Avoid These Pitfalls! Misleading Knowledge When Learning Pour-Over Coffee on Your Own! How Does Brewing Method Affect Your Coffee?

Pour-over coffee is a unique and convenient brewing method. It has gained immense popularity due to its remarkable flavor profiles and clean taste. Moreover, because of its simple operation and low barrier to entry, many friends have started learning pour-over brewing at home.

However, with numerous learning channels and complex information, self-study can easily lead to misconceptions without proper guidance. Without correction, these mistakes can become deeply ingrained. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee would like to share some common "knowledge traps" that often mislead people during self-study of pour-over coffee.

1. Excessively Pursuing Brewing Methods

Many beginners, before understanding the principles of brewing, frantically experiment with different brewing methods because they believe that the brewing method is a crucial factor affecting coffee flavor.

While different brewing methods do indeed bring variations to coffee's texture, the underlying logic behind these methods is more important than the flavors they produce. It's essential to understand that regardless of the brewing method, their design philosophy adheres to one principle: heating an appropriate amount of water to a suitable temperature, then extracting appropriately ground coffee beans for an appropriate duration. If we cannot comprehend why a particular technique requires specific water temperature, grind size, or coffee-to-water ratio, then we're merely copying the superficial aspects of that brewing method. If we only grasp the surface-level techniques, then that brewing method can only be applied to specific beans or certain roast levels. Once we switch to beans with entirely different characteristics (different roasting or processing methods), it becomes difficult to leverage the advantages of the brewing method and showcase the bean's flavor potential.

Therefore, understanding the underlying logic of brewing methods is more important. Before that, we must first recognize the interrelationships between water temperature, grind size, and coffee-to-water ratio, which will enable us to better comprehend the fundamental principles behind brewing methods.

2. Timing Points for Blooming

During pour-over blooming, should the timer be started before or after pouring water? The timing difference between these two approaches is 7-9 seconds (mainly depending on the pour flow rate), and whether this time exists affects the overall brewing time, subsequently influencing our judgment of the brew. This is a question that confuses most people.

Generally speaking, extraction time refers to the period from when coffee grounds first contact hot water until the last drop of coffee liquid leaves the grounds. Therefore, when we begin the blooming process, we need to start the timer simultaneously, as the coffee grounds have already begun extracting and continuously releasing golden-colored foam.

3. Blooming Without Dome Formation Means Not Fresh

Another aspect of the blooming stage that easily misleads beginners is the dome formation of the coffee bed.

For most beginners, a sign of stale beans during brewing is the inability to form a large "hamburger-shaped" dome during blooming. However, the size of the dome is limited by the carbon dioxide content in the coffee grounds—the more CO2, the larger the dome. At the same time, excessive carbon dioxide can hinder the extraction of flavor compounds by hot water. Therefore, some high-density beans require a resting period to release this CO2 before extraction. Although these beans may not form a large dome during blooming, this is precisely when they are at their "freshest."

4. Avoiding Bitterness Through Early Termination

Removing the filter cone before the coffee has finished dripping is an operation known in the industry as "early termination" or "cutting the flow." Generally, the purpose of early termination is to avoid negative flavors that occur due to over-extraction. However, many people mistakenly believe that the tail section is where bitterness is predominantly released, which is why it should be cut off. Consequently, whether brewing at home or ordering coffee elsewhere, they include early termination in their brewing process.

However, as friends who frequently read FrontStreet Coffee's articles know, the coffee liquid in the tail section is not the primary cause of bitterness in the entire cup—excessive extraction efficiency is! When our beans, extraction parameters, and brewing techniques are all proper, there's no need to worry about bitterness in the coffee. Please don't blindly use early termination to avoid bitterness; brewing parameters are far more important.

5. Pursuing Golden Cup Extraction

Golden Cup Extraction is a concept born from research into a group of people's taste preferences. When a coffee's extraction rate and concentration fall within certain numerical ranges, the flavor of that coffee will be appreciated by the most people. After learning about this concept, some friends have become fixated on this "standard": coffee must be brewed to fall within this Golden Cup Extraction range! If the extraction rate and concentration don't fall within this range, then the coffee must be unpleasant!

However, it's important to understand that coffee within the Golden Cup Extraction range isn't necessarily delicious, and coffee outside this range isn't necessarily unpleasant—this is a result determined by the taste preferences of the drinking population. Different groups have different dietary habits and varied flavor preferences, and we cannot unify everyone's tastes. Therefore, numerical values cannot completely represent the quality of a cup of coffee. To determine whether a coffee is good or bad, we should make the judgment through direct contact—that is, through drinking. Clinging to numerical values will significantly limit your experience space and cause you to miss out on countless delicious coffees!

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