Step-by-Step Guide to Brewing Dark Roast Coffee! A Pour-Over Handbook for Dark Roast Beans!

Compared to light-roasted coffee with its floral and fruity acidity, the first impression of dark-roasted coffee is bitterness. However, "bitterness" is merely its surface. When we ignore the stereotypical impression of dark-roasted coffee and taste it carefully through the bitterness, we discover—it's still bitter! But dark-roasted coffee is actually delicious; it's just that what makes it delicious differs from light-roasted coffee.

The appeal of a cup of dark-roasted coffee primarily lies in its flavor—the rich coffee aroma produced by deep caramelization reactions, but not limited to this alone. Additionally, it features a smoother, richer mouthfeel and a long-lasting high-sweetness aftertaste that lingers after swallowing, creating a very pleasant drinking experience!

But achieving this "pleasant" texture is extremely difficult to brew! FrontStreet Coffee mentions that the difficulty in brewing isn't just about avoiding over-extraction, as avoiding over-extraction merely requires reasonable control of extraction parameters. The real challenge lies in controlling to prevent over-extraction while also bringing out the coffee's richness, high-sweetness aftertaste, and allowing the coffee to have a more intense aromatic expression. To achieve this, beyond reasonable control of extraction parameters, we also need to use some techniques for assistance.

Understanding Coffee Body

Coffee's "body" refers to the sense of weight, smoothness, and fullness in the mouth. High-body coffee provides us with a substantial "weight sensation" that noticeably presses on the tongue, giving the coffee a fuller, silkier tactile experience. The level of coffee body is determined by the content of substances in the coffee, primarily soluble compounds and oils. When soluble compounds and coffee oils are more abundant in the cup, the coffee's body is higher, and vice versa. Therefore, if we want to give coffee a sufficiently high body, we just need to increase the proportion of soluble compounds and oils in the cup, which we can achieve through proper extraction and changing filter materials.

Enhancing Body Through Filter Materials

We'll discuss extraction later, but as for changing filter materials, it means replacing filter paper with high filtration performance to cloth filters or metal filters with relatively larger pores. Due to decreased filtration performance, oils that were originally blocked by filter paper and unable to pass through can now join the coffee. This not only effectively increases the coffee's body but also significantly enhances the coffee's aromatic expression. Because oils also contain certain aromatic compounds, their presence can bring noticeable improvement to the coffee's aroma.

The Art of Coffee Aftertaste

Next, let's discuss coffee's aftertaste! Coffee's aftertaste refers to the taste bud experience where coffee initially presents a slight bitterness or astringency in the mouth, followed by a sudden emergence of sweetness that gradually exceeds and covers the coffee's bitter (or sour) astringency, ultimately finishing with sweetness. However, it's important to note that the degree of bitterness and the intensity of aftertaste don't necessarily have a direct relationship—coffee isn't more bitter, nor does it have a stronger aftertaste. Friends who have drunk over-extracted coffee know that coffee can be truly bitter, but as for aftertaste... it's practically non-existent. This is because aftertaste requires enough sweetness in the coffee to support it; mere bitterness alone rarely produces the aftertaste phenomenon.

The High Concentration, Low Extraction Technique

Therefore, if we want to bring out the high-sweetness aftertaste of dark-roasted coffee, we cannot just mindlessly "extract" bitter substances from the coffee—we need sweetness too. But with conventional brewing methods, it's difficult to perfectly control the ratio of bitterness to sweetness. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends the most commonly used "trick" when brewing dark-roasted coffee: HIGH CONCENTRATION, LOW EXTRACTION!

Through high concentration and low extraction, we can suppress bitterness and enhance sweetness. Although the coffee's concentration increases, bitter substances don't rise proportionally. The reason is that the extraction rate is relatively low, not giving bitter substances too much opportunity to be released. Therefore, through high concentration and low extraction, we can enhance the coffee's sweetness without increasing its bitterness. Naturally, the coffee will also exhibit a more outstanding aftertaste performance. With the theory established, let's move on to practical application! FrontStreet Coffee will share how to brew an exceptionally delicious cup of dark-roasted coffee!

Brewing Demonstration

For this brewing demonstration, FrontStreet Coffee uses Sumatra Golden Mandheling beans, with non-woven fabric filter paper (flannel filter cloth or other oil-permeable filter materials also work). The extraction parameters are as follows:

Coffee amount: 20g
Grind size: Ek43 setting 10.5, with 80% passing through a #20 sieve (one notch finer than regular brewing)
Water temperature: 88°C
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:13 (regular brewing is 1:15)
Dripper used: Kono
Brewing method: Three-stage pour

If you're also using non-woven fabric filter paper, it's best to pre-wet it with hot water before adding the coffee grounds, so the filter paper can have better fit with the dripper. Once all preparations are complete, we can begin brewing. First, we still use twice the coffee weight in water (40ml) for a 30-second bloom!

After the bloom ends, we inject the second pour of hot water in a large circular or spiral pattern. This pour contains 120ml of water, and FrontStreet Coffee completes the injection at 50 seconds.

When the hot water in the dripper has almost fully penetrated and we can see the bottom coffee bed, we then inject the remaining 100ml of hot water using a small water flow in small circles. Then we just need to wait for the hot water in the dripper to completely filter through before removing the dripper and ending the extraction!

Total time was 2 minutes! Although it looks similar to regular brewing, the coffee's texture has seen significant improvement. Just as FrontStreet Coffee was about to lean in for a taste, their sense of smell had already captured the overwhelming rich "coffee aroma" coming their way—a complex aroma composed of nuts, caramel, roasted chestnuts, cream, and spices. Then tasting it, one can clearly detect flavors of chocolate, nuts, caramel, and pine. The mouthfeel performance is exactly as FrontStreet Coffee described—it exhibits a smoothness and richness incomparable to light-roasted coffee, thanks to the addition of coffee oils and the concentration increase brought by high concentration, low extraction. At the same time, due to the increased concentration, the coffee tastes stronger. But it's rich without being bitter—on the contrary, it's even sweeter! No need to savor carefully; within less than 2 seconds of entering the mouth, the coffee transforms from bitter to sweet, with aromas of malt sugar and caramel. The aftertaste lasts for a very long time—we can continuously sense the emerging sweetness for quite a while after swallowing the coffee. No exaggeration, it's truly super delicious!!

- END -

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473