How to Produce the Perfect Pour Over, Every Time A Sure Fire Way to Enhance Your Morning Routine
- Neighborhood Coffee Reviews
- Feb 22, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 23, 2022
Hello everyone and welcome to Neighborhood Coffee Reviews, today, we are going to do something a little different. We are going to talk about some tips and tricks that you can use to enhance your morning pour over coffee. It's great to support local roasters, but it means nothing if you don’t employ the right methods to make sure that you are getting the most out of your beans. I am going to show you a few simple tricks to make sure that you are extracting the full flavors from your pour over.
Pour over is one of my favorite methods for brewing coffee, the oxygen that is added to the coffee as they drip brings out the brightness and acidity if done properly. I especially like this technique when it comes to coffees with floral, citrus, tropical fruits, and berry notes because it allows the coffee’s major players to shine through. You might think that the pour overs you see at your local coffee shop are a lengthy process in the name of showmanship, but we are going to take a breakdown why baristas do what they do to make an outstanding pour over, every time. Let's go ahead and get started.
We are going to look at a few different techniques and what they do to help enhance your morning coffee routine.
Starting with the Freshest Beans
Hand Grinding your Beans
Bean to Water Ratio
The Importance of Bloom
Stirring Your Creation
Starting with the Freshest Beans
A great cup of coffee comes from starting with the freshest beans, I recommend that you stick to
anything lighter than a medium dark roast. If you use a dark roast you tend to be a little over-powering through your pour over system and I find that they are at home when they are brewed
through a French press. If you are not sure what beans to use, you’re in the right place, Neighborhood Coffee Reviews focuses on the best offerings from several different small roasters. Go ahead and check out one of my reviews to see if their beans are right for you! Recently I have been loving offerings from Sonder Coffee, Triple Coffee, and the already risen star, Blue Bottle Coffee. If you order anything from these roasters you will not be disappointed.
The Importance of Freshly Ground Beans
Next we are going to talk about the importance of freshly ground beans. I prefer to use a manual conical burr grinder to make sure that I am only grinding what I need and to make sure that I am getting the desired coarseness for my drip. You are going to want a medium-fine grind on your beans as this provides a little resistance but doesn’t cause your water to clog or drip too fast. The only downside I see is that this does require a little bit of endurance and if you are manually
grinding for a larger pot or cold brew it can get a little tedious. There is nothing more satisfying than the aroma you get from grinding beans fresh, and at all costs if you can stay away from pre-ground beans I highly recommend you do so. You can use an electric grinder but I find that I am often getting too little or too much grounds for the amount of coffee I am planning to make, so I choose the manual burr grinder for a little more control.
The Bean to Water Ratio
This brings us nicely to our next tip, to make sure that you are using the proper ratios of coffee to water. I tend to find that 1:16 is my ideal water to coffee ratio, but of course this can be played with to help you achieve your desired cup. For a mug of coffee you are going to want 15g of beans which will yield you 240g of coffee (8.5oz). We are going to do a little bit of conversion math here to make a great argument for why you should pick up a fresh bag of coffee instead of waiting in the drive through line for a $6.00 cup of coffee. If you buy a 12 oz bag of coffee from your local roaster, that is going to be about 340g of coffee. If you use the ratio I suggest above then you are going to get about 22 8oz cups of coffee from a single bag. This means that each of your fresh, beautiful cups of coffee are only going to cost $1.41. Talk about great value!
The secret to making sure that you have a consistent ratio is all in the weight. Every pour over that you make should be on a scale as you pour. This helps make sure that you are not only using the right amount of beans, but also that you are adding the right amount of water. That is why, when you take a trip to your local cafe, they are pouring it on the scale. The system that I use, GINA by Goat story, has an onboard scale that you can access through their app, but if you are using a traditional pour over, like a Hario v60, then you simply place your entire rig on top of the scale and zero it out for the main event.
Bloom Your Grounds
I'm sure by now you are jonesing to get to the act of making your coffee, don't worry, we are almost there! At your local cafe you might see your barista pour a little bit of water onto the grounds, only to pour that coffee out, and start over. You might be thinking to yourself, ‘oh, they messed up and had to start again’. However, in reality they are blooming their beans. The bloom is an oh so important step to getting great taste from your pour over. The science behind it is that blooming your beans releases the carbon dioxide housed in the beans after being roasted. Unbloomed beans sometimes have an acrid or burnt taste to them so if you get those notes from your morning coffee, this might be why.
You are going to want to pour hot water (~50g) over the beans, allow them the water to pass through, and release the carbon dioxide for about 30-40 seconds. I have a little bonus tip for you. The rate at which you add your water, should be as close to the rate at which it is dripping as possible. This allows for a constant circulation of water and makes sure that you do not over steep the beans. A gooseneck kettle will help you greatly if you are struggling with the technique.
Stirring Your Creation
We are almost done, but I am going to provide you with one parting tip. Once you have reached the desired weight for your cup, you are going to want to stir any of the remaining beans with a wooden coffee paddle (the wood is to prevent heat transfer, I use a stainless steel one because there is a smiley face on it). This process allows for the remaining water to circulate and evens out the love to each individual ground. Aside from that, you also get a little bit of centrifugal force to help with the flavor extraction process. If you do the technique correctly then you will be left with a smooth pyramid at the bottom of your filter rather than a scattered mess of beans.
The only thing left for you to do is taste your creation. Pour-over coffee is one of the most traditional ways to enjoy your morning cup, it brings out the brightness and acidity better than any other method in my opinion and if you are a coffee lover, it is a technique worth perfecting. All it takes is a little attention to detail and you will be well on your way to enhancing your morning routine.
Let me know in the comments below if there are other brewing methods you might need tips and tricks about perfecting and it would be my pleasure to follow up on them.
Here are the links to some of my current favorite coffees and the pour over system that I use to make a consistently perfect cup of coffee, every time.
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