How to Make Pour Over Coffee

Pour over is the method with the highest ceiling and the most ways to miss. Everything about it comes down to one goal: get every particle of coffee wet at the same time, keep it wet for the same length of time, and let the water leave.

The recipe

1:16 is the standard: 22g of coffee to 350ml of water for a large mug, or 30g to 500ml for two. Medium-fine grind, water at 200F, total brew time of two and a half to three and a half minutes depending on the dripper.

That is the entire recipe. Everything below is how to execute it.

Rinse the filter, and mean it

Put the paper in and pour hot water through it, into the carafe, then tip that water out.

This does two things. It washes out the papery taste, which is real and obvious in the cup if you skip it. And it heats the dripper and the carafe, which otherwise steal heat from your brew in the first thirty seconds, when it matters most. Ceramic drippers steal a great deal.

The bloom

Add the coffee, level it, and pour about twice its weight in water. For 22g that is 45ml. Start in the centre, spiral outward, and stop.

Fresh coffee is full of carbon dioxide, and when water hits it that gas comes out fast enough to physically push water away from the grounds. Bloom for 30 to 45 seconds and you let it escape; skip it and a good part of your dose is being held away from the water by its own gas.

If the bed swells and domes noticeably, the coffee is fresh. If it barely moves, it is not, and no amount of technique will fix that.

The pours

Pour in slow concentric circles from the centre outward, and stop before you reach the paper. Water that runs down the wall bypasses the coffee entirely, which is why the edges look pale afterwards.

Do it in stages rather than one long pour: to 150ml, wait for it to drop, to 250ml, wait, then to 350ml. Keeping the bed at a fairly constant level means the coffee spends a consistent time submerged.

This is where a gooseneck kettle stops being a luxury. A normal kettle pours a wide fast stream that punches a hole in the bed and digs a channel; a gooseneck lets you place a thin stream where you choose. That is the difference between deciding where the water goes and hoping.

Watching the time

A V60 should finish in 2:30 to 3:00 for this dose. A Kalita Wave runs slower, 3:00 to 3:30, because its three small holes restrict flow. A Chemex is slower again, up to 4:00, since its heavy paper does the restricting.

If it drains much faster than that, the grind is too coarse. Much slower, and it is too fine or the bed has clogged. Adjust the grind, never the pour, to fix timing: your pour should stay the same so it stops being a variable.

The flat bed at the end

When the water has drained, look at the coffee. A flat, even bed means the water moved through it evenly. A crater in the middle means you poured too hard in one place. High walls of dry grounds around the edge mean your pours were too small and central, and a good part of the dose never brewed at all.

It is the most useful feedback the method gives you and it costs nothing to look.

What goes wrong, and which knob to turn

Sour, thin, watery: under-extracted. Grind finer first. Water may also be too cool.

Bitter and drying: over-extracted. Grind coarser. Check the water is not boiling.

Both at once: uneven extraction, not a temperature or timing problem. Either the grind is inconsistent, which is a grinder issue, or you channelled.

Drains far too fast every time: grind is too coarse, or you are pouring hard enough to punch through the bed.

Stalls completely: too fine. It will taste bitter as well, because it sat there.

What to buy first

The dripper is the cheapest part and matters least. A V60 costs very little and its filters are sold everywhere.

The grinder matters most, then the kettle, then a scale, then the dripper. That ordering surprises people who have just bought a beautiful ceramic cone, but it follows from what each thing controls: nothing downstream can repair a grind that arrived uneven. Our pour over rating guide sets out what we can read off a dripper's specification, and admits that ease of use is the one thing no specification answers.