are both bitter and astringent. Therefore, we need to end the extraction before these substances dissolve.

In summary, everyone can understand why coffee is not recommended for multiple brewings. The main reason is that each cup of coffee from multiple brewings is not as delicious. After regular brewing, coffee is also not recommended for secondary extraction, because once you've dissolved the necessary substances, what remains are unpleasant substances full of off-flavors. As a brilliant comment in FrontStreet Coffee's previous article said: No one chews sugarcane twice. Finally, if you don't know how to brew drip bag coffee, you can refer to these two articles: "Gateway 1" and "Gateway 2". The former uses pour-over method to brew drip bags, while the latter uses immersion method to brew coffee. There's always one that will suit you~

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