There’s something magical about getting out of bed every morning and being able to brew a nice cup of coffee with a pour over. Arguably the most popular brewer type of choice for specialty coffee enthusiasts, the pour over is famous for creating truly great cups of coffee thanks to the way it extracts flavors, helping to bring out the best qualities of your coffee. It also allows you as the brewer to take control of the wheel in the process of getting to the kind of cup that you want, whether it’s a coffee with a fuller body, more on the acidity, and many more.
We’d like to share with you a guide on how to make a great cup of coffee at home with a pour over brewer. You can use this guide to get started on the brewing journey, while adjusting parameters in between later on to suit your preferences.
Preparing your Brewing Setup
- Coffee of choice
- Pour Over brewer of choice
- Scale
- Gooseneck kettle
- Coffee grinder
- Coffee server
For this guide, we’ll be referring to a cone-type brewer as the pour over of choice. We will be using a 1:15 ratio, meaning that for every 1g of coffee, you’ll need 15ml of water. Today’s brew will require 16g of coffee, so that brings you to 240ml of water. This should be enough for 2 cups of coffee, or just one cup for a caffeine head.
Measure out the 16g of coffee using your scale and proceed to put it through your grinder. For your grind size, you’ll want to start of with a medium-fine grind. If it feels like kosher salt, then you’re good to go. If it feels courser than that, you’ll want to dial it back a bit. Courser grind sizes would work better on something like the French press, while pour overs work better with medium to medium-fine.
When assembling your set up, at the base of it will be your scale. Keep it off while you place your server first, followed by your pour over brewer. Place the paper filter inside, then run some hot water to pre-heat the brewer and to wet the filter. This will help in getting rid of any unwanted tastes that may come into the mix of your coffee, while pre-heating it ensures that the brewer maintains a certain temperature during the brewing process. Once this is done, toss the water out, turn on your scale and make sure it’s set to 0 or press tare, and put in the coffee grounds into the filter. This will make sure that you’ve put in the right amount of coffee into the brewer. Lastly, make sure your water is pre-heated to 93° Celsius.
Brewing Time
Now that everything is prepared, it’s time to get brewing. If your scale has a timer, it’s good to get it started right before you start pouring. First things first: the bloom. The process of blooming releases the carbon dioxide that is cooped up inside the coffee, which is why you’ll notice the bubbling of your coffee as you pour water on it. Releasing the carbon dioxide helps to make sure the water extracts only the aromatics and oils in the coffee. It should be noted that for the bloom, you’ll want to do a 1:2 ratio, so if you’re brewing 16g of coffee, your first pour should be to 32ml of water (1ml = 1g, so when you see 1g on the scale, that also equates to the amount of ml you just poured). The pour should take you about 10 seconds or less.Wait for about a minute on the timer or when you notice the top of the coffee turn slightly crusty and proceed to pour up to 144g on the scale. Wait another 20-30 seconds and pour up to 240g. While the last drips fall, you can remove the pour over to make sure you’re not getting any extra notes from the coffee such as the bitterness. Serve up and enjoy your freshly brewed pour over coffee.
We hope this guide has been helpful and should you want to learn more about brewing our coffees, feel free to hit us up and we’ll gladly send a reference guide over your way specific to the coffee you’d like to enjoy.
