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What is pour-over coffee? What to know about a manual brewing process

Making coffee without a coffer maker is possible

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Pour-over coffee setup
Julien Labelle / Unsplash

From French press to instant and drip makers, there are several ways to make a delicious cup of coffee. Pour-over coffee involves a manual brewing process that focuses on control, flavor, freshness, and customization for one-of-a-kind brew. While this method of coffee brewing is certainly more involved than using a single-serve brewing system such as K-Cups, it offers numerous benefits for coffee lovers who want to control essential variables in the brewing process. Let’s explore. What is pour-over coffee, and what makes this manual brewing process so unique?

What is pour-over coffee?

Pour-over coffee
Patrick Fore / Unsplash

Pour-over coffee is a coffee-brewing method that involves pouring hot water over ground coffee beans held within a filter. This manual method of making coffee allows steaming water to pass through coffee grounds, letting the coffee drip through the filter and into your mug. While making a pour-over coffee is a simple process, in theory, the method you use when making it is essential to yield a high-quality cup of coffee.

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Unlike an automatic drip coffee maker, making pour-over coffee allows for more precision and control to create the perfect cup of coffee for your taste preferences. Many java lovers find that using the pour-over method results in a bolder, richer cup of coffee that hits the spot. Additionally, pour-over coffee can be used to make just one cup at a time, ensuring you always have fresh coffee instead of that stale coffee that has sat out in a carafe for a few hours (or days). Plus, the manual brewing method used to make pour-over coffee also tends to produce less acidic coffee than other brewing methods, which is ideal for those with GI conditions or sensitive stomachs.

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Other methods of brewing coffee don’t provide as much control over variables that affect extraction, such as water temperature, speed at which the water flows, and coffee grind size. These factors are critical when crafting a delicious cup of pour-over coffee.

What you need for brewing pour-over coffee

Pour-over coffee
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Before you can learn to make pour-over coffee, you’ll want to shop for a few basics:

  • Pour-over brewing device: There are various types of pour-over devices or drippers, some of which can be used sitting on top of a mug, whereas others will brew into a carafe.
  • Coffee grinder: Burr grinders make it easiest to create a consistent coffee ground size for pour-over coffee.
  • Water kettle: Using the right water temperature is essential for this brewing method. Gooseneck kettles with thin spouts allow you to adjust the temperature of your water precisely and control how fast water flows through the filter with coffee grounds.
  • Coffee scale: Weighing coffee and water in grams ensures precise measurement.
  • Coffee filters: A traditional coffee filter you’d use in a drip maker won’t work for pour-over brew. You need filters specific to pour-over coffee, such as cone or flat-bottom filters. Cone filters tend to extract quicker than flat-bottom ones, making the choice a personal preference depending on the type of pour-over brewing device you select.

Brewing the best pour-over coffee

Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder
Fellow Opus

Perfecting the pour-over brew process takes time and practice. Using the right size of coffee grounds, quality water, and scale can help you improve the taste of your pour-over coffee.

Using the right size of coffee grounds

First and foremost, don’t ignore the size of the coffee grounds you use for pour-over coffee. Not all bagged ground coffee is the same. Using the wrong size for pour-over coffee impacts the extraction process and thus changes the taste of your cup. The best size grounds for pour-over coffee is medium to medium-fine grounds. While you can use pre-ground coffee, grinding your coffee beans yields a fresher-tasting cup of coffee. To grind your own beans, you’ll need either a burr-style grinder or a blade grinder, which will help you grind your beans uniformly and use them in pour-over coffee. We love the Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder for newbies.

Water quality

It’s easy to get carried away and focused on using quality coffee beans, but don’t forget that the quality of your water is just as important. Coffee is mostly made of water, so investing in filtered water (and avoiding using tap water) can seriously help you improve the taste of your coffee.

Weighing coffee

Eyeballing how much coffee to use isn’t always the best method if you want a consistently delicious cup of pour-over coffee. Using a coffee scale to weigh out your coffee can help you determine the right ground coffee-to-water ratio for your ideal cup of coffee.

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Emily Caldwell
Emily Caldwell
Contributor
Emily is an accomplished freelance journalist with over seven years of experience in food, beverage, health, fitness, and…
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