When many white friends are new to coffee, they will pay great attention to grinding, powder-water ratio, water temperature, technique and other controllable things related to production, but time, this uncontrollable factor is easy to be ignored by everyone.
Today Hanasaki wants to tell you that time is very important for the making of a good cup of coffee.
Soluble substances in coffee beans
We need to talk about the soluble substances contained in coffee beans first. In a coffee bean, it only has 30% soluble flavor compounds, and the remaining 70% is insoluble wood fiber. Just like chewing gum, when you extract its soluble flavor, it will become a tasteless "wood dregs"!
Although there is 30% soluble flavor compound, we don't need to extract it all!We only need to extract 18 to 22%.
The soluble flavor substances of coffee beans can be divided into three types, namely: sour substances, sweet substances, and bitter substances. Each substance has a different dissolution rate, and in layman's terms, each substance will have a peak period of release in large quantities at different times.
The sour substance dissolves at the fastest rate, so it reaches its peak at the beginning of extraction and is released in large quantities!The second is the sweet substance, the dissolution rate of the sweet substance will be slightly slower than the sour substance, so when the sour substance is released in large quantities, it will only be dissolved little by little, and it will not start its peak period until the middle of extraction, and it will be dissolved in large quantities.
The dissolution rate of bitter substances is the slowest, from the figure we can see that the bitter substances at the beginning are almost parallel to the horizontal line of **, very slow, until the sweet and sour substances reach the peak of release It begins to slowly increase the rate of dissolution!So, in general, the longer the extraction time, the more substances will be dissolved, and the resulting coffee will be richer and more layered!
And the reason why we need to pay attention to time is to control the amount of these substances released!to ensure that the flavors are balanced with each other.
For example, when the extraction time is too short and the point where a large amount of sweetness is released, the whole cup of coffee will become thin and sour due to the lack of sweet and bitter support, forming a state of insufficient extractionAnd if the extraction reaches the point where a large amount of bitterness is released, the bitterness will dominate, and the whole cup of coffee will be immersed in the negative taste of bitterness, which will form over-extraction!
Therefore, we need to stop the extraction of soluble substances after a large amount of sweetness is released and before a large amount of bitterness is released, so that we can get a cup of coffee with a balance of sweet, sour and bitterness!
So Hanasaki thinks the best way is to control the timeFor example, if you use 15g of beans for pour-over coffee, you only need to control the extraction time between 1 minute and 50 seconds and 2 minutes and 25 seconds to get a cup of coffee with a balance of sweet and sour!