Front Street once wrote about the tools needed to make espresso, and the powder needle is one of them, which can make our extraction more stable. But some friends thought of using toothpicks instead of cloth powder needles, and reported that the effect was good.
It just so happened that Qianjie saved up a little toothpick for takeaway, and I also tried to compare the difference between the toothpick and the professional cloth powder needle, to see if the toothpick was as easy to use as the friend said.
The role of cloth powder needles.
First of all, let's talk about why you need to use a powder needle, because static electricity occurs due to friction when the grinder is running, which causes the fine coffee powder to attract each other and form a lump. These lumpy coffee powders tend to cause a channel effect during extraction, making the extract of the concentrate uneven.
The advent of powder needles is to use a fine needle or similar tool to stir and break up these lumps, adjust the density of the coffee grounds, make them more evenly distributed, and stabilize the coffee extraction. This method was invented in 2005 by John Weiss, who tried to break up the lumps with a fine needle when using a home grinder when he used a home grinder to produce too much clumps in the channel. Therefore, the use of cloth powder needles or needle cloth powder to assist the cloth powder is named WDT (Weiss Distribution Technique, WDT).
Unfortunately, Guangzhou, where Qianjie is located, has become very humid in the past two days due to the warming temperature, and the ground coffee has slightly clumped. Based on this, Qianjie came to test it, extracted three concentrations respectively, and observed the effect of not using a needle cloth powder device and using a cloth powder needle and toothpick on the extraction of the concentrate. (In this experiment, Nuanyang blending was used, and the extraction parameter was 19.)8g powder amount: 26s to extract 38g of coffee liquid. ）
The concentrate column without the needle cloth cloth showed a small oscillation from side to side, and there were two ejections due to channel effect; Using the extraction of cloth powder needle, the coffee liquid appeared at the bottom of the powder bowl almost at the same time, and the liquid column was relatively stable in the center, and there was no channel effect. Using this set of toothpicks, there was a slight wobble in the liquid column after extraction.
From left to right: without needle clother; Use cloth powder needles; Use a toothpick).
Tasting three cups of concentrate separately, all showed a rich aroma of sherry, the sweetness of caramel, and the coffee without needle cloth had a bitter taste at the end compared to the other two cups; The overall balance of bitterness and soreness in this cup using the cloth powder needle did not appear negative taste; The toothpick is also slightly bitter, but not as pronounced as the first one.
After following the above steps and then re-extracting three parts of concentrate, and adding 250ml of ice water to make ice American, it is not easy to tell which cup is extracted with the assistance of a cloth powder needle or toothpick.
After experiments, it was found that the cloth powder needle will indeed stabilize the coffee extraction, and the toothpick can also be used instead to a certain extent.
But if you don't taste the espresso alone, but make other espresso drinks with a certain percentage of milk or water to meet your daily drinking needs, the difference between the use of cloth powder needles and the use of powder needles does not seem to be as big as imagined. Of course, if you find that the ground coffee has very obvious clumps, and you don't have a powder needle on hand, it is also a good choice to use a toothpick instead.
In the daily bar production of coffee shops, speed and consistency are particularly important, and the use of an extra powder needle will increase the preparation time of each concentrated extraction, which is contrary to the high efficiency of espresso.