How to Make Pour Over Coffee – A Simple Tutorial and Brew Framework

Are you new to pour over coffee? Have you struggled to dial in your pour over process? The question I get more than any other is what is my “go to” pour over recipe. While I am constantly adjusting things based on the coffee, brewer, etc., I have developed a framework that I continually come back to when brewing any pour over and is usually my starting point when looking to dial in a new coffee. In this article, I share my simple, yet flexible brewing framework and recipe for making pour over coffee. It is a very flexible framework that scales up and down based on brew size and has a variety of other parameters you can change to adjust the final result.

The Framework

At the bottom of the post is the step-by-step instructions for the recipe, but below is an overview at a high level:

• Dosage: The recipe can adjust from 12g to 30g (or more). In this post I’ll be using 20g as the coffee dosage because the numbers are easy to work with.
• Ratio: 1:16 – 1 gram coffee to 16 grams water. For this example, it is 20g of coffee to 320g of water.
• Bloom: 3x coffee weight, wait 30-45 seconds. For this exampe, you would bloom with 60g of water.
• Pours: After the bloom you split the final brew amount (260g in this example) into two pours (two, 130g pours in this example). If I increase the coffee dose to above 24g, I usually split the final pours into three instead of two.
• Total brew time: I usually don’t get too worried about total brew time as long as the final cup tastes good, but anywhere in the 2:45-3:30 range is good.

Additional Variables

The above is the framework that I start with, but there are some variables you can work with within this framework to adjust the final cup of coffee:

• Grind Size: I usually start with medium to medium fine as the grind, but will adjust finer or coarser based on the coffee I am brewing, the brewer I am using, and what specifically I am trying to get out of the coffee.
• Water Temperature: I usually brew close to 210°F (99°C) because most of the coffee I drink is roasted very light. In general anywhere between 195-212°F (90-100°C) works for light-roasted coffees, 185-200°F (85-93°C) for medium-roasted coffees, and 175-190°F (79-88°C) for dark-roasted coffees. Just remember, the higher the water temperature, the higher the extraction during brewing.
• Brewer: While the fundamentals of most pour over brewers are similar, their geometric, material, size, etc. all have an impact on the final cup you brew. I have many different brewers and switch between them frequently, but the brewer I am using does impact the overall brew.
• Agitation: Agitation can take the form of swirling or stiring (I don’t recommend shaking!). Increased agitation throughout the brew can increase extraction of the final cup of coffee. Usually I will do some mildly aggressive to gentle swirls after each pour to help fully saturate the grounds. On brews where I am trying to increase the extraction, I sometimes add in some additional stiring.