Immersion brewing takes a different approach towards extraction, instead keeping the original quantity of water in constant contact with the coffee grounds. Your average coffee-drinker won’t be very familiar with this method of extraction, but if you’ve ever used a French press, then you’ve made yourself immersion-brewed coffee! You’ve probably also noted that French press coffee has a bit of a stronger “bite” to it. This is due to those slow-extracting compounds mentioned earlier. With the immersion method, the water used for extraction soaks up everything it can from the coffee grounds until it is strained, typically resulting in a stronger cup.
Notably, there is a method of brewing that uses cold water instead of near-boiling water, called cold-brew. Typically, an immersion brew takes a little more than a few minutes to complete, but cold-brew extracts at a minimum of 8 hours and can go all the way to a full 24 hours. This is due to hot water extracting at a much greater rate than cold water. You may ask yourself why you would want to spend almost half of a day making coffee, but the benefits of cold brew can be great (and deserve their own article). Suffice it to say, it’s a lot easier to prevent over-extraction and bitterness with an 8-hour window than it is with a 2-minute window.
So, what does Minas Espresso recommend? You can’t really go wrong with either method, as both can produce an elegant cup of coffee. For stronger roasts, like our
Benedito Espresso, the immersion method really brings the bold and hearty flavors to the fore. For lighter roasts, like our Honey Bee Specialty, percolation helps the gentler floral notes be expressed. Of course, any one of our specialty roasts produces an excellent cup of coffee— you can look
here to give them a try!