Water Temperature Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Just something I wanted to share, especially for those like me who are obsessed with water temperature. I've been living in various parts of Southeast and East Asia over the past couple of years, and I am surprised to see the low water temperature at which they brew coffee. Pour-over drip coffee is the method of choice for most people, and I've asked many coffee lovers, cafe owners, and coffee roasters at what temperature they brew their coffee at, and the answer is almost always 80-85 degrees celsius --- much lower than the 92-96 degrees we tend to brew in the States. There are countless books written in Chinese and Japanese on why they believe this temperature range to be better, complete with diagrams, graphs, and detailed pics of what different water temps do to the coffee when brewed (I will provide bibliographic information in a later post).

Here are some general guidelines that many people abide by in Hong Kong and Japan, for example:

For full city, it depends on roasting date.
after roasting 1-3 days - 80 degrees
after roasting 4-6 days - 82 degrees
after roasting 7-10 days - 85 degrees
over 11 days - forget about it.

the ratio of coffee / water, 15g / 150 ~ 180cc water, whole process takes 02:15 ~ 02:45 minutes.

I do know some Japanese coffee lovers who will go up to 90 degrees but not much higher, since they say that, like brewing tea, the hotter water will negatively affect extraction.

When I mentioned this in one of the more popular online coffee forums, a member said that perhaps Asians just prefer lousy coffee. This is rubbish, of course. All too often I hear coffee enthusiasts in America and Europe say such things like:

"oh, they don't know what they are doing. Let us true coffee lovers (read: those of us from Euro-America) teach them a thing or two." But such views assume that Asian coffee lovers are not up to speed on the latest brew trends, which is certainly not the case. They are avid readers of coffeegeek and coffeesnobs and are therefore pretty up to date on what's going on in the coffee world. The amount of time, energy and money that many Asians put into perfecting the perfect brew is pretty impressive. It's almost an obsession for some (as is many hobbies that people from Asia, especially the Japanese, engage in). While coffee shop culture still lags behind what one will find in the States or Australia, home brewers and roasters wouldn't be caught dead with a cheap $50 home brewer.

In the end, however, I guess what is important is taste. I've done countless experiments using all sorts of temperature variations, and I tend to lean towards the coffee that is brewed with lower temps. Feel free to experiment on your own and share your thoughts here. I'm very interested as to what others think.