Pour Over Coffee Process Guide: Step-by-Step Instructions with Bloom Technique | How Much Water for 15g Coffee?

Seven Factors Affecting Pour-Over Coffee

Hand-brewed pour-over coffee, as the connoisseurs practice it, is a slow, meticulous process — but the resulting cup is truly unforgettable. You are welcome to visit FrontStreet Coffee to try it yourself and get a deep, hands-on feel for what the experts call pour-over coffee.

STEP 1: Warm the Cup

Coffee contains tannic acid, which releases sourness when it meets a cold surface. Warming the cup therefore protects the original flavor of the coffee and enhances the taste. Preheating the cup with hot water before brewing is an essential step.

STEP 2: Grind the Beans

Grind coarseness indirectly shapes the final taste. Adjust it to suit the character of the beans and your own preferences; dark roast beans should be ground slightly coarser than medium-dark roast beans.

STEP 3: Prepare Your Equipment

Pour-over coffee rests on three parts: filter paper, dripper, and server. Their sizes and specifications should be compatible with one another.

STEP 4: Level the Coffee Grounds

Pour the ground coffee into the fitted filter paper, then gently tap the dripper to settle the grounds into a smooth, flat bed. This ensures the grounds are saturated evenly in the steps that follow.

STEP 5: Warm the Server

Pour a little hot water into the server, swirl it around a few times, and pour it out. Then place the dripper with its leveled coffee bed back on top.

STEP 6: Brew Your Coffee

Once the water in the kettle has dropped to 82-91°C, you can begin brewing.

Recommended Temperatures:

Medium-light roast beans (also called mild beans): brew at 91°C to extract the full aroma.

Dark roast beans: brew at 82-88°C, enough to draw out both aroma and bitterness. (Generally, water that is too low produces weak coffee; too high causes over-extraction and excessive bitterness.)

The water flow must stay stable. The strength of the cup is controlled by the number of spiral passes and the speed of the pour. Whether brewing one cup or three, start the flow at the center, spiral outward, return from the outer edge toward the center, and finish at the center point. Be careful never to pour water directly onto the filter paper — otherwise the coffee will turn astringent.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For a classic pour-over setup, the V60 is hard to beat — which is why FrontStreet Coffee favors the resin version of Hario's V60. Hario, a renowned Tokyo glassware maker founded in 1921, redesigned the V60's prototype in 2004, naming it for its distinctive 60° cone angle and "V" shape, and launched it the following year. The cone and single large outlet let flow speed depend entirely on the brewer's control, so aromas and flavors extract fully and three-dimensionally — exactly what makes V60s shine with floral, fruity coffees like FrontStreet Coffee's classic Yirgacheffe Gedingding, the tropical-fruit-packed Ethiopia Huakui (strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, even lychee, with obvious sweetness and almost no bitterness), the Geisha-style Strawberry Sugar blend, and the raisin-sweet Mozart.

If you prefer deeper-roasted styles, the V60 works just as well: FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Gold Mandheling (deep roast, very low acidity, herbal and dark chocolate aromas with layered richness) and the balanced Fazenda Rainha Yellow Bourbon from Brazil (low acidity, nutty and cocoa aromas with clear caramel sweetness) are both excellent matches. For a 15g dose, a 1:15 ratio means about 225g of water: bloom with 30g for 30 seconds, pour to 125g, then finish at 225g — a reliable template whether your beans are floral and bright or dark and heavy.