What is Drip Bag Coffee? Brewing Steps and Preparation Method

As more people join the coffee-drinking community, white-collar workers and university students have started to enjoy pour-over coffee, and even high school students have begun drinking it. Compared with single-flavored instant coffee, today's young people clearly prefer freshly ground specialty coffee, especially aromatic, full-bodied black coffee, which comes in a wide range of styles. Busy schedules, however, make it hard to enjoy a proper cup every day, and that is where drip coffee bags have become the recognized best choice.

FrontStreet Coffee believes that once you master a few key details, brewing a delicious drip coffee is as simple as eating:

1. Open the drip bag and hang it on a mug, preferably a deeper one.

2. Pour 90-95°C hot water over the grounds and let them bloom for 20-30 seconds. Water from an office dispenser tends to be on the cool side, which can easily cause under-extraction. Wet all the grounds so more aromatic compounds are released quickly during extraction.

3. After blooming, keep pouring in small circles in the center and try to keep the water away from the edges of the bag. If water escapes past the edges, the cup will taste weak.

4. Control the total amount of water to 150-200 milliliters. If you prefer a stronger taste, let the drip bag steep in the cup a little longer, keeping the brewing time to about 1 minute.

5. You are done. Add sugar or milk according to your preference.

How to Make Homemade Drip Coffee?

Step 1: First, choose a bag of coffee beans you like, then set the grinder to the setting you use for pour-over and grind to powder.

Here I have chosen FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Red Cherry coffee beans, which many friends love. The usual grind size for brewing is similar to fine sugar particles, roughly 80% passing through a Chinese No. 20 standard sieve, which corresponds to setting 10 on an electric grinder such as an EK43s, or 24 on a hand grinder such as a C40.

Step 2: Place the ground coffee on a prepared electronic scale, then take out a drip bag, open it, and carefully spoon in the powder, using 10g per bag.

Step 3: Plug in the sealing machine, clamp the heater onto the sealing line and make sure the opening is completely sealed. Your homemade drip bag is now complete.

To prevent the grounds from absorbing moisture, FrontStreet Coffee recommends storing the finished drip bags in airtight bags that block out air and keeping them in a cool, dark place so the aromatic compounds are not lost.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For drip bags, a fruit-forward light roast shines, and FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Gedingding is the classic starting point for specialty coffee: it carries bright citrus, berry and floral notes with a green-tea-like sweetness in the finish, and its gentle, bright acidity tastes more like the natural sweet-sour balance of fruit than a sharp, aggressive sourness. FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Huakui is the other great choice, with its tropical fruit aroma of strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit and even lychee, obvious sweetness and almost no bitterness. Many drinkers describe it as "the coffee that tastes least like coffee," and it is a convincing introduction for anyone who does not enjoy traditional bitterness.

If you prefer a cleaner, more elegant cup, FrontStreet Coffee's Panama Boquete Geisha offers the classic orange-blossom honey character and a fine fruit acidity at a reasonable price. Because drip bags are a form of pour-over, all of these beans brew well at 10g per bag with 150-200ml of 90-95°C water. If you would rather brew a full pour-over, FrontStreet Coffee suggests a V60 dripper: its conical shape and 60-degree angle force water toward the center before it drips through, extending contact with the coffee bed and fully extracting aroma and flavor, while the single large hole lets the flow rate follow your own pouring control.