A Guide to Selecting Coffee Equipment for Your Home Coffee Corner

Choosing the Perfect Pour-Over Kettle: A Comprehensive Guide

A pour-over kettle is an essential tool for brewing coffee, much like a sword is to a swordsman. Choosing a kettle is like choosing a sword. A suitable coffee kettle can appropriately reduce the difficulty of water control during brewing.

Therefore, choosing a suitable pour-over coffee kettle is very important, especially for beginners, as it can make it easier to brew your desired coffee. Today, FrontStreet Coffee will share how to select a pour-over coffee kettle.

Temperature Control vs. Non-Temperature Control

The first step in choosing a pour-over kettle is to make a choice between temperature control or non-temperature control. Non-temperature controlled pour-over kettles, which are regular kettles without temperature control modules, are more affordable in price. They are the basic models offered by many equipment manufacturers, suitable for friends who have additional water heating equipment, but require purchasing a separate thermometer for use.

The advantages of temperature-controlled pour-over kettles are relatively prominent—convenience: they come with built-in heating functionality and allow for free adjustment of target water temperature. Additionally, they have heat preservation functions that can maintain the water temperature during brewing intervals. However, there are also drawbacks: due to the temperature control module added at the bottom, they are heavier than non-temperature controlled versions, with the center of gravity concentrated at the bottom of the kettle, and the price is about 300 yuan higher than the regular version.

In simple terms, if you don't brew often or want to purchase a more affordable brewing kettle, choose the non-temperature controlled version; if your goal is convenience and you brew frequently, then a temperature-controlled kettle is definitely a good choice.

Kettle Spout

The spout is the important part that dominates the shape of the water stream. Common spouts on the market include narrow-necked goose neck, wide-necked goose neck, as well as eagle beak, crane beak, and flat beak designs. The differences in these spouts directly lead to changes in the size and impact force of the water stream, while also greatly affecting the ease of use and operating space.

Friends who are new to pour-over can start with narrow-spouted kettles. Although the water stream from narrow-spouted kettles looks relatively thin, it has strong impact force, is easy to handle, and the water flow is easier to control. However, there are some disadvantages: unable to use large water flow, reducing certain flexibility.

Wide-spouted kettles significantly increase the difficulty of water control compared to narrow-spouted ones, requiring extensive practice to master the water flow. However, they offer more flexibility, allowing you to control the size of water flow at will after becoming proficient, playing with various brewing methods, and even satisfying demanding brewing techniques like the "drip method." They are more suitable for advanced players who have left the novice village~

The crane-beak kettle has a specially designed wide spout that looks like a crane's head when viewed from the side, hence its name. Don't be afraid of the water flow being too strong to control just because of its wide-mouth design—designers have installed a multi-hole water barrier at its outlet to prevent overly strong water flow, allowing for free water control without too much proficiency! Because of this design, it has been favored by many people, ensuring flexibility while not being too difficult to control water flow.

The eagle-beak kettle refers to a spout with a downward-curving flow guide design. The advantage of such a design is that it makes the poured water flow easier to form a vertical water stream.

Next is the flat-beak kettle. The opening of these kettles is nearly parallel to the horizontal plane, without the spout's flow guide design, making the poured water flow more likely to form a parabola, requiring more practice to use it skillfully.

Kettle Body

The kettle body can be chosen based on your strength or the amount of coffee you brew. Regular capacities mostly range between 0.5-1.2L. What you should choose is a capacity about 200ml more than the amount of water you need for brewing, leaving room for error. This is because when there's not enough water, it's impossible to form a vertical and impactful water stream, ultimately leading to insufficient stirring of coffee grounds, resulting in under-extraction.

Handle

Different handles from various manufacturers are their unique identifiers. Almost every manufacturer's handle promotion will include the phrase "ergonomically designed."

Indeed, different handles bring us different feelings. A good handle design allows you to grip more comfortably, better control the center of gravity of the kettle body, and control the water flow. Simply put, it saves effort and is easy to control.

Material

The most common materials for pour-over kettles on the market are: stainless steel, copper, and enamel porcelain. In terms of cost-effectiveness, the first choice is stainless steel, which is also the most commonly used material on the market—good quality and affordable~ When it comes to performance, copper kettles are superior, with excellent insulation and quality, but the price is slightly higher (compared to non-temperature controlled versions). If choosing based on appearance, you can consider enamel porcelain, which is full of artistic color, but the disadvantage is that it's fragile.

Conclusion

In general, a suitable pour-over kettle is still very necessary for beginners. Don't just buy a pour-over kettle with high difficulty of use just because of its high appearance value~

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

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