As soon as you started learning about specialty coffee, you must have heard someone talking about blooming. Maybe, they explained to you what you have to do and since then, you Bloom your coffee every day, but why?
Why is this infusion time necessary and why does it happen?
This is what we will explore in this text.
What is Blooming?
Blomming is the release of the CO2 trapped in the coffee after it was roasted. This process is done through a pre-wetting of the beans before starting Brewing. They are the characteristic bubbles that are formed in the coffee at the beginning of the brewing of a freshly roasted coffee.
Why does it happen?
The release of this CO2 occurs naturally through the degas. However, when the hot water comes in contact with the grounded beans, the gas release intensifies, and therefore we observe the bubbles.
How to do it?
To do the Blomming you wet the coffee beans already grounded in a proportion of 2 times of water for each gram of coffee, thus covering all the coffee evenly, let this infusion occur for 30 ~ 45 seconds. It is expected that during bloom the coffee will not start dripping yet.
Why bother to do it?
The idea is that doing Blooming you release CO2, which will offer you a less bitter drink since CO2 in contact with water forms a weak acid, the carbonic acid (H2CO3) decreasing the pH of the coffee. The ions generated in this reaction are now diluted in water making it saturated quicker. In the end, it yields you with less extraction of the coffee.
Does it really make a difference in taste?
I believe that this is the most important question and that many do not ask since they learned that they should do blooming and never stopped to try to make coffee without it.
To write this text I did some blind experiments, Brewing a few times the same coffee with the same recipe, but sometimes with blooming and sometimes without.
And the verdict was:
If you have a trained palate, you can feel the difference between coffees that were bloomed and the un-bloomed ones. The differences I felt were as follows:
With Blooming: Richer, more flavored, and rounder.
No blooming: Flatter, hollow flavor, and more acidic
But when blind tested with some people who do not drink specialty coffee every day they couldn’t tell that much of a difference.
So what I would say: there is a difference and it is not hard to do the blooming, so it is worth taking this “extra” step. But don’t take my words, try it yourself!
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