Drip coffee is one of the favorite brewing choice for most brewer and it has many different techniques, also there are other factors as well can be play around with to achieve different result with the same bean. Sometimes being adventurous will give you a good cup, other times it might be a bad cup of coffee. On of the fundamental of drip coffee, there is 3 stages of brewing during our pour over, given it is a drip bag, kalita, or V60.
Stage 1 : The Pre-brewing / Blooming.
A lot of people think that blooming is to justify the bean’s freshness. But they might not know that some roasted bean can still bloom after 4 weeks where some roasted bean can’t even bloom after 2 weeks, and they still taste good!!
Pre-brewing is a process where we wet the coffee and “PUSH OFF” the carbon dioxide that trapped in the coffee during roasting. We do not want it in the coffee as it will create sourish taste that we do not want (There is a different of acidity and sourness). And to maintain consistency brewing at the second stage of the brewing (the extraction), as excessive gas in our ground will interrupt the extraction when more water is hitting it will cause the gas to surface during extraction.
Stage 2 : The extraction
This is where the main thing happens ! Most flavour are extracted during this process, so the pre-brewing is like setting out the stage nicely for a show! What we learn from the basic pouring is we pour our remaining of the water 1 shot to complete the extraction, well that’s not wrong for a beginner. But let’s play a bit more here with AGITATION.
We are not pouring water into the ground for no reason. We pour to extract it, and by agitating the coffee with water we extract flavour and by not causing clogging at the bottom of the filter which caused “traffic jam” in your extract that contributed to over extraction (bitterness, harsh taste)
Here you would want to pay attention on
- movement of the ground during your pouring
- water temperature.
There are some brewers will refer to multiple stop/pulse brewing as they will split the extraction into 2 – 4 times or more pouring to have a more effective and consistent brewing to avoid flooding the coffee, well that’s depends on your personal preference.
Stage 3 : Closure / Finish
There are usually the remaining 30-40% of your pouring, this is where it determine how strong is your coffee. Most flavour are extracted at stage 2, but it need to open up and balance with “diluted” to have a rounded and balance flavour. If you notice and pay attention, there are layers of colours for brewed coffee and brewer usually swirl their server before serving to balance up the flavours.
If you are using normal pour over kettle without temperature control, it is fine at this stage to have a slightly lower temperature water however if you are using a electronic kettle. You might consider lowering the temperature by 5 degrees Celsius as we do not want to over extract it and create a very heavy cup of coffee. We want to bring the remain “soften” fruity, sweetness to the cup to open up the flavor from stage 2.
Conclusion
By Knowing what we are doing at different stages allows us to fine tune and troubleshoot via the factors that affecting our cup of coffee into our preference. It also allows us to create different brewing recipe with the same beans and have fun with our friends too.
Have fun in brewing coffee and have fun in sharing with your buddies!
