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A Guide to Pour-Over Coffee for Beginners

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Today, we've prepared some content shared by pour-over coffee enthusiasts for beginners.

● Before Brewing:

A. About Coffee Beans

In the introduction to beginner coffee beans provided by roasters, the roast level is something to pay attention to.

Light roast means the bean's flavor profile tends toward floral and fruity notes, with noticeable acidity that can be under-extracted, resulting in grassy flavors; medium roast means the coffee bean's flavor gradually transitions from acidic to bitter, with caramel and nutty flavors being signature characteristics; dark roast will be more appreciated by those who love bitter flavors, with reduced acidity but prominent flavors like dark chocolate, roasted nuts, and smoky notes, plus high body, but it's also prone to over-extraction, allowing rubbery and woody flavors to dominate.

Although pour-over coffee typically uses single-origin coffee beans, there's no rule against using blended beans. Pour-over espresso beans will ultimately present a flavor more like the Americano you often drink.

The freshness of coffee beans is also very important. Generally, brewing uses coffee beans within five to thirty days after the roasting date, with the period from five to fifteen days after roasting being the optimal tasting period for coffee beans.

B. About Equipment

For pour-over coffee, the main equipment includes: grinder, pour-over kettle, filter cup, filter paper, thermometer, and scale.

Grinder: In our opinion, unless you're a serious enthusiast, a grinder under one thousand is sufficient to meet most home brewing needs.

Regarding the differences between grinders, you just need to understand the characteristics of different burr types: flat burr grinders produce flaky coffee particles with larger surface area in contact with water, allowing for quick extraction of flavor and aroma; conical burr grinders produce uniform coffee particles but have lower extraction rates, requiring longer extraction times; ghost tooth grinders are widely accepted because they produce less fine powder, resulting in coffee that tastes clean and full-bodied.

Pour-over kettle: A good kettle is one that allows you to easily and steadily control the water flow during brewing.

Filter cup: Different filter cups present different flavor profiles. Beginners can start practicing with wave filters, then advance to conical filters. Wave filters have high fault tolerance and produce coffee with balanced acidity and bitterness while maintaining good body.

Filter paper: To avoid papery tastes, we recommend using bleached filter paper.

Scale: Used to better control the coffee-to-water ratio. If it doesn't have a timing function, your phone's timer works just as well.

● During Brewing:

A. About Brewing

The strength of coffee is greatly related to the coffee-to-water ratio, the presentation of coffee flavors is closely related to grind size and time, and the balanced extraction of acidity, bitterness, and sweetness depends on water temperature control.

Therefore, if you prefer a stronger taste, you can use a 1:14-1:15 coffee-to-water ratio; for lighter tastes or for dark roast coffee beans, you can choose a 1:16-1:18 ratio.

Different coffee beans have different recommended extraction parameters. You should refer to the roaster's suggestions and adjust according to your own taste. When making adjustments, only change one parameter at a time, or you can read our previously published articles.

B. About Water Flow

Besides parameters, another important aspect that everyone cares about is water flow control. When starting to learn, the water flow doesn't need to be too fine. Because fine water flow will extend the extraction time, and overly long extraction time will lead to over-extraction of coffee; but too coarse water flow will push the coffee grounds directly apart, allowing water to pass directly through the filter paper, causing under-extraction.

Water flow control emphasizes the consistency of flow from beginning to end. When pouring water, generally control the flow to hit the center of the coffee grounds first, then pour in concentric circles outward. The water flow should not be sometimes coarse and sometimes fine, as this will cause uneven extraction of coffee.

● After Brewing:

A. About Containers

Some people prefer porcelain, others like glass cups, and some love using stainless steel mugs. Regardless of what material cup you use, it must first be clean, and secondly, it's best not to choose cups that produce strange odors when heated. Some cups with strong design sense and unique shapes can add a sense of ceremony to life.

However, before pouring coffee, it's recommended to first warm the cup with hot water. The hot water used to warm the cup can then be used to clean the filter cup and server. But if you don't use a server and place the filter cup directly on the cup, then when you wet the filter paper, you might as well use more hot water to serve the purpose of warming the cup.

B. About Tasting

The final step, and also the most enjoyable one—

● Smell the Aroma

Gently swirl the cup and smell the coffee aroma. Sometimes you'll smell floral notes accompanied by tropical fruit aromas; sometimes the coffee has rich nutty, spicy, and chocolate aromas. Of course, sometimes you'll also smell grassy and vegetable aromas, which means your coffee is somewhat under-extracted; conversely, when you smell charcoal-grilled leather and burnt aromas, there may be over-extraction; but when you smell old newspaper and musty odors, this cup of coffee may contain moldy beans.

● Taste the Flavor

In coffee, acidity is not a bad thing—it's the fruit acidity with apple and lemon aromas that stimulates saliva secretion and creates a juicy sensation. But if you taste an unbearable sharp acidity in your mouth, you can adjust parameters accordingly to correct the taste.

The caramelization and Maillard reactions that occur during coffee roasting not only bring bitterness to coffee but also produce sweet aromas. We usually sense the sweetness of sucrose, caramel, or brown sugar in the middle and finish of tasting, making a cup of coffee taste full-bodied and layered. Bitterness is the biggest characteristic of coffee—sometimes you'll taste bitter almonds, sometimes it's like dark chocolate, and sometimes it's as subtle as the malt taste in beer.

● Appreciate the Aftertaste

Even after finishing a sip of coffee, there are still details worth appreciating, with the tongue often sensing lingering aromas. For high-quality Ethiopian heirloom coffee beans like Guji, the palate often retains rose and strawberry aftertastes; coffee beans with high body also leave creamy and caramel aftertastes. Sometimes, after drinking coffee, the tongue will also feel a strong sweet sensation.

We all wonder why we can't taste so many flavors. In fact, sometimes coffee flavors are strong, and sometimes they are very weak. This is the moment when a foodie's level is tested. The more things you eat, the more flavors you remember, and the more coffee flavors you'll be able to taste.

In life, coffee is something for leisure, and pour-over is also a relaxed and pleasant thing. We don't need too many dogmas to constrain us—just make a cup of coffee that you think tastes good.

● Recommended Beginner Coffee Bean Brands

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted beginner coffee beans: Yirgacheffe coffee, Panama Geisha coffee, Indonesian Mandheling coffee, etc., all have full guarantees in terms of brand and quality. More importantly, the cost-performance ratio is extremely high—a half-pound (227g) package costs only around 80-90 yuan. Calculating at 15g per cup of pour-over coffee, one package can make 15 cups of coffee, with each single-origin coffee costing only about 6 yuan. Compared to the price of dozens of yuan per cup sold in cafés, this is extremely cost-effective.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, while also providing online shop services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473