What is extraction?
Extraction is pulling the soluble flavors out of ground coffee into water. Everything in brewing — grind, temperature, time, ratio — is really about controlling how much you extract. Under-extraction tastes sour and thin; over-extraction tastes bitter and dry.
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Roughly 28-30% of a coffee bean's mass can dissolve; we aim to extract about 18-22% of it — that's the sweet spot where sweetness, acidity and body balance. Dissolution happens in stages: acids and fruit notes first, sugars and body next, bitter compounds last. Brew too little of the coffee's mass and you stop at sour; push past the sweet spot and you drag out the bitters. The tools you control: grind size (finer = faster extraction), water temperature (hotter = faster), contact time, and dose. Every brew method is a different combination of those four. When someone says 'dial in' a coffee, they mean adjusting these until extraction lands in the sweet spot for that bean.
- ·Specialty Coffee Association brewing standards(No direct source link provided)