Not sure whether that’s just me, but I’m not properly woken up until I have my second cup of coffee! I was never really fussy about my morning coffee but recently wanted to learn a bit more about how to make a good coffee at home. So, today I wanted to share with you my top coffee tips on how to make the best pour-over coffee.
The minimum equipment you’ll need
- Your choice of pour over coffee set up
- Coffee Filter (Unbleached and natural are best)
- Kettle
- To get more precise results
- Coffee Grinder
- Digital Scales
- Thermometer
The pour over coffee recipe
Boil water
The quality of coffee you use will influence the final flavour of your coffee. For example, water with a high quantity of minerals might give you coffee a bit of a fizzy after taste, so make sure that you use good quality water.
Grind coffee
Freshly ground coffee makes a huge difference to the taste, so only grind what you need for one or two cups of coffee at the time. The coarseness also makes a difference to your coffee.
You want to aim for a medium to fine grinds (something like a sea salt texture). If you have anything finer than that, the water will have difficulty dripping through the coffee, and anything coarser than that will allow the water to pass through the coffee too quickly, which means that you will get a much weaker flavour.
The quantity depends on how strong you like your coffee, but I like to use about 3 teaspoons (about 10g) per 250 ml cup. I know I like my coffee weaker than many, so please adjust it to the amount you like.
Prepare the coffee filter
Set up your coffee pour over equipment and line it with a coffee filter. Make sure that your paper coffee filter is fitting neatly into your pour over container.
Once your water has boiled, let it sit for about 30 sec – 1 minute until the temperature drops to about 96 – 98 C or 204 – 208 F. You can check this with a suitable thermometer if you have one.
Pour the water over the coffee filter to wet it first. This removes any residual chemicals from the coffee filter and also warm ups your coffee mug or cup underneath.
Pour the water from the cup and pack your freshly ground coffee lightly into the prepared coffee filter.
Recheck the water temperature. If you are fast, you can carry on with the next step or re-boil the water if it cooled down too much.
I sometimes boil the water, then wet the coffee filter straight away, pour the water out and then carry on with the main coffee preparation. This just about makes it the right temperature at the point of pouring over the coffee grinds.
The final pour over process
Pour the boiled water over your prepared coffee grinds slowly and let all the coffee soak first. Then stop. This allows the coffee to prime itself and the next pouring is done much more evenly. If you pour all the water in straight away, you might get parts of coffee grinds that won’t get wet, which means you’ll lose flavour.
Now pour the rest of the water up to the level you need for your brewed coffee.
Put a timer on or check your watch and depending on how strong you like your coffee try 3 or 4 minutes brewing time. The brewing time starts to count down from the time you do the second pour.
Drink with or without milk and enjoy!
Magdalena