Should You Stir Pour-Over Coffee? What Are the Techniques for Proper Stirring?

Recently, FrontStreet Coffee noticed while surfing the internet that many pour-over enthusiasts enjoy incorporating the technique of stirring the coffee bed during the brewing process, hoping to enhance the extraction of certain flavors, such as the sweetness of coffee. Is stirring really that effective? And what considerations should be taken when using stirring techniques?

Today, FrontStreet Coffee will discuss this auxiliary technique in pour-over coffee: stirring.

When Did Stirring Techniques Begin to Rise?

When it comes to the rise of stirring techniques, we must mention Matt Perger, the 2012 World Brewers Cup (WBrC) champion, as well as other coffee industry leaders who later "responded" to this stirring method.

Matt uploaded a V60 pour-over brewing video on a foreign video website, where he used a self-proclaimed "Stir like a Bandit" pour-over technique. In the video, during the blooming stage, Matt used a wooden stick to stir in a cross pattern: first up and down, then left and right, then up and down again, stirring the coffee slurry quickly and forcefully.

Tim Wendelboe, the father of Nordic roasting from Norway, also used the stirring method during the blooming stage in a V60 pour-over tutorial video uploaded to his personal YouTube channel. Tim mentioned the purpose of stirring: "I like to stir the coffee during blooming to ensure all grounds are thoroughly wet."

In addition to the two masters from Northern Europe and Australia who support stirring, Scott Rao, a key figure in American roasting, and 2017 World Barista Champion (WBC) James Hoffmann also support this auxiliary "technique" of stirring. Furthermore, there is a barista from Taiwan named Amis, who represents the extreme application of "stirring."

What Is the Purpose of Stirring?

The benchmark for coffee extraction is uniformity. When it comes to stirring during pour-over coffee brewing, tools such as spoons or wooden sticks are typically used to apply a certain degree of agitation and disturbance to the coffee bed. The purpose is to increase the tumbling of coffee grounds in water through external force, allowing water to contact each coffee particle more evenly, thereby achieving "thorough" extraction.

From the perspective of segmented extraction, stirring can be performed in two brewing stages: blooming and the water injection stage of main extraction. As for when to stir, the magnitude of stirring, the angle and direction of agitation, the duration of stirring... this series of questions returns to the original intention of extraction: "Why stir?"

How Does Stirring at Different Stages Affect Coffee Extraction?

FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned multiple times that the water injection itself can achieve the purpose of stirring, but only if the amount of water is sufficient. However, during the blooming stage, with only a few dozen grams of water, this is often difficult to achieve. If the brewer's water control ability is weak, making dry coffee grounds evenly wet and tumbled becomes even more challenging. This is why multiple brewing masters recommend using tools to stir the coffee bed during blooming.

Stirring during the blooming stage, regardless of the force or direction, aims to ensure that coffee grounds at every level in the filter cup can be saturated with water, thereby reducing concentration differences and laying the foundation for flavor extraction in later stages.

For the main extraction after blooming, since the water volume is sufficient to create turbulence, coffee grounds have more opportunities to "absorb water," so there's no need to rely heavily on stirring. Stirring after blooming is typically done after completing the second water injection, where the stirring helps with degassing the coffee to achieve higher extraction efficiency.

To verify the above approach, FrontStreet Coffee also conducted comparative experiments, extracting the same coffee beans using three methods: no stirring, stirring during blooming, and stirring after the first water injection. Here, FrontStreet Coffee selected Guodingding Cooperative, using 15g of coffee grounds, a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, water temperature of 91°C, and a grind size of 10 on the EK43s.

No stirring: Total extraction time was 2 minutes and 5 seconds, with prominent citrus notes in flavor, uplifting acidity, and a finish with the light sweetness of honey.

Stirring during blooming: After completing the blooming water injection, the coffee slurry was stirred once with a small spoon (cross pattern: first up and down, then left and right). The coffee finished dripping in 2 minutes and 10 seconds. The flavor showed berries, lemon, green tea, with faint white floral notes and clear sweetness.

Stirring after the first water injection: After completing the first water injection, the coffee slurry was also stirred once with a small spoon (cross pattern: first up and down, then left and right). Drip filtration completed in 2 minutes and 13 seconds. The flavor again showed fruit acidity with citrus notes, weaker aroma, and a finish with a hint of licorice flavor, slightly over-extracted. It seems the stirring here did not have a positive effect.

What Should We Pay Attention to When Stirring?

The biggest problem encountered with the stirring method is fine powder blockage. As the coffee slurry experiences more stirring turbulence, the greater the chance that fine particles will migrate downward to the bottom of the filter cup and block the filter holes. Therefore, excessive stirring not only prolongs extraction time but also increases the likelihood of over-extraction.

Because stirring techniques force the extraction of coffee flavors, they have high requirements for coffee bean quality. If using inferior beans, negative flavors are likely to be infinitely amplified. For stirring to help with coffee flavor extraction, besides proper technique, it must be combined with many "demanding" steps, such as fine grinding, high water temperature, fast brewing, etc.

Because stirring techniques lack relatively unified standards and are difficult to measure with precise data, everyone's techniques vary during operation. When applied to their own equipment and beans, results often vary widely, naturally lacking universality. FrontStreet Coffee believes that one should first fully understand the characteristics of their beans, consider the features of the filter cup, and then decide whether to stir and how to stir properly.

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FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)

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