Sometimes you just need to feel fancy and take extra time brewing up your favorite coffee in the morning... Pour over coffee is a ritual: wake up, bring your water to a boil, grind your coffee, and take the next 4 minutes brewing it up. The reward? Good smells, good vibes, and damn good coffee. If you are new to specialty coffee or coffee in general and have been wondering about manual brew methods, then let us entertain you.
Long before espresso machines, coffee was made simply by heating ground coffee in a pot with water. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the first pour over was introduced, the Melitta. Then the Chemex, Hario V60 and others came after. These devices changed the way the world drank coffee, especially when specialty coffee entrepreneurs got a hold of them.
A few things you might need: a fiter, kettle, dripper (we like the Kalita Wave), water, and your favorite bag of organic Roast House Coffee. The pour over method simply involves pouring hot water over a bed of coffee grounds in a paper filter. The water then drains through the coffee and into a vessel. As the water passes through the coffee, it extracts flavor and aromatic compounds. In a pour over, you are controlling all of the variables that affect extraction which include ratio of coffee to water, brew time, water temperature, choreographing the frequency of pours, and material of both your filter and dripper. A pour over accentuates intricate flavors as the water extracts coffee oils and fragrances, resulting in a flavorful, clean cup of coffee.
There are lots of recommendations when it comes to brew ratio, which refers to your water to coffee ratio. As a basis, Roast House recommends a 17:1 ratio, so 17 grams of water to every 1 g of coffee. If you like your coffee to be more potent, try a smaller ratio like 16:1 or even 15:1 for a sweetly intense cup of coffee. The less coffee you use, the more delicate and juicy the cup while using more coffee will intensify the qualities in the coffee.
There are 2 different ways of pouring your water onto your coffee: pulse pour & continuous pour. Pulse pouring is when you use multiple pours of varying amounts of water. For example, pouring 100 g of water over your coffee bed three times. Continuous pouring means slowly pouring your total amount of water over your coffee. For example, one continuous pour over 300 g of water. There is no “better” option, but you will get different flavor and extraction results from each. That’s the beauty of pour overs- it’s like a fun science experiment that you can taste!
Here’s a 16:1 recipe for you to try:
You’ll need:
- Paper filter for your dripper
- Dripper (Kalita Wave or V60)
- Scale with a timer (we like Brewista or Acaia) or use a scale and the timer on your phone
- Vessel (some sort of carafe or even a big mug)
- Gooseneck kettle (ensures a slow steady stream)
- 350g of hot water
- Your favorite Roast House Coffee (22 g for a single cup)
Instructions:
- Place your filter in your brewer
- Heat water until boiling
- With that water off-boil, rinse your paper filter and discard water (so you don’t get that nasty paper filter taste)
- Measure out 22g of medium-fine Roast House Coffee
- Fill your filter with coffee and tare your scale
- Using your gooseneck kettle filled with hot water, pour 50 g of water in a circular motion over your coffee. This is called bloom, which refers to the releasing of gasses such as CO2 that happens when hot water meets coffee.
- Wait 30 seconds for your coffee to bloom (put your face real close and smell the yummy magic and marvel at the cute little bubble forming on the top of your coffee).
- At 40 seconds, slowly pour water in small circles until you reach 150g.
- Wait until the timer hits 1:20 seconds and then start pouring water in a circular motion until you reach 250g.
- Wait until the timer hits 2:00 and pour water in a circular motion until you reach 350g.
- The goal is for the water to stop dripping between 3:00-3:30 seconds.
- All that’s left to do is sit back and enjoy!
