The Mechanism Behind Astringency in Coffee

Jonathan Gagné · 1 Aug 2022 · coffeeadastra.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
The compounds responsible for astringency in coffee require very high water temperatures to dissolve efficiently.

Their wordsThe case of astringent compounds is particularly interesting, because they require a very high temperature to be dissolved efficiently in water.
Our reading
Avoiding astringency in coffee is fundamentally a filtration problem rather than simply a matter of flow evenness.

Their wordsTherefore, avoiding astringency is not directly a matter of flow evenness, it is actually a filtration problem !
Our reading
Grinding coffee too fine liberates more astringent compounds by breaking more coffee cells, causing astringency no matter how evenly water flows.

Their wordsGrinding too fine will liberate a lot more astringent compounds by breaking more coffee cells, which will result in an astringent cup regardless of how even the water flows through the coffee bed.