With the right equipment and these coffee-making tips, you can make the perfect cup of coffee. Plus, you won’t have to wait for longer than 5 minutes to enjoy a freshly-brewed cup—every single day.
The pour-over method is simply pouring water over coffee grounds to extract coffee flavors onto your cup. How to get a perfect cup of pour-over coffee? Here’s how:
1. Bring your water to the boil.
The water should just about be ready to simmer with small bubbles appearing at the edges. Turn off your stove or electric kettle and transfer water, if necessary, to a container with a spout.
2. Prepare your other ingredients and equipment: finely ground coffee beans, hot water in the kettle, a paper filter, 1 coffee mug, ceramic cone dripper, and a saucer to place the basket on once done.
The amount of coffee grounds will differ with regards to how strong or weak you like your coffee. A good guide is about 1 tablespoon per cup of water. Tweak the amount of grounds and water according to your tastes.
3. Place a paper filter into the dripper.
Use a #2-sized filter for a small dripper and a #4-sized filter for a larger one. You may have to fold the sides to ensure it fits properly.
4. Place dripper on top of the mug.
5. Add ground coffee to the filter.
Shake it around to make sure that it’s evenly distributed.
6. Wet the grounds.
This is when the coffee making really begins. Begin by slowly pouring just enough water to cover the grounds, essentially wetting the mound. Once wet, stop. Let the coffee sit for about 30 seconds to a minute depending on how much coffee grounds you have added to the dripper.
Once the water has passed through the filter, continue slowly pouring in the remaining water into the grounds, pausing to make sure all the grounds are wet or occasionally letting the water drain down into the mug before continuing. Once all the water has been poured in, let any remaining water drip down. This should take about 3-4 minutes.
7. Remove the dripper from the mug, and place it on the saucer to catch any drips. Serve the mug immediately with sugar and creamer as needed, and enjoy your perfectly brewed cup of coffee.
For those who like their coffee ice-cold, follow the same procedure, except for these differences:
Fill the coffee mug or glass completely with ice before Step 3. Double the amount of coffee grounds per cup of water. This is because the ice will melt as you pour in the hot water, making it diluted. Doubling the amount remedies this. Use about 1/2 cup less water per tablespoon of grounds. Most of the ice will melt, making up for the reduced amount of water.
A few tips on brewing coffee at home:
1. Keep the coffee grounds when using the pour-over method. Don’t let it dry out. Once you see the water has drained enough that you can see the grounds settling in the filter, fill it with the hot water again.
2. Pour in a circle. All the coffee grounds must get wet for maximum flavor and extraction so pour in a circular, even spiraling, motion to get everything wet.
3. The finer the grounds, the faster the extraction. Coarsely-ground coffee beans are best for a French press, where it steeps for a few minutes. A pour-over brew does not allow much steeping to happen so go with finely ground beans.
4. Don’t over- or under fill your pour-over dripper with ground coffee. Too much coffee grounds won’t allow proper drainage into the mug while too little grounds won’t restrict the flow of the water enough to properly wet the grounds.
5. If you taste the paper filter in your coffee, wet the filter first before adding the coffee grounds then discard that water. Add the grounds and continue with the rest of the steps.
