How to brew pour-over coffee

Why pour-over

In a pour-over, hot water passes through a bed of ground coffee once and drips through a paper filter into the cup below. The paper catches almost all of the fine particles and oils, so the coffee is light-bodied and very clear. Fruit, flowers and tea-like flavours that get muddied in a French press come through sharply.

It is also the most hands-on method in these guides. You control how fast the water goes in, how hot it is and how long it takes, and each of those changes the cup. That sounds fussy, but it means that when a cup tastes wrong you can almost always tell why, and fix it the next morning.

What you'll need

• A cone dripperCeramic, glass or plastic. A size 02 cone brews one or two cups.
• Paper filtersMatched to your dripper. White filters taste cleaner than brown.
• A kettleA gooseneck spout makes a slow pour much easier, but isn't essential.
• A scale and timerAny kitchen scale that reads to 1 g. Your phone is the timer.
• A burr grinderOr ask us to grind for filter when you order.
• Fresh coffee15 g per cup, five days to five weeks off roast.

Get the ratio right

Ratio is the weight of water divided by the weight of coffee. We start every pour-over at 1:16.7, which is 15 g of coffee to 250 g of water, and adjust from there. Weigh the water as you pour, with the dripper sitting on the scale, rather than measuring it in a jug first.

Prefer it stronger or lighter? Change the ratio, not the grind. The grind controls how much flavour you pull out of the coffee; the ratio controls how concentrated the cup is.

Step by step

Times are from the moment the first water touches the coffee. Start the timer as you begin the bloom.

1. Heat the water

   Bring fresh water to the boil and let it sit for about 30 seconds, which puts it close to 94 °C. Heat a little more than you need; you will use some to rinse the filter.

2. Rinse the filter

   Fold the paper along its seam, set it in the dripper, and pour hot water through it. This washes out the papery taste and warms the cone and the cup. Tip the rinse water away.

3. Grind and level

   Grind 15 g of coffee medium-fine, about the texture of table salt. Tip it into the filter and give the dripper a gentle shake so the bed is flat. Put everything on the scale and tare it to zero.

4. Bloom0:00–0:45

   Pour 40 g of water, about two and a half times the weight of the coffee, making sure every ground is wet. The bed will swell and bubble as carbon dioxide escapes. Fresh coffee blooms more; that's a good sign.

5. First pour0:45–1:15

   Pour slowly in small circles, starting in the centre and working out to just inside the edge, until the scale reads 150 g. Avoid pouring directly onto the paper.

6. Second pour1:15–1:45

   Let the level drop by about a centimetre, then pour again in the same slow circles up to 250 g. Keeping the water at a steady height gives an even extraction.

7. Swirl and draw down1:45–3:15

   Give the dripper one gentle swirl to flatten the bed, then let it drain. The water should finish dripping between 3:00 and 3:30, leaving a flat bed of grounds with no crater in the middle.

8. Taste, then adjust

   Remove the dripper, give the coffee a swirl and let it cool for a minute or two. Flavours open up as it drops in temperature. Note how it tastes and how long it took; that is all you need to dial in tomorrow's cup.

Dialling it in

Change one thing at a time, and change the grind first. Finer grounds slow the water down and extract more; coarser grounds speed it up and extract less. Small moves are enough: one or two clicks on most grinders.

Water matters more than you think

A cup of pour-over is about 98.5% water, so whatever is in your tap is in your coffee. Very soft water tends to taste flat and sour; very hard water tastes chalky and mutes acidity. If your kettle builds up scale or your tap water smells of chlorine, a simple jug filter makes a noticeable difference.

Temperature matters too. Light roasts like our Ethiopia and Kenya want water just off the boil, around 94–96 °C. Darker roasts and decaf are sweeter a little cooler, at 90–92 °C.

Common mistakes

• Skipping the bloom. Without it, gas pushes water away from the coffee and the first pour extracts unevenly.
• Pouring onto the paper. Water that runs down the sides bypasses the coffee completely and thins the cup.
• Using pre-ground coffee from last month. Ground coffee goes stale in days. Grind just before you brew, or order a smaller bag ground to order.
• Changing three things at once. Change the grind, brew again, and taste. Then change the next thing.

Which beans to use

Pour-over shows a coffee's character more clearly than any other method, so it is where our lighter roasts shine.