Beginner's Guide to Pour-Over Coffee: Three-Knife Technique to Save Your Shaking Hands

FrontStreet Coffee's Guide to Multi-Stage Pour-Over Coffee Extraction

Beyond enjoying professionally crafted coffee at cafés, more and more people are now willing to personally try brewing coffee at home. The aroma of freshly ground coffee is so captivating, and when paired with favorite music—whether for yourself or to entertain one or two close friends—slowly brewing a pot creates such a pleasant and beautiful moment.

Today, we're pleased to present a simple and practical guide explaining how to use the pour-over method to brew a delicious pot of coffee. The method we'll introduce is the academic three-stage water injection brewing technique, colloquially known as the "Three-Flow Technique"...

Hahaha... Mom will never have to worry about my coffee anymore...

Step 1: Prepare Equipment and Materials

First, you need fresh coffee beans (obviously—you can't brew coffee without beans!). For brewing coffee, we use roasted coffee beans, with freshness typically calculated from the roasting date. Beans suitable for pour-over coffee are generally considered best when roasted within one month, and you should try not to use beans that are more than three months old.

Freshness and shelf life are two different concepts! Two different concepts! Two different concepts! Important things must be said three times.

Well-packaged coffee beans can certainly remain unspoiled for one to two years. However, shelf life only guarantees "safety"—for "delicious" coffee, the beans must be sufficiently fresh. Then, we also need some coffee brewing tools: grinder, pour-over kettle, filter cone and filter paper, thermometer and timer, as well as a serving carafe (of course, using a large bowl to hold coffee is also your choice...).

Step 2: Prepare for Brewing

Grind 14-18 grams of coffee beans (for 1-2 servings) into coffee powder with a consistency similar to granulated sugar. When brewing coffee under the same conditions, coarser grounds result in lighter, more acidic flavors, while finer grounds produce stronger, more bitter tastes.

Heat water, and when preparing to brew coffee, the water temperature should be approximately 88-94°C (190-201°F). If you're using darker roasted coffee beans or don't want the flavor to be too strong or bitter, you can try using slightly lower water temperature. Conversely, if the coffee beans are lighter roasted or you want to avoid the coffee becoming weak or sour, you can choose higher water temperature.

Set up the filter cone and serving carafe, place the filter paper on the filter cone and wet it with hot water. The purpose of this is to ensure the filter paper fits tightly against the filter cone while also preheating the equipment.

Step 3: Blooming

Carefully pour the ground coffee into the center of the filter paper, gently level it, then start timing. Pour hot water from the center of the coffee grounds, quickly drawing circles outward to continue pouring, ensuring no dry powder remains on the surface of the grounds. Don't use too much water this time—approximately double the weight of the coffee grounds will suffice.

If your coffee beans are sufficiently fresh, you should observe the coffee grounds expanding into a hamburger-like shape after pouring hot water (this may not appear with very lightly roasted coffee).

When the "hamburger" stops expanding and the surface begins to show signs of drying, it indicates that the coffee grounds have been thoroughly saturated and have released gas, and you can begin the formal brewing process. Typically, from the moment the first drop of hot water touches the coffee grounds until the "hamburger" has fully released gas, it takes about 30 seconds.

Step 4: Formal Brewing

Plan your water volume: including the bloom, you should inject a total of 14-18 times the weight of the coffee grounds in hot water. More water results in lighter coffee; less water produces stronger, more bitter coffee. It's recommended to start with 15-16 times the water weight, which produces a moderate coffee concentration acceptable to most people. Again, start pouring from the center, then quickly expand in circles. Subtract the water used for blooming from the total planned hot water weight, then divide by three—this gives you the amount of water to pour each time.

After each water injection, pause briefly until the water level slightly drops before beginning the next injection. Be careful not to break through the outermost layer of coffee grounds that hugs the filter cone with your water flow. After completing the three water injections, observe the water surface. If you notice that the coffee oil foam has dissipated, revealing clear liquid, you can consider removing the filter cone and discarding the tail end. From the moment the first drop of hot water touches the coffee grounds until the last drop falls into the serving carafe, the total time should be slightly over two minutes.

There you have it—this is the operational process for the Three-Flow brewing method. You can try it yourself and then share delicious coffee with your friends!

Knowledge Point: The Benefits of Multi-Stage Extraction

Multi-stage extraction offers more complexity than single-stage extraction, clearly distinguishing the front, middle, and back-end flavor profiles of the coffee. The technique involves increasing the water injection volume after blooming, typically adding water when the coffee liquid is about to drop to the surface level of the grounds, using small, medium, and large water flows for three-stage extraction.

In summary: FrontStreet Coffee is a research-focused coffee establishment dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. Our unreserved sharing is aimed at helping more friends fall in love with coffee. We hold three coffee promotion events with significant discounts each month because FrontStreet Coffee wants to enable more friends to enjoy the best coffee at the lowest possible price—this has been our mission for the past six years!

Important Notice :

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