Where Does Pour-Over Coffee Come From?

Pour-over coffee comes from a German housewife, Melitta Bentz, who in 1908 punched holes in a brass pot, laid blotting paper on top, added ground coffee, and poured hot water through it. Her filter blocked residue while keeping the coffee aroma, and in June 1908 she filed a patent with the German Imperial Patent Office for the arched-bottom brass filter.

Before that, people crushed beans, boiled them in a pot, and strained the grounds through burlap or metal mesh that left residue in the cup. The three-pour process follows the same logic today: blooming, main extraction, then finishing and blending. Each stage controls how much of the grounds the water contacts, which shapes the body and clarity of the final cup, the standard for absolute coffee.

Pour-over coffee is now one of the mainstream brewing methods in specialty coffee, but its origins actually come from the ingenuity of a German housewife. In 1908, Melitta Bentz used a perforated brass pot and blotting paper to create the world's first filter coffee device, forever changing the way people drink coffee. This article will walk you through the origins of pour-over coffee and the evolution of the dripper, and break down the complete three-pour brewing process in detail, including blooming, main extraction, finishing, and blending. At the same time, Front Street Coffee also recommends suitable coffee beans for people with different taste preferences and provides specific brewing parameters to help you brew a clean, full-bodied, and richly layered pour-over coffee at home.

The Origins of Pour-Over Coffee

For a long period in history, people around the world made coffee in a rather crude way: they crushed coffee beans, threw them into a pot to boil, then filtered out the grounds with burlap or a metal mesh sieve, and drank it directly. Due to the limited production techniques of the time, the mesh could not achieve a fine enough aperture, so even after filtering, the coffee liquid still contained quite a bit of residue.

Moving into the 20th century, there was a German woman named Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz. She loved freshly brewed coffee, but the coffee made with traditional filters tasted bitter to her, and after drinking it, coffee grounds would still get stuck between her teeth — a poor mouthfeel experience. So Melitta began exploring various new methods to free herself from the annoyance of grounds, and eventually she came up with an idea:

Punch holes in the bottom of a brass pot to turn it into a sieve-like vessel, then lay a sheet of blotting paper on top, put ground coffee in, and pour hot water over it. The coffee liquid would pass through the blotting paper and drip into the brass pot below.

Compared to burlap and metal mesh, Melitta's combination could block residue while retaining the coffee's aroma, and it was cheap to make and easy to use. Most importantly, the filtered coffee liquid was clear with no impurities, and the improvement in taste was very noticeable.

The Evolution of the Dripper

In June 1908, Melitta filed a patent with the German Imperial Patent Office for her invention: a brass coffee filter with an arched bottom featuring drainage holes, used with filter paper. This was probably the world's first pour-over coffee cup. Around the same time, she founded The Melitta Company, officially bringing pour-over equipment to market.

Since its founding, The Melitta Company has continuously researched and improved the shape, size, filter holes, and grooves of the dripper to keep up with the changing times of coffee and consumer demands. Pour-over coffee equipment has also been continuously updated and iterated, with a series of new products launched. For example, the trapezoid dripper we commonly see today was a bestselling representative of Melitta back in the day.

Pour-Over Coffee Tutorial

There is actually a very rich selection of coffee beans for pour-over. Here, Front Street has listed a few coffee types suitable for the vast majority of people for your reference: for those who prefer floral flavors, we recommend Front Street Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda Red Label Geisha coffee, one of the most expensive coffees in the world; for those who enjoy fresh, slightly acidic coffee, we recommend Front Street Huakui coffee, which has notes of black tea and berries;

For coffee lovers who pursue a balanced taste — neither sour nor bitter — we recommend Front Street Brazil Red Bourbon coffee; finally, for those who love a solid, full-bodied mouthfeel, we suggest purchasing the highest-grade Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee. These beans undergo multiple rounds of hand sorting, minimizing the defect rate, which makes the coffee aroma clearer and the aftertaste more excellent. All the above coffee beans can be purchased at Front Street stores and the Front Street Tmall flagship store. To let everyone experience the beans at their full flavor peak, all coffee beans shipped by Front Street are roasted within 5 days.

As usual, let's start with the brewing parameters used by Front Street:

Coffee dose: 15g

Grind setting: For light roasts, use ek43 setting 10, with 80% passing through a No. 20 sieve; for dark roasts, use ek43 setting 10.5, also with 80% passing through a No. 20 sieve.

Water temperature: For light roasts, 90°C~92°C is recommended; for dark roasts, 86°C~88°C.

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Dripper used: V60/Kono

Three-Pour Method, First Pour: Blooming

First, use twice the coffee dose in water (30ml) for a 30-second bloom. Starting from the center and spiraling outward, pour hot water quickly while gradually expanding the range.

We all know that the purpose of "blooming" is to release carbon dioxide from the coffee so that the subsequent hot water can better extract the coffee's substances. But this also means that the hot water used for blooming extracts the least coffee material. That's why the bloom water is kept at twice the coffee dose — first, this amount is just enough to saturate the coffee bed, and second, it's exactly the amount of water that dry coffee grounds need to absorb.

Three-Pour Method, Second Pour: Main Extraction

After the bloom, pour in 120ml of hot water, using a slow, steady stream in large circles. The pour should take about 55 seconds to complete.

After blooming, this extraction stage is absolutely critical! Whether a cup of coffee tastes good or not largely depends on the extraction at this stage, when the water temperature is still relatively high. After "shedding" the carbon dioxide protective shell, the coffee bed can easily release its sweet and acidic substances under the brewing of high-temperature hot water.

Three-Pour Method, Third Pour: Finishing

When the water level is about to reach the bottom (when the coffee grounds start to show), pour the final round of hot water (75ml), making small circles around the center of the dripper.

This is the final pour of the three-pour method! As mentioned in previous Front Street articles, this is a stage where you can correct deficiencies. If the second pour's water is not descending and permeating at a normal rate, we need to decide whether to use a fast or slow stream based on its speed.

When the second pour's water level drops too quickly, it can easily cause under-extraction. In that case, we need to use a slow stream to extend the extraction time and increase the extraction rate; if the water level drops too quickly, it can easily cause clogging and over-extraction — then we need to use a fast stream to raise the coffee bed, increase the permeable surface area, and speed up the flow rate.

Finally: Blending

Each pour extracts different coffee substances, and due to differences in concentration, they may have some separation and won't automatically blend together. If you drink it directly at this point, it may not taste very pleasant. Therefore, we need to swirl the carafe — "swish swish" — to let them fully blend.

Only then can we enter the actual drinking phase~ The clean, full-bodied coffee flavor and the rich, varied layers — this is the "supreme" enjoyment that the three-pour method can bring us~

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.