How Can Beginners Brew Pour-Over Coffee at Home? How Should You Choose a Gooseneck Kettle?

Getting Started with Specialty Coffee

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When entering the world of specialty coffee as a beginner, there are essential items to understand and purchase. These include coffee beans, a grinder, a pour-over kettle, various filter cups, and finally, a coffee machine (which isn't necessarily required to buy).

Coffee beans are crucial, and good coffee beans go without saying, which is why this point is emphasized repeatedly. When beginners start brewing pour-over coffee, they might sometimes envy others' equipment, but choosing the most suitable tools within your capability is the best approach. The best tools are those that are readily available and most convenient for brewing. What truly matters is whether the resulting coffee tastes good. Using different coffee cups can sometimes enhance your coffee-drinking experience.

Explore and Compare

FrontStreet Coffee recommends that coffee beginners try various options extensively and drink, drink, and drink more. Try to experience the flavors brought by different coffee origins. There's no secret to tasting coffee—just drink more, preferably in its original form.

Before purchasing beans, you can visit a coffee shop to taste their brewed flavors firsthand, then try to replicate them at home. Commercial grinders are typically more professional with higher grinding uniformity, allowing for more detailed flavor notes. This is why a grinder is the most worthwhile coffee equipment investment—once you experience the difference, there's no turning back.

Water Quality and Temperature

Water temperature affects the amount of substances extracted from coffee. Simply put, higher temperatures dissolve more aromatic compounds from coffee. Using good filtered water will make your coffee taste better.

Coffee Bean Weight

The right ratio of coffee beans to water helps achieve consistently delicious coffee. Using a precise electronic scale can significantly increase your chances of successful brewing.

Brewing Time

The longer the brewing time, the longer the coffee is steeped in hot water, resulting in more intense flavors. More substances will be extracted from the coffee, making the good aspects taste even better and the bad aspects even worse.

Next, using FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe as an example, we'll brew a pour-over coffee following the details above and share FrontStreet Coffee's daily extraction parameters.

What is Yirgacheffe?

Yirgacheffe, in the ancient Ethiopian language, means "let us settle down in this wetland." It was originally the name of a small town in Ethiopia, the homeland of coffee. The altitude here ranges from 1700-2200 meters, with relatively low temperatures, allowing coffee to grow more slowly and accumulate more nutritional components and flavor compounds. Due to the unique flavors and high quality of the coffee beans produced, Ethiopian farmers take pride in their coffee bearing Yirgacheffe characteristics. In 2004, to promote the country's coffee, the Ethiopian government even patented the "Yirgacheffe" regional name. Today, Yirgacheffe coffee has become synonymous with Ethiopian specialty coffee.

Those who have tasted Yirgacheffe will immediately recall its bright, uplifting lemon acidity, floral and honey-like sweet aromas, soft fruit acidity and citrus flavors, with a fresh and pleasant mouthfeel. Unlike traditional bitter coffee, Yirgacheffe lacks the rich, roasted bitterness and instead presents a fruit tea-like flavor profile that makes people fall in love at first sip. This is why Yirgacheffe is often the gateway coffee for many enthusiasts.

Unlike the era of "bitter coffee," lightly roasted Yirgacheffe has ushered in the "new era of fruity acidic coffee." The main reason coffee becomes strong and bitter is that roasters deep-roast the beans, with the primary flavor direction being nuts and dark chocolate. With the emergence of specialty coffee concepts, to preserve more acidity, roasters only roast Yirgacheffe to an appropriate light level, allowing it to express pleasant fruit sweetness and white floral notes.

The preference for sweetness over bitterness aligns perfectly with public taste, which is one reason why Yirgacheffe is so popular worldwide. Given its popularity, FrontStreet Coffee has naturally included Yirgacheffe in its introductory coffee bean series. FrontStreet Coffee's staple beans allow newcomers to the coffee world to experience the fundamental flavors of different origins at extremely low prices, with small packaging designs preventing waste from unfinished coffee.

Yirgacheffe Brewing Parameters:

Filter cup: V60
Water temperature: 92-93°C
Coffee amount: 15g
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15
Grind size: Fine sugar texture (sieved to 78% through a #20 sieve)

First, pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then continue with 95g (electronic scale shows around 125g), completing the pour in about 1 minute. When the water level drops to 2/3 of the coffee bed, pour the remaining 100g (electronic scale shows around 225g), completing the pour in about 1 minute and 35 seconds. Finish extraction at 2'10", remove the filter cup.

The first sip reveals citrus and black tea notes. As the temperature changes, cream, caramel, and almond aftertaste emerge with a noticeable sweet aftertaste and a clean, sweet mouthfeel.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473