What is Pour-Over Coffee: Basic Knowledge and Three-Stage Pouring Steps Illustrated

Many friends have purchased FrontStreet Coffee's coffee beans to brew at home and have consulted FrontStreet Coffee in the comments about how to make pour-over coffee. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee would like to share with beginners how to get started with brewing pour-over coffee.

Watch the Video First

The first video is a brewing process clip from "Beginner's Guide by Top Baristas" showing cone filter pour-over brewing.

Link: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1fs411V76s/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click

This video shows a Japanese barista demonstrating the standard brewing process for cone filter pour-over coffee. Several details are worth noting:

1. First, wet the coffee filter paper. As seen in the video, the filter paper is natural wood-colored. Wetting the filter paper removes the woody taste and makes it fit the filter cup better. Using hot water also preheats the filter cup and server, but remember to pour out the hot water from the server!
2. For blooming, the narrator explains that all coffee grounds need to be saturated. The bloom water amount is about 30ml (twice the amount of grounds), and the bloom time is 20-30 seconds. In actual practice, should it be 20 or 30 seconds? This depends on the coffee's roast time. Blooming is actually the process of coffee grounds releasing gas. When the gas release ends and the aroma begins to emerge, that's when blooming should end. If you can't judge this precisely, then use "no more gas release" as the standard and set the bloom time between 20-30 seconds.
3. The brewing uses segmented water pouring. During brewing, don't wait until the grounds are completely dry before continuing to pour water. When brewing ends, notice that a powder bowl forms rather than a powder bed. This indicates that during this brewing, not too much water was poured at once to prevent water from reaching the server directly without passing through the coffee grounds. This situation is more common with V60 because V60 has groove designs to allow faster water flow. If the water level is too high during brewing, it will lead to under-extracted coffee liquid.

4. During the pouring process, notice that her water flow is vertical and in small circles. This is because the coffee grounds in cone filters are thicker in the middle and thinner on the edges. This also prevents water from reaching the server directly without passing through the coffee grounds, resulting in insufficient flavor. Note that after brewing is complete, she also shakes the server to mix the liquid inside, preventing one sip from being weak and another from being strong.

Next, let's watch another video - the competition process of 2017 World Brewers Cup champion Wang Ce. Below are edited clips from his brewing at that time.

Link: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1AW41137Je/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click

In the competition, he prepared three cups simultaneously. Please focus on the first cup's bloom. His total brewing time for this cup was 2 minutes. After blooming for 28.86 seconds (timed from the first pour), he poured water again. When he completely poured 250ml of water, he didn't quickly remove the V60 dripper, but let all extracted coffee liquid flow into the server.

In daily practice, we notice that some baristas remove the dripper when the extraction time is up, even if there's still liquid in the dripper. This detail makes the coffee's water-to-coffee ratio inaccurate, meaning that suitable water flow wasn't used during brewing, and extraction time didn't match the water-to-coffee ratio.

General Principles of Pour-Over Coffee

Overall, there's no single answer to pour-over methods. The goal is to obtain a suitable coffee with appropriate grind size, water temperature, and brewing time - meaning neither under-extracted nor over-extracted. Based on this principle, techniques and various parameters can be adjusted according to personal circumstances and the coffee beans' condition.

For beginners, as long as you master these parameters for pour-over coffee: grind size, water temperature, coffee-to-water ratio, brewing time, and pouring technique, brewing a good cup of coffee is almost not difficult.

Coffee Grind Size

For any coffee brewing method, grind size is crucial. For pour-over coffee, there are two indicators for grind size: first is uniformity, second is coarseness. Uniformity is very important and mainly depends on the grinder's quality. If there are too many fine particles, it can only be solved through "financial ability" (buying a better grinder). For coarseness, there's basically an appropriate range - too fine leads to bitter and astringent tastes, too coarse leads to no taste.

FrontStreet Coffee's recommended pour-over grind size is 70-80% pass-through rate on a #20 standard sieve screen (you can prepare one if you don't have one, not expensive, under 50 RMB). For light to medium roasts, use the 75-80% range; for medium to dark roasts, use the 70-75% range.

