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What is a Pourover?

Black Market Roasters looks at what a pourover is, where it came from and what makes a great pourover?

First patented around 1800, this filter method is uber popular in Japan. It is becoming seriously trendy now in Australia and in the US they have quite a developed specialty filter coffee market (in some areas at least). In its simplest form, it is a paper filter which sits in a cone-shaped device, ground coffee is placed inside the filter and hot water poured over the top. The water then drips out slowly into your cup…easy! Well, it is done very poorly in many cafe’s I have been to, here is our take on it:

Method
It is very important to heat all glassware and utensils used as contact with a cooled surface will drastically reduce the temperature of the water and affect cup flavour.

What you need:

  • Pouring jug
  • Fresh light roasted coffee
  • Glass or mug
  • Filtered water if possible
  • Kettle
  • V60 or pourover cone
  • Filter paper
  • Grinder

This process can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Some of the best bars in the world have quite different methods to make a filter coffee so just play around yourself, just like we have and find a method that suits you. Here is ours…

  1. Using 15g light roast coffee, grind to sand-like coarseness
  2. Boil 265ml of water
  3. Preheat filter and cup by pouring boiling water through it (gets rid of papery taste as well)
  4. Place the ground coffee into the filter and ensure it all sits evenly and is settled
  5. When you water is boiled, pour straight away into your pouring jug (one with a nice thin spout for ease of direct pouring and to control the flow rate), you are aiming for the water to hit the coffee at 95 degrees, so move quickly. If you do not have a pouring vessel, then use your kettle, just try as hard as possible not to pour large chunks of water at a time, do your best
  6. Pour slowly into the middle of the grounds, just enough so that the whole coffee puck is wet. Stop your pour and wait 30 seconds. You will see it bubble up, this is important as it releases CO2 and allows the grounds to settle into a nice uniform distribution, ready for the full extraction
  7. Now pour the water in slow pours into and around the centre of the coffee bed, just enough so the water raises above the dry coffee line, stop your pour and wait for it to fall just below that line and start again. Repeat this till the 256ml of water runs out. If it doesn’t run out, then stop your extraction at 2.5 mins
  8. Allow to cool and presto, you have made a great pourover!!!!

Feel free to experiment with different grind settings, water temps and you can even stir the coffee slurry mid-pour to give the coffee more body in the cup. For such as simple device it takes almost a lifetime to master!

At our Black Market Roasters online specialty coffee bean store, we sell light roast single origin coffee and blends that are perfect for pourovers. We would recommend joining our Subscription so we can send you freshly light roasted coffee every 3 weeks. We really take you on a trip around the world with exotic origins and unique blends.