How to Predict and Prevent Water Pooling in Pour-Over Coffee

How to Handle Blocked Water Flow in Pour-Over Coffee

If you notice that the drainage hole is blocked by coffee grounds and water accumulates after completing the pour, the only remedy is to stop the flow early by removing the filter cup to prevent over-extraction.

If you notice signs of water accumulation before finishing the pour, there are many more ways to remedy the situation. For example, you can adjust your pouring technique by avoiding large circular motions that might wash coffee grounds from the edges down and increase blockage. Alternatively, you can raise the water level to allow more coffee grounds to adhere to the filter cup's edges, thereby reducing the thickness of the coffee bed. Or you can use a stronger water flow to stir up the blocked coffee bed.

Three Time Points to Predict Water Blockage

When brewing coffee, there are three time points where you can predict whether water accumulation will occur.

The first time point is during the bloom stage. The expansion of the coffee "burger" depends on the freshness and roast level of the coffee beans. The fresher the coffee beans, the more obvious the expansion and gas release during blooming. Conversely, when coffee beans are not fresh, there's almost no reaction during blooming. The darker the roast level, the greater the expansion, easily forming a "burger" shape. Lighter roasted beans have greater hardness and relatively smaller expansion, which sometimes may not be obvious.

Coffee with obvious blooming expansion is less likely to experience water accumulation. However, coffee with不明显 blooming expansion is more prone to blockage and water accumulation problems at the end. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee suggests paying attention to using smaller circular motions in subsequent pours and appropriately raising the water level of the coffee bed in later pours.

The second time point is the foam performance during pouring after blooming. If the foam color is relatively dark (brownish-yellow) and abundant, you generally don't need to worry about blockage and water accumulation.

However, if the foam color is relatively light (yellowish-white) and thin (with only a thin layer of foam on the surface), or even shows holes, this indicates that most coffee grounds have settled on the coffee bed, which can easily block the drainage hole. In this situation, if you haven't finished the current pour, you can increase the water flow to stir the coffee bed while尽量 making smaller circular motions to avoid washing down the coffee grounds at the filter cup's edge.

The third time point is observing the water level drop speed before the final pour. If the drainage speed is slow during this period, you'll need to use a stronger water flow during the final pour to tumble the coffee bed.

Final Solutions and Considerations

Of course, if these three methods cannot solve the blockage and water accumulation problems, you can only use the final method—stopping the flow early. While this can effectively avoid the bitter and astringent flavors produced in the final stages, it also brings issues of high coffee concentration and lack of flavor. The high concentration issue can be resolved by adding 10-20ml of fresh water through bypass. As for the flavor performance, you'll need to find the cause of the blockage and water accumulation to avoid the same situation happening again next time.

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473