Let's make a cup of Pour Over Coffee

Today, let us talk about my go-to and favourite way of making coffee: pour over.

The reason it's my favourite is because it's fun. It does take time (around 10 mins from setup to cleanup) and some skill (which is not that complicated), but the variables you can play with and tweak make the whole thing worth it. The resulting cup you get is full of flavour and I enjoy drinking from hot till it comes to the room temperature.

In this post, I will write about the equipment you will need, and a basic recipe, which is the one I use when I start to brew a new bag of coffee beans. And then based on how it tastes I tend to alter the variables until I get a perfect one.

There is a lot I can talk about and for you to know. But thankfully, you don't have to everything before you start brewing with it.

And to keep the posts short and value packed, I plan to write multiple posts that accompany this one.

Essentials

For the equipment, I want talk about the must-have tools first and then good to have ones, in the decreasing order of importance. So that this acts like a nice upgrade path for you as you step up your game.

Aravind’s current V60 brewing setup

Brewing device - V60 dripper

Obvio!

There is absolutely no need to go fancy here. You can get a basic Hario V60 dripper for around ₹500. This was my first pour over dripper from 4 years ago and I still have it today. This is the one I use for by base recipes.

In this dripper, we put in a filter, most commonly a paper filter. We get a few filters with the dripper when we buy, and we should restock them after we run out.

We talked about filters in an earlier post.

Kettle

You need a way to heat the water, and also pour it on the coffee.

The later, pouring on the coffee, is equally important because that determines how much the of coffee bed is getting disturbed and how evenly the coffee is getting extracted. When you just directly pour hot water from a utensil, it's hard to make sure all that things happen and it is hard to exactly repeat the process.

A gooseneck kettle gives you that precise control. You can start with a normal kettle and then upgrade to this gooseneck one. Trust me, it's a game changer.

To measure the temperature, you can get a kitchen thermometer, or buy an electric coffee kettle which can be set to a certain temperature.

Scale

Eyeballing things will only take you so far.

Look, I get it. Measuring seems like too much work for your morning coffee. But the thing is - making a cup coffee is basically chemistry, and chemistry needs precision. A small digital scale that can measure in grams will cost you around ₹800-1,000.

Once you start weighing your coffee and water, you'll notice how much more consistent your cups become.

I used to start a stopwatch on my phone earlier, but the scale I have now also has a timer built in. I start it and see how slow or how fast I am pouring.

Making a cup of V60 pour over involves multiple rounds of pouring water and waiting. One tool that measures weight and time makes sense.

Coffee Grinder

You can directly buy ground coffee, but I would not advise you to.

For me, fresh ground coffee is non-negotiable. Pre-ground coffee loses its flavour faster than you can say "filter kaapi".

A hand grinder is your best friend here. Grinders are the costliest part of the coffee setups. Because that definitely makes a lot of difference.

Manual grinders like the Hario Mini Mill (around ₹3,000) or TimeMore C2 (around ₹5,000) will serve you well. Yes, it's a bit of arm workout, but honestly, I find the grinding process quite meditative.

How the brewing works

Fresh hot water goes through the bed of coffee in the filter, extracts the coffee from the ground beans and gets collected in the cup. This process is called percolation.

The Base Recipe

This is the recipe I use to judge the coffee beans when get a new fresh bag.

I have the Timemore C2, and on it, I grind 15g of coffee at 20 clicks. Based on the roast level, I heat the water up to a certain temperature. Light roasts need more heat, around 94-96deg, and dark roast can be done well with 85deg too. Total water I use will be 250g which makes the coffee to water ratio around 1:16.

With the V60 put on a cup, and a paper filter in it, I get ready to brew by rinsing the filter and making it stick to the dripper. Then I put the coffee grounds in and start adding hot water from the gooseneck kettle.

The first phase is called bloom, where I use water that measures 3x the weight of coffee, pour it slowly in circles and wait for up to 45 seconds. I split the remaining water, which is 250 - 45 = 205, into two parts and pour one after the other. So the next stop would be around 147g on the scale, and after the water drains out, final pour comes in making the total weight 250g. I aim to finish this brew around 3:00 minutes.

Now, based on how it tastes, I alter the recipe. If I want to make it more lighter and tea like, I reduce the number of pours. If the acidity is high and I want to balance it with some bitterness, I either crank up the temperature a bit, or reduce the grind size. If it's too bitter, then the opposite.

This is the fun.

While making these cups, I also note down all the things so that I remember what I followed last time and a rating of how it turned out. It is really helpful.

This is all what you need to get started. In the next post, let's take one famous recipe for V60 from the internet and try to understand how it works.

See you.

Keep on brewing!