What Equipment Do You Need for Pour-Over Coffee?
Pour-over needs only three things: coffee grounds, filter paper, and hot water. It is favored for a clean cup with no off-flavors, and it removes the fine sediment that metal-filter methods leave behind. Other brewing devices each carry a drawback, from sediment in a French press to the plastic valve on a Clever Cup that can turn rancid if poorly maintained.
Boiling water is not a barrier to good extraction; the common belief that it ruins coffee does not hold up in practice. Filter paper material changes how much oil reaches the cup, so paper choice shapes flavor as much as grind size does. The AeroPress offers body but lost popularity, while the siphon and French press fill different roles.
Pour-over coffee, with its advantages of being clean, free of off-flavors, clear, simple, and safe, has become the first choice of many coffee lovers. This article starts with a horizontal comparison of the French press, Clever Cup, AeroPress, and siphon, sorts out the three truly indispensable conditions for pour-over—coffee grounds, filter paper, and hot water—and deeply analyzes the impact of filter paper material on flavor, breaking the common misconception that "boiling water cannot be used to brew coffee." At the end, it includes Front Street's recommended Huakui brewing parameters and flavor description, suitable for coffee lovers who want to systematically understand the logic of pour-over.
If one day being able to brew a good cup of pour-over coffee becomes a bonus point in matchmaking or dating, then you will surely feel lucky that you clicked on this article!
What advantages does pour-over coffee actually have? And what methods can improve the tasting experience of pour-over coffee?
Advantage one: Clean
The French press is actually not bad either. It can restore the coffee's original flavor relatively well, but if it is for service, shops will still worry that it is "not clean enough":
The French press uses a metal filter, and limited by pore size and workmanship, it cannot effectively intercept coffee fines, so the result contains a lot of "fine sediment."
Customers do not understand why there is so much sediment at the bottom of the cup by the last sip?
Therefore, this useful tool, the French press, was once neglected. If it is only used at home, I think the French press is a quite good coffee device.
Advantage two: No off-flavors
Many people think the Clever Cup is very stable: put in a filter paper, pour water, and let it filter when the time comes.
But the biggest weakness of the Clever Cup is that its filter valve is made of plastic. If not maintained properly, the brewed coffee will carry a heavy "rancid oil smell."
Early Clever Cups all had plastic bodies. Although some people have now solved this problem (ceramic versions), the valve problem still has not been effectively solved. (I believe it will be solved someday in the future.)
Advantage three: Clear
For a while, the AeroPress was very popular. Everyone found that it could express relatively good body, but after being popular for a while, its heat cooled down. The reason is that people found the AeroPress result has very cloudy coffee liquid (and the AeroPress has even more plastic surface area than the Clever Cup).
PS: Since the AeroPress's advantage is body, we can maximize its strengths and avoid its weaknesses by using it in some mixed drinks: AeroPress milk tea, for example, is very tasty (place tea powder in the AeroPress to steep, extract it, add milk or a little honey, and it tastes wonderful).
Advantage four: Simple and safe
The siphon was originally the star of coffee shops, but now it is no longer as glorious. After all, the maintenance issues of the siphon are also very troublesome: the upper and lower bowls need to be cleaned, and the filter cloth needs maintenance (although filter paper can now replace filter cloth, personally I still think filter cloth is a bit better than filter paper). Not only that, the siphon is also very, very, very easy to bump and break.
There is also this: the siphon requires an external heating source: alcohol lamp, gas, or halogen cooker.
Alcohol lamps are not very stable, gas needs to be fixed in place, and even a slightly better halogen cooker is sold for more than two thousand? I once bought a Japanese KONO siphon. It looked quite good and was also decent to use, but let me remind everyone: whatever you do, whatever you do , whatever you do, do not use it to cook instant noodles...
Pour-over coffee's cleanliness, lack of off-flavors, clarity, simplicity, and safety... have made humans, this lazy species, ultimately fall into her embrace!
Let's look at the conditions that pour-over needs to satisfy:
The principle of pour-over coffee can be summarized in one sentence: hot water passes through coffee grounds held by filter paper and brings out coffee liquid.
So in fact, as you can see, the truly important conditions are only three: coffee grounds, filter paper, and hot water.
The reason many people find pour-over troublesome is that they cannot grasp the essence and instead fuss over trivial details:
What kind of pour-over kettle should I buy?
What pore size and material is better?
What material dripper should I buy?
V60 or trapezoid?
Single hole, three holes, or four holes?
What kind of server should I buy to better preserve aroma?
......
This reminds me of the mystical school in coffee, which claims that coffee brewed clockwise and counterclockwise tastes different.
I told him: if I brew a pot of coffee now and you can tell whether I brewed clockwise or counterclockwise, I will give you one hundred yuan.
