How to Brew Delicious Coffee with an Automatic Pour-Over Coffee Machine?

Modern technology is becoming increasingly advanced, and coffee has also entered the realm of automation. Automatic milk frothing and automatic latte art have frequently made headlines in recent years. This raises the question: can coffee types that are full of ritualistic meaning, like pour-over coffee, be replaced by machines?

Embodying the spirit of exploration, FrontStreet Coffee borrowed an automatic brewing machine from a neighbor late at night—one that didn't need to be returned—just to test what kind of coffee flavors the machine could produce and how they would differ from our manually brewed coffee!

This automatic brewing coffee machine is only responsible for brewing, as water temperature and weighing need to be measured manually. Of course, fully automatic brewing machines are already available on the market, including water temperature control and weighing that can be automatically managed by the machine. But that doesn't matter much! Because their brewing methods are similar to this machine. Open the side rotary switch, and the upper pot will rotate evenly, then hot water will flow through three holes at the bottom of the upper pot for pouring.

The water flow from these three holes is affected by water pressure. When water pressure is high, the water flow appears as a column, and when the water is nearly finished dripping, the water pressure decreases, and the water column will transform into slow dripping. Alright, without further ado, let's start preparing for the experiment.

Experiment Preparation

We used the same coffee beans, with both parties brewing once each. Below is the data used for this brewing comparison.

Coffee Beans: Deep roasted "Indonesia·Golden Mandheling".

Grind Size: Normal grind for hot brewing. FrontStreet Coffee used an EK43 grinder with a grind setting of 10.5, with a 75% pass rate through a #20 sieve.

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15 (15g of coffee grounds, 225ml of hot water)

Water Temperature: 88°C for dark roasted beans.

Brewing Method: Single-pour brewing method.

Dripper: Same as the automatic brewing machine, using a conical dripper.

Beginning the Experiment

Manual brewing has been covered too much usually, so this article won't elaborate excessively. Let's just show the automatic brewing process.

1. Place and moisten the filter paper, then pour in the coffee grounds.

2. Turn on the side switch to make the water tray enter rotational motion.

3. Pour 30ml of hot water for a 30-second bloom.

4. Place the lower pot into the frame.

5. When the bloom time reaches 30 seconds, pour the remaining 195ml of water into the upper pot.

6. Wait for the dripping to complete, then shake, with a total time of about 2 minutes.

7. Take a spoonful of coffee from each for concentration testing.

The extraction calculation formula for the coffee concentration meter (TDS detector) is: Coffee liquid concentration × Coffee liquid weight ÷ Coffee bean/grounds weight = Extraction rate.

Concentration | Liquid Weight (g) | Extraction Rate ---|---|--- Golden Mandheling (Machine) | 1.34% | 225ml | 15g | 20.1% Golden Mandheling (Human) | 1.36% | 225ml | 15g | 20.4%

We can see that both brews meet the data for extraction in the golden cup standard, so next comes our tasting session.

Tasting Comparison

Through tasting and comparison, it was found that the machine-brewed coffee doesn't exhibit the distinct layers of manually brewed coffee—it's not as full-bodied and leans more toward balance, but it still showcases the characteristic flavors of Mandheling: nuts, pine, and chocolate. The manually brewed coffee shows clearly richer layers with a more distinct creamy texture.

In fact, using machine brewing, whether for dark roast or light roast, as long as the parameters are set correctly, it can extract the core flavors of each bean and ensure that each cup of coffee has approximately the same extraction under consistent parameters. However, FrontStreet Coffee believes that good pour-over coffee's definition isn't just about being tasty—it's more about the core element contained within this term—"human." The same coffee beans, because of different people with different personalities, will adopt different brewing methods. The height of water flow, the speed of circular movements—all will cause the coffee to exhibit different flavor characteristics. It's not repetitive uniformity, but the ability to make people feel a heartwarming temperature that's most important.

Final Thoughts

Finally, regardless of the results, if manual pour-over coffee is changed to machine brewing, then... wouldn't it be more appropriate to call this coffee "machine-brewed coffee"?

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FrontStreet Coffee
10 Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473