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The Importance of Water Temperature in Pour-Over Coffee

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Almost every enthusiast who practices pour-over coffee brewing owns a thermometer. When describing the coffee they've made to others, mentioning what temperature of water they used is essential. This shows that water temperature is a very important factor.

How Important Is Water Temperature?

Why is it important? How should we approach and choose water temperature? Today, we're diving into this knowledge point.

How Is Water Temperature Important?

Extraction temperature vs. drinking temperature: First, we need to distinguish between two concepts. When we talk about temperature, we must be clear whether we're referring to extraction temperature or drinking temperature. These two concepts are completely different.

Drinking temperature is certainly important, primarily reflected in palatability. Pour-over coffee water temperature is generally chosen above 80°C. After the brewing process, the coffee presented to the guest is around 60°C—hot but not scalding the tongue. As you savor each sip, the water temperature gradually decreases, allowing you to appreciate the characteristics and differences in coffee flavor at various temperatures. Even at room temperature or iced, coffee exhibits different mouthfeel performances.

We'll explore drinking temperature in detail in future articles, but here we're discussing extraction temperature, which refers to the temperature at which soluble substances are extracted from coffee when water comes into contact with coffee grounds.

Presenting Flavors: Countless Differences

Given the quality of coffee beans, factors such as roast degree, grind size, pour-over technique, and extraction level all affect the performance of a cup of coffee. Water temperature might be the most intuitive adjustment variable. Different water temperatures extract coffee liquids with different flavor presentations.

Have you heard of the Golden Cup extraction theory?

We previously discussed cold brew topics. Coffee grounds brewed in cold water versus hot water dissolve different substances, resulting in coffee liquids with different flavors.

Similarly, with hot water at different temperatures like 80°C or 98°C, the dissolution speed and extraction ratio of different substances in coffee vary. This leads to different flavor presentations in the final coffee due to varying content of dissolved substances.

How to Choose Water Temperature?

For experts, water temperature cannot be given an exact reference value to apply universally.

As one experienced brewer said: "I feel that water temperature should be considered together with roast degree, freshness, grind coarseness... Using 92°C as a reference value, then making fine adjustments according to other corresponding conditions to achieve a 'delicious' result is the ultimate goal. But 'delicious' varies from person to person. A thermometer is basically an auxiliary tool for recording data for oneself..."

In other words, if you want coffee to present certain flavors (provided it has those flavors), you need to control various factors including water temperature to make adjustments. High temperature pairs with short time and coarse grind, while low temperature pairs with long time and fine grind—there's a mutual constraint balance. Everyone can have their own most familiar temperature as a baseline.

For general enthusiasts, matching the coffee bean's roast degree, making a rough water temperature selection, and then adjusting up or down based on tasting is also a method that's less prone to error at the entry level. Based on the experience of Xiao Tai and company colleagues, as well as reference values from experts in our group, the general guidelines are approximately:

Temperature Guidelines

Light roast beans: 92°C
Medium roast beans: 86-88°C
Dark roast beans: 82°C

Generally, lighter roasted coffee beans have highly active substances that dissolve easily in water, and small molecule substances are volatile. They need higher temperature water to dissolve more flavor substances in a short time, avoiding large molecules occupying positions, which would result in fewer dissolved flavor substances.

Medium roasted coffee beans, with appropriate water temperature and suitable extraction time, allow selective extraction of desired flavor substances. For example, lower temperatures can better present acidity, while higher temperatures can better present bitterness, but one must be very careful about over-extraction.

Dark roasted coffee beans, if using pour-over, need lower water temperatures (in many Japanese cafes, like Rumaz, they use dark roasted coffee beans to make pour-over coffee). At this time, large molecule substances are relatively stable (with a mature and steady feeling, like dating an older person—you can't be impatient, you need to proceed slowly with gentle heat). Low water temperature + longer extraction time can preserve more wonderful flavors.

This Still Sounds Quite Abstract

Let's practice!

Pour-Over Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted single-origin pour-over coffee beans offer complete assurance in both brand and quality. More importantly, they offer extremely high value—a half-pound (227g) package averages around 80-90 RMB. Calculating based on 15g of coffee per cup, one package can make 15 cups of coffee, with each cup costing only about 6 RMB. Compared to cafes selling cups for tens of RMB, this represents exceptional value.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473