Pay Attention to These Details to Make Your Pour-Over Coffee Taste Better - How to Make Delicious Pour-Over Coffee?

More Overlooked Details in Pour-Over Coffee Brewing

FrontStreet Coffee wrote an article six months ago titled "Pay Attention to These Details to Make Your Pour-Over Coffee Taste Better," which elaborated on some seemingly insignificant details that can affect a cup of coffee. This time, we'll explore even more overlooked details in pour-over coffee brewing.

A Quick Review

Let's briefly review the 4 details about pour-over coffee mentioned previously:

1. Grind coffee beans as the final step of preparation to minimize flavor loss from the coffee grounds.

2. Don't over-pursue a perfectly level coffee bed. Excessive pursuit of levelness will compact the coffee grounds, which is detrimental to blooming.

3. During pouring, keep the water level below the height of the coffee grounds. Water higher than the coffee grounds will form "channels," resulting in lower overall extraction rate.

4. After brewing is complete, shake the coffee liquid. Shaking ensures consistent concentration and temperature throughout the coffee.

Seemingly Insignificant Details in Pour-Over Coffee

1. Clean the grinder before grinding coffee beans.

Many people might be accustomed to directly pouring weighed coffee beans into the grinder for grinding. Perhaps you've never noticed that your grinder isn't "clean." The "unclean" here refers to residual grounds from the previous grind still remaining in the grinder. You might think these trace amounts of residue couldn't make much difference.

If the flavor of the coffee you ground last time is similar to the next cup, you might not notice any difference. However, when the previously ground coffee beans have an overly strong or prominent flavor, even trace amounts of fine residue will affect the flavor of your current coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee currently uses the EK-43s grinder. After grinding Mandheling coffee and performing external cleaning of coffee residue, when grinding some light roast coffee beans afterward, one can clearly taste the bitter notes of Mandheling coffee when tasting these light roast beans.

Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee suggests that before officially grinding the coffee beans needed for brewing, you might want to use 3-4 coffee beans from this batch to grind and "clean" the residual coffee powder inside the grinder. Of course, please generously discard those 3-4 ground coffee beans as well.

2. During brewing, focus on the coffee grounds rather than the electronic scale.

Some people always like to stare at the scale readings when brewing coffee, which is a bad habit. During brewing, our eyes should focus more on the coffee grounds.

While numerical accuracy is also important for a cup of coffee, putting too much energy into focusing on the numbers will cause you to miss many things. For example, if you focus too much on the numbers and the water level overflows the coffee grounds, it will be counterproductive.

3. Don't over-pursue the aesthetic appearance of the coffee grounds.

Perhaps when you brew a beautiful coffee bed (coffee crater), you'll feel confident. When you brew a less aesthetically pleasing coffee bed, you might even think this cup of coffee won't taste good!

But in reality, the appearance of the coffee grounds doesn't fully represent the coffee's flavor. What we see as the coffee bed (crater) is the state formed after all water has flowed through at the end of brewing, so the brewing method greatly influences the changes in the coffee bed's appearance. What we generally consider as aesthetically pleasing coffee grounds usually present a bowl shape, with a ring of uniformly thick grounds around the edges and a flat coffee bed at the bottom. However, this state of coffee grounds doesn't necessarily mean you've brewed a good-tasting coffee - it can only be said that from the appearance of the grounds, there are no brewing problems.

Aesthetically pleasing coffee grounds (crater)

For example, using a three-stage pour-over method, with center pouring in the first two stages and even circular pouring in the final stage to "create" a beautiful coffee bed, but this cup of coffee might not necessarily taste good.

And pour-over coffee grounds that don't look good aren't necessarily difficult to drink, nor are they necessarily your brewing problem. It could be an issue with the coffee beans themselves. For example, when FrontStreet Coffee brews Panama Geisha coffee beans, due to light roasting combined with the inherent hardness of the beans, the water absorption state of the coffee grounds isn't as good as other coffees, so the final appearance of the coffee grounds might not be very aesthetic, but this doesn't prevent it from being a deliciously brewed cup of coffee.

Coffee grounds state after brewing Panama washed Geisha

4. Before pouring hot coffee, please preheat your cup as well.

FrontStreet Coffee has previously emphasized that you must preheat the server before making coffee. So please also develop the habit of preheating your cup before pouring coffee into it.

The serving cups used by FrontStreet Coffee are made of ceramic material and have certain heat retention properties, provided that the ceramic cups are preheated. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee preheats the ceramic cups with hot water before serving, then pours the black coffee. FrontStreet Coffee previously explained in the article "What is the best drinking temperature for coffee?" that most coffee becomes less palatable after cooling due to oxidation of oils and pigments.

Therefore, preheating the cup allows a cup of coffee to maintain its temperature longer, extending the drinking time and providing a better drinking experience.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473