How to Make Kyoto-Style Slow Drip Coffee

So you’ve never made Kyoto-style slow drip cold brew at home? That’s understandable. The brewer is expensive and looks complicated. Coffee brewing can take an entire day, and it doesn’t seem like it would be worth your while.

But I’m here to tell you that preparing it using a slow dripper is a great use of your time and money if cold coffee is your thing. It’s the only cold brewing method that maintains the subtle complexity of the best specialty coffees. And while you’ll need to be patient, the actual effort required to brew coffee this way is minimal.

Keep reading if you’re ready to be shocked by just how flavorful a cold brew can be.

A FEW NOTES:

• 有多种不同slow-drip Kyoto style coffee makers，但每个由三个堆叠的室组成 - 一个用于水，一个用于咖啡地，一个用于成品酿造的咖啡 - 和一个坚固的框架来支撑高耸的结构。除了这些基础知识外，您还可以选择适合您预算和空间限制的京都风格的滴头。
• 酿造缓慢的滴水时，您可以使用纸或金属滤清器，但是每种情况下的结果都会略有不同。如果您喜欢一杯清洁咖啡，请选择纸张，如果您喜欢较重的咖啡，请选择金属。
• You can prepare a drip coffee with any good qualitycoffee beans。It works with blends and single origins of any roast level, so feel free to use a favorite you might have on hand. However, this brewing method is generally used to showcase coffees with complex and delicate flavors. And if you’re going to spend up to 24 hours brewing a coffee, you might as well opt for a really stand-out brew.We recommend a light or medium roast single origin coffee bean from Central America, South America, and East Africa.
• While it is possible to use pre-ground beans for slow drip brewing, it’s always better to start with whole coffee beans and grind your coffee right before brewing to ensure the most flavorful cup of coffee. The best choice is to use a burrcoffee grinder, which will give you a far more consistent grind when compared to a blade grinder. If you love coffee, a quality burr grinder is a great investment, but if you can’t afford one, try to buy your beans at a coffee shop or roasterie that will grind them fresh to order.
• The manufacturer of your Kyoto-style slow drip brewer will provide a guideline for the best water to the coffee ratio for brewing. While measuring by volume is possible, using a scale to weigh both the water and the coffee guarantees accuracy. Any kitchen scale that is precise to 1 g will work in this case, but a dedicated coffee scale measuring 0.1 g is even better.
• 过滤水总是最适合咖啡的。但是，如果您住在一个充满自来水的地方，那也很好。

If you’re interested in other types of cold coffee, you can watch Steven from Home Grounds compare slow drip with cold brew, iced coffee, and more in this video:

How to Make Slow Drip Coffee

Looking at the towering piece of equipment required for brewing Kyoto-style slow drip, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a complicated method reserved for coffee professionals. And coffee shops are happy to take your money and let that myth persist. But in fact, it’s simpler than many other酿造方法, because that fancy-looking brewer is going to do all the work for you.

准备开始了吗？好吧，让我们继续做一杯完美的咖啡。

1。Measure and grind the coffee

权衡制造商推荐的咖啡量。这可能会有所不同，但通常在50至70 g之间，具体取决于酿酒师的特定设计，所追求的咖啡强度以及您的口味。因此，请遵循制造商的第一次尝试指南，但不要害怕将来尝试使用不同的水与咖啡比。

How should you grind coffee for a slow drip brewing?

使用毛刺研磨机研磨咖啡，以确保您将任何卡在研磨机中敲出咖啡磨碎片。理想情况下，您希望从磨床中散发出相同的咖啡。如果磨床的豆类料斗已经装满了咖啡豆，则可以尽快权衡地面咖啡的输出。

如果您不确定该怎么样，请咨询this chart。Even though this is a slow brewing method, you don’t need to use a coarse grind as you would for a French Press coffee or standard cold brew because it is not an immersion method.

If you don’t have a burr coffee grinder, don’t be tempted to pull out your blade spice grinder instead. Blade grinders yield very poor grind consistency; some of the coffee will be very finely ground, while some will still be in large chunks. You might be able to get away with this in specific brewing methods, like an electric coffee machine, but it is very noticeable in cold brew because of the long steeping time.

2。Add the coffee to the coffee maker

Place a coffee filter at the bottom of the ground coffee chamber, then add the fresh coffee grinds on top to prepare the coffee bed.

With Kyoto-style drip coffee, you can use either a paper filter or a metal filter, and each will give you a slightly different brew. Using paper filters will give you a cleaner cup with a lighter body, similar to what you expect from a pour-over coffee. On the other hand, a metal filter lets through all of the coffee oils and some fines, resulting in a heavier-bodied cup, more like a French press coffee.

3.测量并加水

Measure the amount of water you need based on the ratio given by the manufacturer. This will likely be somewhere between 5:1 and 10:1 water to coffee, as measured by weight. Add the water to the water chamber of your drip coffee brewer and top off the chamber with ice.

4. Start the brewing process

在水室的底部是控制水流的阀。打开它的越多，滴水率就越快。改变滴水速率是控制您生产的冷咖啡风味的主要方法，因此您可能需要进行实验。当然，流量还控制着酿造时间。

The brew time will vary depending on how much coffee you’re brewing, your drip rate, the design of your brewer, and the ratio of water to the coffee you used. Some brewers are as fast as 4 hours, whereas others take up to 24 hours. Either way, if you want Kyoto-style slow drip, patience is the name of the game.

For the most part, brewing by this method is hands-off, but it’s not entirely as hands-off as regular immersion-style cold brew. You may want to check back a few times during brewing to ensure the drip rate is staying consistent.

5. Dilute and enjoy a great coffee

缓慢的滴水方法会产生咖啡浓缩液，就像酿造更传统的浸入冷啤酒一样。然后，您将稀释浓缩物以产生标准强度杯咖啡。您将浓缩液稀释的程度取决于您使用的酿造比，因此加入冷的水品味。稀释后，通常将咖啡倒在咖啡杯中的冰上上菜。

根据Perfect Daily Grind的专家说，京都风格的冷水啤酒以产生酥脆和清爽的杯子而闻名，其口味比传统的冷啤酒所期望的。1）。

Traditional immersion cold brew is often prized for being low in acid and mild in flavor. Still, Kyoto-style cold brew is for those who appreciate specialty coffee’s bright and acidic notes. This brewing technique preserves those subtle flavors.

Final Thoughts

Preparing Japanese-style slow drip cold coffee is not the fastest, cheapest, or most practical way to brew iced coffee. But that’s not why you should be doing it. Instead, you should be making slow drip cold brew coffee to tease out flavors from your coffee that you would lose in other cold brew methods. And the fact that the towering glass brewer will wow any brunch guests is just a happy bonus!