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How to Brew Delicious Pour-Over Coffee with 80°C Water? How Much Does Water Temperature Affect Pour-Over Coffee?

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, When using coffee beans with different roast levels for pour-over brewing, each has an appropriate brewing water temperature. For example, as FrontStreet Coffee often recommends: light roast coffee beans are best brewed at around 92°C (±1°C), while dark roast coffee beans are best brewed at around 88°C.

The Impact of Water Temperature on Coffee Extraction

When we use coffee beans with different roast levels for pour-over brewing, each has an optimal brewing water temperature. For example, FrontStreet Coffee often recommends: light roast coffee beans are best brewed at around 92°C (±1°C); dark roast coffee beans are best brewed at around 88°C (±1°C).

Only with appropriate water temperature can we simply and effectively extract soluble substances from coffee! When water temperature is too low, extraction efficiency decreases, leading to insufficient extraction of soluble substances from coffee, resulting in undesirable flavors in the entire cup; of course, excessively high water temperature is also problematic. When water temperature reaches a certain height, its extraction power becomes very strong, easily extracting bitter substances from coffee, making your coffee unbearably bitter. Therefore, coffee bean grinding isn't the only issue people need to address when brewing coffee outside; water temperature is equally important! However, in many situations, schools or offices often only have water dispensers available for heating water, and their hot water temperature is typically around 85°C. What kind of experience does coffee brewed with 85°C hot water typically have?

That's right - it often has noticeable astringency! This is especially true for light roast coffee beans, as 85°C water temperature struggles to achieve complete extraction, leading to a significantly higher proportion of chlorogenic acid in the coffee, which creates noticeable astringency! However, it's important to understand that low water temperature doesn't increase chlorogenic acid itself; rather, low temperature causes insufficient extraction of coffee substances, significantly reducing the sweet and bitter compounds that would normally mask chlorogenic acid's astringency, allowing chlorogenic acid to become more prominent!

Adjusting Brewing Parameters for Lower Water Temperatures

Therefore, brewing a coffee with exceptional flavor using water from a water dispenser is quite challenging! Well, since brewing outstanding coffee is difficult, let's aim for something more achievable: good, easy-to-drink coffee with all the expected flavors present and without astringency - that should be possible, right? And believe it or not, it really is! Although the water temperature is fixed, we can make adjustments in other areas. By increasing extraction efficiency elsewhere, we can partially compensate for the negative effects of low water temperature. It's worth noting: while it won't taste as good as coffee brewed with recommended water temperature, its flavor is still acceptable!

Parameters to Adjust

Finer Grind: Due to insufficient water temperature, the efficiency of hot water penetration into the beans for extraction is greatly reduced. Therefore, we need to adjust the grind to be finer, increasing the surface area of coffee particles that can contact water, allowing better extraction of aromatic substances!

Increased Agitation: Of course, simply adjusting the grind finer is not enough. Due to the presence of fine particles, we cannot grind too finely, as this would cause blockage, leading to excessive extraction time and over-extraction flavors! Therefore, we also need to incorporate stirring motions in our brewing technique, manually and actively "stirring" out substances from the coffee to increase extraction efficiency!

Coffee grinding and agitation techniques

Brewing Experiment

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will share how to use hot water at around 80°C to extract a coffee with pleasant flavor! For this experiment, FrontStreet Coffee used Ethiopian Sidamo Guji 7.0 beans. Light roast beans better demonstrate the results of this experiment, as their recommended water temperature (92°C) differs significantly from the experimental temperature (85°C)!

Parameters:
- Coffee amount: 15g
- Grind setting: 9 on Ek43 (originally 10), with 75% pass-through rate on #20 sieve (standard is 65% pass-through)
- Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15 (225ml hot water)
- Brewing temperature: 85°C
- Brewing method: Three-pour method
- Dripper used: V60

First, we still use twice the coffee weight in water (30ml) for the bloom! After the bloom ends, we use a larger water flow in wide circles to pour the second 120ml of hot water, raising the coffee bed!

After pouring the hot water, take out any spoon or stirrer and stir the coffee bed! Stir evenly in clockwise wide circles for 5 seconds!

After stirring, when the water level is about to bottom out, we can pour the remaining third portion of hot water (75ml), pouring from the center of the coffee bed in wide circles with small range. Once all the poured hot water has finished dripping, the brewing is complete!

The total time was 2 minutes and 15 seconds, about 10 seconds slower than regular brewing. This is the result of the combined effects of adjusting both the grind and brewing method. Through tasting, we can experience coffee flavors such as strawberry, cream, and apricot, along with some citrus acidity. Overall, the flavor is quite balanced without astringency. Although not as impressive as coffee brewed with 92°C water, given the current conditions (hot water only reaching around 80°C), it's considered a very good cup of coffee!