How to Brew Coffee with a Gaiwan? What Grind Size for French Press Coffee? Common Coffee Brewing Methods!

Brewing Coffee with a Gaiwan: An Unconventional Approach

Although there are countless professional tools for making coffee, enthusiasts have never been satisfied and keep exploring alternative vessels for brewing it.

Recently, for instance, the coffee community has started trending toward using traditional Chinese tea gaiwans to brew coffee. This has attracted considerable attention, and FrontStreet Coffee frequently receives questions from customers about gaiwan coffee brewing. The inevitable question in every conversation is: "Can you really make delicious coffee with a gaiwan?"

Understanding the Gaiwan

Most of you are surely familiar with the gaiwan. Essentially, a gaiwan is a three-piece cup set consisting of a lid, bowl, and saucer, traditionally used for brewing tea. It can indeed be used to brew coffee, because making delicious coffee is not as complicated as one might imagine. As long as we understand the fundamental principles of extraction, making great coffee with any vessel becomes straightforward. Which brings us to the question: what makes coffee "delicious"?

Defining Good Coffee

Generally speaking, only coffee that meets standards across several aspects can be considered delicious. It should achieve flavor balance, with sweet, sour, and bitter notes harmoniously coordinated so that no single taste is prominent, jarring, or harsh, and with rich, natural aroma layers and no obvious negative flavors. In terms of mouthfeel, it should be smooth and clean rather than thin. In short, to brew such delicious coffee we need to use appropriate parameters to control the dissolved coffee substances, achieving a suitable extraction rate and concentration. Whether we use pour-over, espresso, or any other method, everything relies on parameter adjustments to control flavor. Brewing delicious coffee with a gaiwan follows the same principle: finding the right extraction parameters for both the brewing method and the beans.

The Immersion Method Advantage

Fortunately, gaiwan coffee brewing follows the immersion method, similar to the French press and the Clever Dripper. That means we do not need to research suitable parameters from scratch; we can directly apply the formula originally used for French press brewing.

However, since the gaiwan lacks filtering tools such as a filter screen or filter paper, and the vessel itself already has a mature brewing system, its use differs slightly from the French press. So next, FrontStreet Coffee will share how to use a gaiwan to brew a great cup of coffee.

Brewing Guide

Since gaiwans do not have a large capacity, we need to determine the amount of coffee grounds based on capacity. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's gaiwan holds 200ml, so at a 1:15 ratio we can use a maximum of 12g of coffee grounds. We will therefore use 12g of coffee beans for this brewing session.

The beans used for this brewing are Hacienda La Esmeralda - Natural Diamond Mountain, a bean many friends have been fond of recently, so FrontStreet Coffee chose it for this sharing session.

Extraction parameters:

• Coffee amount: 12g
• Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15
• Grind size: Ek43 setting 10, 75% retention on #20 sieve, fine sugar texture
• Water temperature: 96°C
• Steeping time: 9 minutes

First, warm the gaiwan with hot water. Pour hot water to one-third of the gaiwan, then pick it up and rotate it to heat evenly before discarding the water.

Then pour all the coffee grounds and hot water into the bowl according to your settings and start timing the steep, waiting for four minutes.

At the four-minute mark, gently press the lid against the coffee grounds on the surface. This accelerates water absorption and helps them sink, reducing the amount of grounds poured out later and giving a cleaner taste.

After pressing, replace the lid. Then simply wait until the 9-minute mark, at which point you can adjust the lid position to prepare for pouring. Move the lid to leave a 2-3mm gap, then pinch both sides of the bowl rim with your thumb and middle finger while pressing the lid knob with your index finger. Tilt the bowl 90 degrees and the coffee will begin to pour out evenly. (You can also drink directly from the gaiwan, but be careful of burning your mouth.)

When you can see obvious, large amounts of coffee grounds about to pour out, most of the coffee has been poured. At this point, return the bowl to an upright position and begin tasting this delicious coffee brewed with a gaiwan.

Honestly, coffee brewed with a gaiwan is truly no different from coffee brewed with a French press. Because the extraction method and parameters are identical, it tastes equally delicious. The entry offers full berry sweet and sour notes, followed by distinct citrus and chocolate flavors, with an oolong tea-like aftertaste and a honey-like texture. As the temperature drops slightly, the sweetness becomes more prominent, developing apricot-like flavors with rich layers. Delicious.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Because a gaiwan is an immersion brewer, it flatters the same medium and darker roasts that suit a French press. If you like a fragrant, delicate cup, the FrontStreet Strawberry Candy is a wonderful match: this Geisha blend is built from a honey-processed coffee from Costa Rica and a washed Geisha from Panama, bringing together the finest flavors of Central American coffee. Steeped as an immersion brew it releases rose, citrus, grape, and dried blueberry aromas, and with milk it takes on a strawberry gummy sweetness.

If you prefer a low-acid black coffee with a full, oily body, the FrontStreet PWN Golden Mandheling is a strong choice. It is sorted three times by hand plus once by machine, so the beans are even and translucent, and after medium-dark roasting they are large and carry rich spice, caramel, cedar, and dark chocolate aromas. An immersion extraction yields a thick, full-bodied cup with a good layer of oil.

For the brewer, FrontStreet recommends a coarse-sugar grind, roughly 10.5 on an EK43s electric grinder or 26 on a hand grinder, more like small gravel than fine sand. Use a 1:15 ratio (15g of coffee to 225g of water) and water at about 90°C, and steep for about 4 minutes before pressing slowly to the bottom.