We have a Hamilton Beach one cup coffee maker which works perfectly. You put ground coffee in a small metal basket, add the appropriate amount of water to the reservoir and hit a button to make it start. There are actually two buttons you can choose from, one labeled ‘Regular’ and one labeled ‘Bold’. We have always used the bold setting because that’s they way we like our coffee, but what happens if you hit the regular button?
Since the amount of water and coffee is fixed, the only thing I can think of that can vary is the water temperature. My hypothesis is that when you use the bold setting the water is heated hotter and that somehow makes the resulting coffee stronger. I don’t have an easy way to test this, and I wasn’t aware that hotter water made stronger coffee. I always thought that the amount of coffee or water you put in the coffee maker determined how strong or weak the coffee was, since you would be altering the ratio of coffee to water.
So am I right, is the only difference between regular and bold the temperature the water is heated to, or is there something more mysterious going on?
It’s time. On “bold” you should hear the brewing pause periodically. On “regular,” not. From what I see online, an 8 oz brew should take 15 seconds longer on “bold” for 8 oz. and a minute longer for 15 oz.
on an older 8 cup dripper the strength selection lever restricted the outlet hole for stronger coffee. so length of time for the water contacting the coffee was increased.
Our old Mr Coffee that died recently had a Regular/Bold switch, and I assumed that bold took longer to brew, since it took about 15 minutes to brew a full pot. But it took just as long to brew a full pot when it was on regular, so for that coffee maker it doesn’t appear that it was a time thing. (On the other hand, I couldn’t tell a difference taste-wise, so maybe it was just stuck in Bold mode.)
But on our new KitchenAid coffee maker, it definitely takes longer (about five minutes more) to brew a full pot on Bold.
Thinking a few coffee makers back, one of them had a dial on top of the filter basket that, when turned towards bold, would actually cause the sides of the filter basket to close inwards, making the coffee in the basket deeper. So I guess different manufacturers have different strategies.
While others have pointed out that time seems to be the actual variable, this sentence is incorrect (mostly) and a common misconception.
Changing the amount of coffee you add will change the flavor, but it isn’t as simple as more coffee -> stronger brew. Using too little coffee will actually result in strong bitter flavors, because the water will overextract the grounds and pull out bitter acids. Using more coffee will give you a more balanced flavor and will often be perceived as milder. Using TOO much coffee won’t make it much stronger, it’ll just waste coffee.
I think some fancier home brewers do strength control the same way commercial ones do, which is they let a certain amount of water bypass the grounds altogether. That lets you reduce your coffee to water ratio without running into the overextraction problems typoink mentioned. Of course you can achieve the same thing by simply brewing a smaller pot and topping it off with hot water, which is usually the best way to brew a “weaker” but still good-tasting pot of coffee with a regular home brewer.
Depends on the brewer. Some physically change the size of the orifice the water flows through, some do a “pulse brew” thing where it sends the water through the grounds in pulses which gives it more time to extract, or apparently the brewer Shoeless used to have actually makes the filter basket narrower and deeper which makes the water take longer to get through. I’m sure there’s other ways too.