Coffee Brewing Techniques: Siphon Brewing Extraction Methods for Blue Mountain Coffee

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FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee is characterized by its balanced sweet, sour, and bitter flavors with a rich, mellow texture, making it exceptionally enjoyable to drink. Brewing Blue Mountain No. 1 is also quite simple. FrontStreet Coffee recommends using drip or immersion methods to brew it. Drip brewing is best represented by pour-over, which allows you to experience the clean aftertaste and rich layers of Blue Mountain No. 1. Meanwhile, immersion methods offer various presentation options, such as clever dripper, French press, and siphon, which are all relatively common types.

Today, we'll use the coolest-looking siphon pot to demonstrate how to brew delicious Jamaican Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee at home, and see what the legendary "emperor of coffees" is all about!

Regardless of which brewing method you choose, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using freshly roasted coffee beans for brewing to maximize the rich flavors of the coffee. Coffee beans shipped from FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) are roasted within 5 days because FrontStreet Coffee deeply understands that coffee bean freshness greatly affects flavor. The core of FrontStreet Coffee's roasting is "freshly roasted good coffee," ensuring that customers who place orders receive the freshest coffee when it arrives. The coffee's resting period is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive it, the flavor is at its best.

Jamaican Blue Mountain No. 1 Grades

Blue Mountain coffee was once hailed as the Hermes of the coffee world. Authentic Blue Mountain allows people to taste rich, dense, and lasting chocolate and roasted hazelnut aromas, while featuring an excellent balance of sour, sweet, bitter, fragrant, and mellow flavors. FrontStreet Coffee believes that Blue Mountain coffee's high reputation is inseparable from the careful management and strict grading by Jamaican growers.

Blue Mountain enjoys unique terroir conditions, where the combination of various factors makes this area a perfect space for growing coffee. However, as an agricultural product, variety, altitude, harvesting, and post-processing methods all affect the final aroma.

According to the official division by the Jamaican Coffee Industry Board (CIB), only Typica variety coffee grown in forest areas at altitudes between 910-1700 meters can be called authentic "Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee." Typica needs to be grown in high-altitude environments for its flavor characteristics to be more prominent. Additionally, the Typica variety has poor disease resistance and is very susceptible to disease, coupled with low fruit yield per plant, requiring more manpower for careful cultivation. Furthermore, the high-altitude areas of Blue Mountain have uneven terrain, making management and harvesting very difficult, thus requiring highly skilled harvesting personnel, which further affects production. In recent years, less than 15% of coffee beans produced in Jamaica can carry the Blue Mountain coffee label, about 900 tons.

Many friends may have heard the rumor: "Authentic Blue Mountain coffee has been monopolized by Japan." This statement is not without basis. UCC is a Japanese coffee company, formerly known as Ueshima Coffee Co., Ltd., which established a farm in Jamaica in 1981 to operate the Blue Mountain coffee project. Jamaica promised to allocate 90% of Blue Mountain coffee quota to Japan. Coupled with Japan's vigorous promotion of Blue Mountain, the phenomenon of high prices and difficulty obtaining Blue Mountain emerged. Today, with the flourishing development of coffee culture, enjoying a cup of Blue Mountain coffee is no longer difficult. At FrontStreet Coffee, you can enjoy a cup of Blue Mountain No. 1 pour-over black coffee for just 60 yuan.

Bean specifications are determined using various mesh sizes - coffee beans that do not pass through the screen holes meet the used standards. Color assessment includes visual observation and colorimeter readings, with blue-green being the highest grade. Combining these various standards, Blue Mountain coffee is divided into 4 grades, from high to low: NO.1, NO.2, NO.3, PB, and Blend. NO.1 is the highest-grade premium Blue Mountain, known domestically as "Blue Mountain No. 1." Blue Mountain No. 1 must meet specifications of 17 mesh or larger, defect rate below 3%, moisture content around 13%, and present rich coffee aroma, smooth and balanced taste, low and weak acidity, and lasting aftertaste in cupping.

In terms of roasting, CIB also has recommendations for roasting levels that bring out Blue Mountain's classic flavors. FrontStreet Coffee's roasters also follow this principle, using medium roast to allow Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee to present both rich chocolate sweetness and retain appropriate soft fruit acidity.

Siphon Coffee Brewing Method

Let's understand the extraction parameters: FrontStreet Coffee will use a fast-paced extraction method this time, paired with a light roast coffee bean -- Kenya Assalia! Therefore, the water temperature will be relatively high, around 92°C, which means sealing when the lower pot shows frequent bubbling; since the extraction time is not long, just 60 seconds, and the coffee beans are lightly roasted, we'll use a grind that's "two degrees" finer than pour-over -- EK43 setting 9, with 90% pass-through rate on a 20-mesh screen; the coffee-to-water ratio is 1:14, meaning 20g of coffee grounds with 280ml of hot water.

First, let's prepare all equipment, then pour the target amount of water into the lower pot.

Remember to wipe off water droplets from the lower pot with a dry cloth after pouring to avoid the risk of pot bursting.

After wiping, we first install the filtration device in the upper pot. The specific operation is to lower the vapor chain from inside the upper pot, then forcefully hook the vapor chain's hook onto the tube. This way, the filtration device can tightly block the upper pot's outlet, preventing too many coffee grounds from seeping into the lower pot! At the same time, it can effectively slow down the drainage speed.

After installation, we can place the upper pot on the lower pot, remembering to ensure the vapor chain can touch the bottom, then start heating.

When the lower pot starts continuously bubbling small water droplets, don't rush. Wait until the small droplets turn into large ones, then straighten and press down the upper pot to create a vacuum state in the lower pot. Subsequently, just wait for all the hot water from the lower pot to run up to the upper pot, and you can start extraction!

Start timing simultaneously when pouring the coffee grounds, then begin our first stir.

The purpose of this stir is to fully saturate the coffee grounds, equivalent to the bloom in pour-over coffee, so we first use a tapping method, tapping all coffee grounds into the water to ensure even water absorption.

When the time reaches 25 seconds, we perform the second stir. The purpose of this stir is to accelerate the dissolution of coffee flavor compounds, so we can use a relatively high-intensity stirring technique here. For example, FrontStreet Coffee currently uses the Z-shaped stirring method, stirring the coffee grounds by drawing Z-shapes back and forth for 10 seconds.

When the time reaches 50 seconds, we perform the final stir. The purpose of this stir is also to increase the dissolution of coffee compounds, but the difference is that because we're in the late extraction stage, there isn't much sour or sweet matter left in the coffee, so we need to reduce the stirring intensity at this time. Like FrontStreet Coffee currently uses circular stirring, slowly drawing circles. At 55 seconds, we can remove the heat source and wait for the coffee liquid to return. If the coffee liquid returns very slowly, you can wipe the lower pot with a wet cloth to accelerate the temperature drop and speed up the coffee liquid return, avoiding the risk of over-extraction.

When the coffee liquid has completely returned to the lower pot, the extraction is complete. At this point, the siphon coffee might be a bit hot when poured for tasting, so you can let it cool for a while before tasting~

After letting it sit for a while, FrontStreet Coffee conducted the tasting! Besides Kenya's bright small tomato and plum sour aromas, we also tasted the sweetness of brown sugar and apricot. The overall texture is thick and round. Although the layers aren't as distinct as pour-over, siphon coffee indeed feels more substantial and has more prominent aromas, providing a completely different experience!

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473