What temperature water do you use?

The SCAA says sucrose extracts best at 201F (94C) but I see lots of incredible coffee people brewing with cooler water than that.

I have also heard it said that you should start with hotter water so that the slurry temp stabilizes at 201F after the hotter water mixes with the cooler coffee mass.

So, there’s lots of respectable options.

What temperatures do you use for your pourovers, espressos, immersions, and/or AeroPresses?

More importantly, why? Taste? Data? A specific recipe? Habit?

Sometimes you can drive yourself crazy when thinking how many parameters exist in coffee brewing.I personally brew between 91-94 celsius.Lower temperatures,about 91,90 etc highlight acidity.Also in the BrewresCup,the most competitors brew into this spectrum.Though, it is always a matter of taste.When i have a new coffee i start with 93 celsius and make little adjustments if the cup is not “acceptable”,or i beleive that is a place for improvement,according to my tasting buds.But usualy 93 is my standard temperature and gives me the result i want.

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Same here, i start at 91, then if i get some acidity (and if the grind is right) i go up, but most of the time 91/92.

I’m a big fan of boiling. You can’t mess it up, and if the coffee is good you shouldn’t be “burning” it or anything silly like that.

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The consistent “need” for a stable slurry temp is just not relevant any longer. Tetsu Kasuya(Japan) just won the world brewers cup with an approach that will not ever, have a stable slurry temp much less 201F.

I tried his 40/60 method for the V60 02 and, really works! V60, the most tempermental dripper of all and this method tames it.

Coffee brewing creates “summarization” rules, to avoid considering the many, many compounds that extract at different levels to make a flavorful coffee.

As an example, maybe components at the start of the brew need to extract at 205C, midway at 200C, and at the end 195C. Or maybe agitation at the beginning, and zero at the end?

Not all components in coffee should be extracted, they are “negatives” for flavor. How can varying all these elements of temp, grind, water avoid this compounds?

Given the large number of compounds, the approximations of using a single temp, consistent level of agitation, etc., are just ways that humans try to manage all of the variables in a realistic technical way.

But in reality for brewing coffee, I could see different grind sizes layered in a dripper, agitation and temperature varied during the brewing, plus combining immersion and pour through at differing stages. All to manage the many compounds in coffee and only extract what is “best”.

What would help, though I haven’t done it yet is during the brewing, segment each pour into a different cup. Then you can taste the stage of what each pour provides to the coffee cup. Actually, you could just take each element and manually mix it together to get the flavor profile for that cup of coffee and then reverse back to your brew to replicate.

Or could take the same coffee bean and create an amalgamated version with multiple drippers extracting timing segments from each dripper and then recombining.

The possibilities are endless…

If one has the time…

So, what temp of water do you use? Can depend on many, many factors and how experimental you want to be. Medium Roast higher, Dark Roast lower otherwise… mileage will vary.

I used to use water at 96°C, but since I saw in the “The Brewed Coffee Compass” a recommendation from Matt to boiling water I started to use it. At the altitude where I live water usually boils at 97,5ºC on good weather’s days, but can reach 100°C in others. Initially, as a little (say silly) precaution I was pouring the boiling water on the wall of AeroPress instead of directly on the ground, but lately I’m pouring directly with no fear.

Currently (last six months) I use only Aeropress and occasionally Siphon. My goal was ever to get the highest EY (in between 21% and 24%), therefore the coffee can show, or not, its value: sensorial exotic notes, equilibrium, lack of bitterness, more sweetness, more complex acidity, and, last but not least, appropriated roasting for the choosen method.

Grabbing coffees 90+ (SCAA or equivalent) and along with other variables such as grinding frozen beans finer (<350 micra), longer infusion times (3 minutes+), and enough agitation (every 10 or 15 seconds, just to keep the whirl on), I have been achieved excellent results for my personal taste, of course.

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94-93 degrees for brewed coffee, but that’s bases around our workflow. We have a set brew time of 2 mins for our steep methods and we’ve found that this temp gives us the best balance.