Pour-Over Coffee Watering Techniques for Beginners: How to Pour Evenly from the Center

In bookstores, coffee brewing guides abound in dazzling variety. For those just beginning to learn pour-over coffee, when faced with every stage of brewing, there must be many worries about whether you're doing things correctly. What exactly is most important when making pour-over coffee? Simply put, it's about understanding the state of the coffee beans, establishing flavor standards, maintaining a correct and consistent brewing method, and attempting to fully extract the true character of the coffee beans.

Pour-Over Water Injection Techniques

FrontStreet Coffee is here today to discuss the water injection techniques for pour-over coffee. Beyond other considerations, even the method of water injection carries numerous nuances. Whether using the intermittent pour method, continuous pour method, Kono-style, Kanazawa-style... all methods avoid using too large a water stream that would cause excessive agitation and submerge the entire coffee bed. Imagine when watering a potted plant—don't we always add water slowly, allowing the soil to absorb it completely, rather than pouring an entire bucket of water at once, causing the soil to be forcefully scoured by a waterfall of water, potentially even splashing out of the pot?

Mastering the Pour-Over Technique

Whether using a flat-bottom filter or a conical filter, the thickest part of the coffee bed in pour-over filters is almost always concentrated in the center. Therefore, during the bloom stage, slowly inject water from the center to allow the coffee bed to contact water evenly, preparing the extraction channels for brewing. Once the bloom ends, continue pouring from the center outward, observing how the coffee bed absorbs water, and making fine adjustments to your water stream and speed.

The recommendation for a slightly slower speed is because when beginners first start, if they pour water too quickly, the flexibility for correction and adjustment becomes limited. Pouring outward rather than inward is because the center coffee bed is thicker. When brewing from inside out, you can gradually push the central coffee bed toward the outer layer, creating what's known as a "coffee wall."

Avoiding Common Pour-Over Mistakes

If you pour from the outside inward, the water stream will initially flow from the filter's edge along the ribs to the server below. When the water stream only lightly and quickly passes over the coffee surface, what result does this bring? That's right—you get coffee water with just a hint of coffee flavor. In the commonly used Hario V60 filter, beginners often brew coffee that tastes watery. This is because the V60 filter design has many tall ribs. When the water stream hits empty areas without a coffee wall (such as during the second pour, when the pouring height exceeds the coffee wall built during the first pour), the water stream typically flows quickly and directly along the ribs to the bottom, diluting the concentration of the well-extracted coffee in the server from the first pour.

Achieving Even Water Distribution

As for starting the pour from the center point, how do you achieve even water distribution? If you initially find it difficult to control the speed of your circular pouring, you can try keeping your wrist and arm stationary while maintaining the same flow rate and water stream from your pour-over kettle, moving the water stream by rotating your body in a circular motion.

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