The Correct Way to Use Coffee Drip Bags: Why Can They Only Be Brewed Once?

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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, a single drip bag costs much less than buying a cup of coffee from outside. This has attracted many friends who have never been exposed to coffee making, who have started purchasing drip bags to try making coffee.

However, precisely because many friends are complete beginners who have never been exposed to coffee making, they often encounter numerous problems when brewing. Questions like: How should I brew drip bag coffee? What causes drip bag coffee to taste weak? How long can drip bag coffee be stored, and so on...

Since FrontStreet Coffee has shared about the above-mentioned issues before, we won't elaborate further 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, as many infusions as you want. This is because the flavor of coffee mainly comes from the soluble substances in coffee, and a single coffee bean contains as much as 30% soluble substances. So as long as these 30% of substances have not completely dissolved, you can continue to brew flavorful coffee.

But fundamentally, whether it's drip bags or other coffee brewing methods, coffee is typically brewed only once. Why? Because unlike tea, coffee 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 level increases. The lighter the coffee roast, the more chlorogenic acid is retained; the deeper 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. Moreover, chlorogenic acid belongs to small molecular compounds, and during the extraction process, it's one of those substances that dissolves relatively quickly.

Therefore, if you plan to brew once and drink once like tea, this cup of coffee will be difficult to swallow in the initial stage due to the high concentration of chlorogenic acid, unless you're brewing with 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).

And if you don't want to drink such coffee (there's no mandatory requirement, 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.

Under normal circumstances, we dissolve about two-thirds of the soluble substances. This is not only because this amount allows coffee to have excellent flavor expression, 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 brewing. The main reason is that each cup of coffee brewed multiple times 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 undesirable flavors. As a brilliant comment in one of FrontStreet Coffee's previous articles said: Nobody chews on sugarcane peel a second time.

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