The other person immediately fell silent.
To reiterate, the truly important conditions are only three: coffee grounds, filter paper, and hot water.
The importance of filter paper is greater than that of the dripper. Many people put great effort into choosing a dripper but neglect the filter paper. It can be said that the most overlooked part at present is precisely the filter paper.
Let's look at the mainstream filter papers on the market: HARIO, KALITA, MOLA, KONO, CHEMEX, BONAVITA, TIAMO, MELITA, BONMAC, ESKIMO...
When buying filter paper, we do not think too much. As long as it is widely used on the market, or cheap, that is enough.
But these mainstream filter papers actually differ completely in raw materials and craftsmanship: some are Nordic oak, some are Finnish wood, some are coniferous trees, some are Manila abaca...
Differences in raw materials lead to different performance in fiber hardness, thickness, water resistance, and deformation resistance.
At this point, we have already discovered that the dazzling array of filter papers on the market actually varies greatly in performance. Sometimes when the filter paper is changed, differences in coffee flavor appear. This is a very, very normal thing. As the medium for filtering coffee liquid, filter paper is actually a very important part of pour-over coffee. Most people have already determined the coffee's flavor when choosing the filter paper. This is not an exaggeration at all.
The most direct function of filter paper is to separate liquid from solids. The fibers have countless small pores through which liquid particles can pass, while larger solid particles cannot pass through. The thickness and strength of the fibers determine how strong its interception ability is.
Most importantly, there is no need to wet the filter paper. Once it is wet, it changes even more things. If you are worried that the papery taste of the filter paper is too strong, why not just change brands?
Rather than changing limited conditions, it is better to change the entire framework.
If I were to select the biggest rumor about pour-over coffee, the first one would be: boiling water cannot be used to brew coffee.
What nonsense... Every time I hear such remarks, I worry about the other person's ability to reason dialectically!
No wonder. The SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) specifies the temperature for cupping coffee at 93°–94°C.
This caused it to suddenly spread everywhere that the pour-over temperature should also fall within the range of 90°–94°C. Add to that the sudden appearance of various temperature-controlled kettles, and people elevated the specified temperature to an incomparable height.
Here I want to say one thing: using boiling water, that is, 100°C boiling water, to brew coffee is completely fine!
After repeated testing with a concentration meter, it was found that the higher the temperature, the higher the extraction.
Some people say, will a high extraction yield bring bitterness and miscellaneous flavors?
When can this kind of logical shackle be broken? Why can't you allow a person to be good-looking, rich, and hardworking?
Binary opposition has always shackled people: only one condition is allowed to develop.
It seems that admitting the fact that "high extraction yield, but also good flavor" is a very painful thing. Do not simply attribute everything to one cause. Extraction is multiple conditions proceeding simultaneously. Do not let boiling water take the blame for bitterness and miscellaneous flavors.
By the way, most temperature-controlled kettles on the market can only reach a very limited temperature. Friends who are interested in brewing with boiling water can use a household hot water kettle. (Oh right, please abandon the step of wetting the filter paper.)
Do not ask me what dripper to buy. Setting aside other conditions, the most controllable flow rate is the V60. For the others—single hole, two holes, three holes, four holes—there are baffles in the middle. Only the bottom of the V60 is an open design.
Even if it is an eighteen-hole design, there will still be a baffle in the middle. Because the holes need to be arranged on a plane. How clever the V60 is: the design of having no hole yet surpassing having holes is very philosophical.
The speed of flow is not determined by the pore size, but by the filter paper.
The pore size is an interfering factor, not the primary factor. Coffee flow is like a small river, while pore size and baffles are obstacles.
Finally, let's brew a cup of 2018 Huakui~
Ethiopian Sidamo Shakisso Natural
Name: Ethiopia Natural Sidamo G1 Huakui
Ethiopian Sidamo Shakisso Natural
Coffee producing country: Africa, Ethiopia,
Coffee estate: Guji, Hambella Wamena, buku able estate
Coffee variety: Heirloom (local Ethiopian native variety)
Production altitude: 2250-2350M
Quality grade: G1
Processing method: Natural (African raised beds)
Dripper : Hario v60
Grind setting : Fuji Royal 3.5
Water temperature : 90°C, water-to-coffee ratio 1:15
Brewing method: Pour in 25g water for a 30-second bloom, pour with a vertical stream, slowly circle until 120g water, then divide the pour; with a larger stream, finish brewing at 226g.
Total time : 2 minutes 05 seconds
The front end smells clearly of melon aroma, strawberry jam ; on entry it has a soft acidity like jackfruit, the middle shows strawberry berry flavors, and there is also some sucrose sweetness in the finish. The layers are relatively rich.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
