Methods for Brewing High-Cleanliness Pour-Over Coffee: How to Evaluate Coffee's Cleanliness and Flavor Profile?

For pour-over single-origin coffee, extracting flavor is important, but cleanliness cannot be overlooked.

High cleanliness doesn't mean the coffee is thin or weak. A coffee with high cleanliness refers to a very clean brew without off-flavors. Therefore, the lighter the coffee doesn't necessarily mean the cleaner, nor does acidity indicate higher cleanliness.

In coffee cupping, there's a specific scoring category called "Cleanliness," which evaluates the quality of green beans and the cleanliness performance after roasting. Generally, as long as no off-flavors like woody, moldy, earthy, or rotten tastes appear, it can score well. If the coffee's flavor expression is clear, this category can receive high marks.

Therefore, high cleanliness means the absence of off-flavors, with distinct and clear flavors.

In brewing, it's also very easy to affect coffee cleanliness. For example, if you brew coffee using both immersion and pour-over methods, and the immersion method produces significantly cleaner coffee than the pour-over, it indicates the problem lies in the brewing technique.

For instance, "over-extraction" often mentioned in pour-over coffee is actually one of the reasons that makes coffee unclean. The typical manifestations of over-extraction are obvious bitterness and astringency, with flavors mixed together, accompanied by woody bitter notes. This situation is easily identifiable and solvable. This is what FrontStreet Coffee often refers to as adjusting brewing parameters, which are essentially just a few variables: water temperature, grind size, and fine particles.

There are also cases with similar flavors but without obvious bitter notes. For example, when A and B brew the same coffee beans with identical parameters, the flavor results show that both have expressed the basic flavors without any off-flavors. However, people prefer A's coffee because it's clearer and more transparent, with richer detailed flavors where various fruit flavors can be distinctly perceived. Although B's coffee has expressed the general flavors, they seem muddled, as if all fruits were juiced together.

The difference between A and B lies in their brewing techniques. A maintains a vertical water flow during pouring, with horizontal circular movements at moderate speed. Meanwhile, B uses a flicking motion during pouring, utilizing wrist movements that create variations in water column height, with faster circular movements and stronger agitation.

FrontStreet Coffee mentions this not to suggest that the flicking pouring technique causes muddled coffee flavors. In fact, there are many examples of delicious coffee brewed using the flicking pouring method. FrontStreet Coffee shares this merely to provide some troubleshooting ideas for those who encounter similar situations.

Of course, there's another scenario where coffee beans that are too fresh can easily produce a harsh sensation, which also affects cleanliness. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee suggests letting the beans rest for about 4-7 days before brewing.

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