So, pour over. It was one of the methods I started trying once I switched to whole beans and a hand grinder. It looks fussy from the outside — a kettle, a cone, a filter — but it really comes down to one number and a little patience.
The ratio
Sixty grams of coffee per litre of water. That’s the whole secret.
For one regular cup, that’s 15 grams of coffee to 250 ml of water. For a big mug, 30 grams to 500 ml. If you like it stronger, go up a little. Weaker, go down. But start here.
No scale? Use about one heaping spoonful of coffee for every regular cup of water. It’s not as exact, but it gets you close — and close makes a good cup.
What you need
- A pour-over cone (a V60, a Kalita, a Chemex — whatever you have) and a paper filter
- Coffee ground medium-fine, about like table salt
- Water just off the boil — let it sit 30 seconds after the kettle clicks
- A kettle with a thin spout helps a lot, but a regular one works if you pour slowly
How to brew it
- Rinse the filter. Put it in the cone and pour hot water through it. This gets rid of the paper taste and warms everything up. Throw that water out.
- Add the coffee and give the cone a little shake so the bed is flat.
- The bloom. Pour just enough water to wet all the grounds — about twice the weight of the coffee, so 30 ml for 15 grams. Then wait 30 seconds. You’ll see the coffee puff up and bubble. That’s gas escaping from freshly roasted beans, and it’s a good sign. (Old coffee barely blooms at all.)
- Pour the rest slowly, in small circles, keeping the water level steady. Don’t pour straight onto the filter paper.
- Let it drain. From the first pour to the last drip should take about three minutes.
If it doesn’t taste right
This is where pour over gets fun, because you can fix almost anything with the grind:
- Sour or thin? Grind a little finer, or pour a little slower.
- Bitter or harsh? Grind a little coarser.
- Too strong or too weak? Change the amount of coffee, not the grind.
Change one thing at a time. Once you find your cup, it’ll taste the same every morning — which is the whole point of doing it this way.
If you brew with a coffee maker
The same ratio works in a regular drip coffee maker: about 60 grams per litre, or one heaping spoonful per cup. It’s the single easiest thing to get right, and most people use too little coffee and wonder why it tastes weak.