Brewing Principles For Almost Coffee Experts

We all know how a good cup of coffee feels like: a warm hug in the middle of winter from your grandma. A cat choosing to cuddle with you. Sleeping in on a rainy Sunday morning. Need we go on?

But what about something even better than that? We've gone through the basics together: the importance of knowing what type your bean and grind is, good water, matching method, and taking care of your equipment. The thing is, there's more to it than all of this. Brewing coffee isn't an easy task, especially if you want to become a pro at it, because there are a lot of small details you need to take into consideration. This is the best thing about coffee: you can control many variables in order to match it to your taste, no matter how picky you are. And the good news is, the hardest part is to know how. 

Brewing: a detailed explanation

If you were ever interested in how exactly brewing happens and how water and coffee grounds interfere, you're in a good place. When these two elements meet, the first thing that happens is that water washes away the insoluble compounds from the surface of the grounds, like oil and even smaller particles of coffee. Then, when the particles are fully saturated, the most dissolvable elements are targeted. When talking about roasted coffee's mass, only about 30% of it is made from soluble compounds. After enough time and the adequate temperature, the initially insoluble elements are processed too, through hydrolysis. With each step, water stores everything that is extracted, thus resulting in our cup of coffee. Both soluble and insoluble compounds have equally important roles in the final outcome: insoluble create the texture and coffee, while soluble the flavours.

Another factor that fluctuates in this process is the chemical composition of the coffee through different stages of brewing. For example, the first few drops will be highly concentrated and rich, while the last ones will be very diluted and bitter. The first thing that should ring a bell in this situation is that through it we can control the taste by managing the amount of extraction. 

You heard about under-extraction, over-extraction and ideal extraction before, right? Well, you can control this also through your extraction. Meaning, under-extracted: too little of the soluble elements have been removed, over-extracted: too much of the soluble elements have been removed and ideal extraction: just the right amount has been removed. 

But still, how can you determine which is which? The answer is: by taste. Generally, under-extracted will taste too acidic, sour, or even salty, over-extracted will be bitter, weak and will leave an unpleasant feeling. On the other hand, the ideally extracted coffee will have a beautiful balance between flavour, acidity and texture. If you feel like you wouldn't be able to tell these differences, don't worry, this is a thing that you learn through experience, so start tasting!

The exact variables you can control (or at least most of them)

To be honest, there are dozens of variables when it comes to this process. Even so, only a handful of them have a significant enough influence for us to actually realise it. And don't worry, it's not actually so hard to control them. For example, when it comes to the brew ratio, the relation between it and the extraction and strength will be inversely correlated. This translates to, the more you extract, the lesser the strength. Therefore, the more water you add to a certain grounds dose, the more you will extract and the weaker your coffee will be. And vice versa. 

Now, the grind setting. Here, extraction will be affected more than strength and the variables will be directly correlated. Meaning, the finer you will ground your coffee beans, the more you will allow water to exploit them, therefore resulting in a higher strength. Something that you might want to keep in mind is that by affecting your grind setting you will most likely also have to affect the brew time. Also, make sure, especially with auto-drip machines, that the setting is not too fine, otherwise you risk clogging the filters.

Temperature is another thing that will directly affect your extraction, as cool water extracts slower and hot water faster. The generally accepted number is between 90.5-96 degrees Celsius, but many professionals don't really stick to it, as they experimented in both directions. As a guide, light roasts respond better to higher temperatures, while dark roasts fit the best with lower ones.

Brewing time is, in turn, influenced itself by mostly temperature and grind size. But this doesn't mean that it can't be an influencer on its own. Usually, more time equals more extraction, but you need to consider this together with the type of brew you want to achieve. Some might benefit from longer periods of time, but for others it might lead to over or under extracted drinks. 

Another factor, a bit unconventional for this list, is agitation. This is clearly harder to control, but you can try to come up with at least a general standard for it. This includes how high and how fast you pour, stirring, swirling in the brewer, or the amount of pressure when it comes to an Aeropress. If you have any inconsistencies in your brew and you're not sure why, try to control as much as possible these variables too. Basically, more agitation leads to more total extraction and vice versa. 

We hope this article brought a bit more light to the whole brewing process and now you are one step further to becoming as professional as one can get brewing coffee!