Pour-Over Coffee Ratios: Practical Parameters & How Many Beans Per Cup

As a coffee brewing method that has captivated the world, pour-over has become an increasingly popular extraction method for exploring coffee aromas. Almost every coffee enthusiast has a set of pour-over equipment at home. During leisure moments, they select a favorite coffee, brew a pot, weigh coffee beans, grind, fold filter paper, rinse the filter cup, pour grounds, pour water in circles, taste... every action fills the cup with a sense of ritual.

So, for those who frequently brew coffee, do you know the origin of this drip extraction method? This article will explore the preparation methods of pour-over coffee together.

Who Invented Pour-Over Coffee?

For a long time in the past, people around the world made coffee using a simple and crude method: grinding coffee beans and putting them in a pot to boil, then filtering out the residue with burlap or metal mesh before drinking directly. Limited by the production technology of that time, filter meshes could not be made with fine enough pores, so the filtered coffee liquid often still contained quite a bit of residue.

Until the 20th century, a German woman named Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz, who loved freshly brewed coffee, felt that coffee made with traditional filters tasted bitter and that coffee grounds would get stuck between her teeth, greatly affecting the mouthfeel. So, Mrs. Melitta began continuously trying new methods when making coffee, hoping to solve the困扰 of residue filtration, and finally came up with an idea:

She punched holes in the bottom of a copper pot to create a sieve-like container, then placed a piece of blotting paper on top, put in ground coffee powder, poured in hot water, and the coffee liquid dripped through the blotting paper into the copper pot below. Compared to burlap and metal mesh, Melitta's design combination could both filter residue and preserve the coffee's aroma. It was not only low-cost but also simple and convenient to use. Most importantly, the filtered coffee liquid was clear and residue-free, greatly improving the taste.

What is Pour-Over Coffee?

The coffee beans we typically purchase have undergone high-temperature roasting, which triggers a series of chemical reactions and generates various aromatic substances. When we brew coffee, we use water and equipment to release these flavor components. Pour-over coffee first grinds coffee beans into powder, then injects hot water to contact with the powder layer, "dissolving" substances from the coffee. Essentially, it uses a filter cup with filter paper or other tools to trap coffee grounds, preventing them from entering the lower pot, thus yielding a cup of clear-tasting black coffee.

It's important to know that from bean selection to extraction, every step and stage affects the flavor of pour-over coffee to varying degrees. Therefore, to brew a cup of pour-over coffee, based on FrontStreet Coffee's brewing experience, besides high-quality coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee believes you at least need these pieces of equipment: a pour-over kettle for pouring water, a filter cup and filter paper for filtering coffee grounds, a serving pot, a grinder for grinding coffee beans, an electronic scale for recording water volume and time, and a thermometer for measuring water temperature.

Of course, delicious coffee离不开 good ingredients—high-quality coffee beans. FrontStreet Coffee recommends choosing coffee beans within 4-30 days after roasting when they are at their optimal flavor stage, as this is more conducive to stable extraction and yields fuller flavors in pour-over coffee. To ensure the freshness of coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee ships beans that are freshly roasted within 5 days. Typically, you'll receive them within 1-3 days, so the coffee beans you get will also be within their optimal flavor period, and you can begin studying how to extract them.

How to Brew a Cup of Coffee at Home?

Based on past brewing experience, FrontStreet Coffee recommends that beginners adopt a three-stage pouring method. Three-stage extraction helps to more fully dissolve flavor substances during extraction,增加 taste layers, while avoiding over-extraction caused by prolonged soaking.

For 15 grams of coffee powder with a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio and 225ml total water volume, the three-stage water amounts are: 30ml, 95ml, 100ml, with the electronic scale showing: 30g, 125g, 225g.

Here, FrontStreet Coffee uses their own house-roasted washed Yirgacheffe Gedeb Cooperative coffee beans, paired with an Hario V60 filter cup for brewing. The V60's spiral rib design allows coffee grounds to exhaust better, maximizing the release and dissolution of acidic aromatic substances. Since Yirgacheffe uses light roasting, the coffee beans are relatively hard and require high-temperature water at 92°C-93°C to bring out the floral and fruity notes in the coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee recommends a medium-fine grind size (78% pass rate through China standard #20 sieve), similar to the coarseness of fine sugar. Grinding too coarsely cannot extract the mellow and rounded flavor substances, resulting in thin-tasting coffee; grinding too finely can easily lead to over-extraction at high water temperatures, resulting in bitter-tasting coffee.

For brewing ratios, FrontStreet Coffee believes 1:15 to 1:16 are both acceptable. If you want a richer taste, use 1:15; if you want to more clearly感知 floral and sweet notes, use 1:16 to allow the flavors to disperse more.

First, place the folded filter paper in the filter cup to fit it, pour 15 grams of ground coffee powder into the filter cup, and zero the electronic scale.

For the first stage, pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom. Start timing while pouring water, using a small water stream to pour from the center point outward in circles, making sure to moisten the entire powder layer.

After 30 seconds, begin pouring the second stage of 95g water with a slightly larger steady water stream, aiming to raise the entire powder layer. The water column needs to be poured vertically and evenly. At this time, the timer scale shows 125g, and pouring should be completed around 55 seconds.

When the liquid level drops to half, start using a small water stream to pour the third stage of 100g in small circles. Try to control the water stream from being too large, as it can easily scatter the coffee powder layer and cause under-extraction. Finally, the total water poured is 225g, and the drip extraction completion time is around 2 minutes. Remove the filter cup and shake the coffee liquid in the serving pot evenly before tasting.

The water amount for each stage is not fixed. We can adjust according to our accumulated pour-over experience and our understanding of coffee beans. FrontStreet Coffee believes there are thousands of ways to brew a delicious cup of coffee. As long as we study more and practice more, mastering the various parameters of pour-over is not difficult.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473