Three Major Pour-Over Coffee Techniques: A Guide to Brewing Methods, Features, and Pros & Cons

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FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Three Main Pour-Over Coffee Techniques

In the world of pour-over coffee, restoring the bean's flavor as much as possible and making it delicious is the most important goal. Every step to achieve this goal can be full of creativity, so there are many brewing methods, which we often call pour-over schools. Several common techniques include: volcano pour, meteorite pour, single-stream pour, three-stage method, stirring method, and drip method, etc. Today, FrontStreet Coffee mainly shares three mainstream brewing techniques!

Three-Stage Pouring Method

The three-stage pouring segmented extraction method offers richer layers than single-stream pouring, clearly distinguishing the front, middle, and back flavor profiles of the coffee. The method involves increasing the amount of water each time after blooming, typically pouring when the coffee liquid is about to drop to the powder layer surface, using small, medium, and large water flows for three-stage extraction. Relatively speaking, this method has higher requirements for water flow rate and volume.

The blooming process of the three-stage pouring method doesn't require stirring to improve the evenness of coffee powder water absorption, nor does it need the drip method to increase infiltration depth, making it relatively suitable for most specialty coffee beans, especially medium-roasted coffee beans from Central and South America.

Drip Pouring Method

The drip pouring method, also known as essence extraction, uses weaker water flow to minimize disruption to the coffee powder layer, reduce convection, and increase soaking time. This Japanese technique produces coffee with high body, high sweetness, rich smoothness, and distinct texture.

Because the pour-over kettle's water output needs to be in a drip-by-drip state, it's suitable to choose flattened wide-mouth kettle spouts or wide-mouth crane-mouth kettles. The advantage of these pour-over kettles is that the water flow thickness can be highly controlled, better adapting to the drip pouring method. Paired with conical filter cups, their ribs stop before reaching half the cup's height. This design allows the filter paper to fully adhere to the cup wall after absorbing water, greatly limiting the exhaust space. This method is more suitable for medium-roasted or darker-roasted coffee beans.

European-American Stirring Method

The European-American stirring method involves cross-stirring with a stir bar during the blooming stage. It's also a branch of the three-stage method and a pour-over technique that developed after 2012 World Brewers Cup champion Matt Perger. This approach can effectively enhance the release of aromatic substances from coffee beans, amplify the flavor advantages of coffee beans, and enhance the coffee's mouthfeel without making it too thin.

The stirring method has high requirements for coffee bean quality. If using inferior coffee beans, it will amplify their undesirable flavors. Additionally, the stirring blooming method is more suitable for brewing light-roasted coffee beans, often using relatively fine grinding to increase the water absorption area of coffee powder and improve extraction rate. However, if the degree of stirring is not well-controlled, it can easily lead to over-extraction.

The wide kettle base can provide stronger penetration for the poured water flow, allowing fine powder to remain in a tumbling state for longer periods. This is important because when coffee powder is tumbling, the release of internal substances is paused, thus avoiding the extraction of unpleasant flavors that would result from prolonged soaking.

When starting to pour water, we use drip pouring to increase soaking time. Under low water-to-coffee ratio conditions, this allows the coffee powder to fully expand without producing any unpleasant flavors. Afterwards, we use fine and coarse water flows to extract the floral and fruit aromas from the front stage of the coffee. The entire process takes approximately 4-5 minutes.

Knowledge Extension

Pour-over coffee, without external interference, is extracted through filter paper drip filtration, which can better present the natural taste. The coffee tastes smoother and has more layered complexity.

In Summary

FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research center that enjoys sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation only to help more friends fall in love with coffee. Additionally, we hold three low-discount coffee activities every month because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends enjoy the best coffee at the lowest price. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's principle for the past 6 years!

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