[Beginner's tip for judging roast degree: Look at the flavor description on the packaging. Descriptions with prominent sour notes like citrus, lemon, berries, and fruity floral notes indicate light roast. Descriptions with prominent sweetness, nuts, chocolate with slight fruit acidity indicate medium roast. Descriptions with nuts, chocolate, cream, and rich body indicate dark roast! Note: Not absolute, but applicable to most cases]

Brewing Water Temperature

In the pour-over coffee brewing process, the higher the water temperature, the stronger the coffee taste; conversely, the lower the water temperature, the harder it is for coffee flavors to emerge. FrontStreet Coffee's recommended brewing water temperature is between 86-93°C. FrontStreet Coffee stores select different water temperatures based on the beans when serving - 90-93°C for light to medium roasts, 86-89°C for medium to dark roasts.

Coffee-to-Water Ratio

FrontStreet Coffee's store preparations use 15 grams of coffee, injecting 225 grams of water during brewing, meaning a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:15. FrontStreet Coffee chooses the 1:15 ratio because coffee is more balanced at this ratio, with more even flavor distribution.

The coffee-to-water ratio isn't limited to 1:15. The recommended pour-over coffee ratio can range from 1:14 to 1:18. The smaller the ratio, the stronger the coffee taste; the larger the ratio, the weaker the coffee taste. You can adjust according to your preferred taste and texture.

Brewing Time

Using the parameters mentioned above for FrontStreet Coffee, the brewing time for a pot of pour-over coffee is about 2 minutes, within 10 seconds of error. This is more like a calibration parameter. If your previous parameters are appropriate but the brewing time is wrong, then the problem can only be with your water pouring. If you believe your technique is correct, then you need to check if the grind size is appropriate.

Pour-Over Technique

Now we come to the most concerned part - the pour-over technique, which is how to control your hands to brew coffee. As demonstrated in the first video, a delicious cup of pour-over coffee doesn't require superb skills - just maintain stable water flow, straight water stream, and pour water in circles at a steady speed. Circular pouring prevents water flow from running randomly, helping it establish a good flow path to achieve even extraction. The video also emphasizes not pouring on the junction between the filter cup and coffee grounds, which is also to avoid breaking the coffee bed wall, causing subsequent water to flow directly down without passing through the coffee grounds.

Of course, the coffee bed after brewing can also tell you some information, for example:

A normal brewed coffee bed presents a bowl shape, with consistent thickness of the coffee bed walls around and a flat bottom pit. This is the most ideal coffee bed state after even extraction.

The problem with this coffee bed is uneven water pouring. The coffee bed is low on the left and high on the right, the bed walls are thin on the left and thick on the right, and the left bed wall shows signs of being broken. The reason might be unstable water flow - when pouring around the outer circle, the water flow is stronger in the direction away from the pour-over kettle, with more impact force, while the water flow is smaller in the direction near the pour-over kettle. Broken bed walls cause "channeling effects," where water flows away through the ribs on the filter cup edge, causing uneven extraction.

The scattered coffee particles and oil foam on the uppermost bed wall of this coffee bed might be because during multi-stage pouring, the later water poured over the previously formed bed wall, and water that overflows the bed wall flows away from the rib edges, causing under-extraction or reduced concentration.

The fine particles at the bottom of this coffee bed are muddy, which is caused by too many fine particles and will result in the coffee becoming bitter and astringent. Moreover, the coffee powder attached to the filter cup wall has been washed down, leaving coffee oil attached to the edge. This is clearly because the circle during water pouring was too large and hit the filter paper.

This coffee bed has obvious layering, and the coffee walls are relatively thick. The reason for the low bed height might be pouring with small water flow in small circles in the center, causing too much impact in the middle and slow water penetration at the edge bed, leading to uneven bed extraction.

This coffee bed obviously shows large coffee particles, which is caused by incorrect grind size.

Frequently Asked Questions

Some other questions many people ask?

Q: Why doesn't coffee bloom properly?
A: There are three reasons: first, the beans are not fresh; second, the grind size is wrong; third, light roasts don't expand significantly.

Q: What causes bitterness and astringency in coffee?
A: Check if the water temperature and grinding have problems. If the beans are fine, it's generally caused by too fine grinding or excessive fine particles. Of course, high water temperature can also easily cause bitterness and off-flavors.

Q: Why does coffee have no flavor?
A: First check if the water temperature, grind, and coffee-to-water ratio are reasonable. Water temperature (86-93°C) and coffee-to-water ratio (1:15) are easier to check. For grinding, you can see if the water flow during brewing is very fast. If extraction completes before 1 minute 30 seconds, then the grinding is too coarse. Another possibility is whether you broke through the coffee bed.

See? Basically, coffee brewing problems can't avoid grind size issues. Think in reverse - as long as you master the grind size, you can avoid a bunch of problems.

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Important Notice :

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