Quick Start Guide to Hand Pour Over | Is it really that difficult to learn hand pour over coffee by yourself?

Pour over is the most basic and simple way to brew premium coffee. There is no complicated machine, just hot water, filter and coffee. In just a few minutes, you can brew a cup of fresh coffee.

Hand pouring is also the most exciting part of specialty coffee. By adjusting different parameters during brewing, including: grinding degree, water temperature, water speed and time, it is enough to change the final taste of the coffee. This article will introduce the basic concepts so that everyone can have enough knowledge. After reading this article, you can start making your first cup of hand pouring coffee!

Hand brewing starts with grinding. Coffee beans must be ground into coffee powder before they can be turned into a cup of coffee. There are two main types of grinders. One type uses a blade that rotates at high speed to randomly "crack" the coffee. The other type uses two rotating blades to systematically grind the coffee beans in the middle of the blades. I won't go into the individual theories here. For now, just remember that specialty coffee will only use the latter - the blade type, which is controlled and has a high degree of uniformity.

The coarseness of the grind will affect the extraction of the brew. It is done by adjusting the gap between the two blades. The finer the gap, the finer the powder will be. The finer the powder, the larger the area that the hot water can contact with the coffee. Hand brewing generally uses medium to medium-fine powder, which is roughly between fine salt and fine sugar. Don't worry too much about how to achieve the right coarseness. Learning to brew coffee is actually learning to use your taste to adjust your hands. As long as you learn the theory well, you will know how to adjust it later.

After you have the coffee powder, the next step is to prepare hot water. The water temperature will affect the flavor of the brewed coffee. To make it easier for you to remember and operate, you can simply set the temperature between 85-90 degrees to brew your first cup of coffee. You can search for my earlier article on the relationship between temperature and flavor later.

With coffee powder and hot water, we can brew the aroma of coffee beans and turn it into our favorite coffee drink. Coffee powder needs to be filtered to separate coffee liquid and coffee grounds. Different filter designs have their own water injection requirements. Under different requirements, the goal is to achieve an average extraction of the flavor of coffee powder. Remember one key point: "average", which will be very helpful for understanding and practicing water injection techniques in the future.

The most common hand-brewed coffee filter cup for specialty coffee is the Japanese Hario V60, which has a V-shaped filter paper that falls into the cup through a large water flow hole. The feature is high playability, and the user can change the flavor characteristics of the extraction by changing the force, direction, and rhythm of the water injection. To brew a good cup of coffee with the V60, it often requires a certain amount of experience and a complete understanding of the impact of each brewing parameter on the taste. Therefore, we do not recommend that novices learn to use the V60 by themselves, because the road is more rugged than other filter cups.

Common Hario V60 filter cup

For beginners of hand pouring, using a fine-pore hand pouring filter cup can provide a higher margin of error (error tolerance). Because the filter cup is designed with the aperture size calculated to limit the flow rate, the speed of water filling, whether it is uniform, and other influencing factors are relatively unnoticeable. For example, the Kalita Wave (commonly known as the cake cup), which is usually recommended for beginners, belongs to this category.

Kalita Wave is recommended for self-study

Regardless of which filter cup you use, it usually takes 2-4 minutes to complete the water injection. The water injection can be divided into two parts. The first step is to wet all the coffee powder with a small amount of water, and then wait for about 30-60 seconds to allow the carbon dioxide in the coffee powder to be discharged. This step is called blooming. The theory is to replace the space originally occupied by carbon dioxide with water so that the flavor of the coffee can be extracted in the second part of water injection.

The closer the beans are to the roasting date, and the darker the roasted coffee beans are, the more bubbles will come out.

The second part is pouring water, which requires learning how to be stable (consistency). Time and water volume are the most important parameters, so hand-brewed coffee is generally recorded with an electronic scale and a timer. A simple example is that if the coffee brewed with 2 minutes/200g water/15g powder is too sour and light, you can use a longer time and more water next time to adjust the taste.

There are many different schools of hand-brewed coffee, especially the V60 water injection method. But for those who are new to fine coffee, these schools are often daunting. In fact, hand-brewed coffee can be very simple. Using a water dispenser to brew pre-made drip coffee can also be considered a kind of hand-brewed coffee. The most important thing is that whether the coffee is brewed well or not should be judged by our tongue, not by whether the posture of hand-brewed coffee is beautiful enough. Finally, one thing is certain, that is, good coffee beans with freshly ground hand-brewed coffee are definitely a completely different taste experience from commercial coffee.

I often encourage everyone to learn to brew coffee at home because "brewing a cup of coffee for yourself will definitely make it strong!" This strong feeling can be accompanied by abundant emotions and an overflowing sense of accomplishment, or it can be a real and solid flavor. This "strong" feeling is sometimes difficult to give with other brewing methods.

To brew a cup of "strong" coffee, there are many factors to consider, such as the coarseness of the ground particles, water temperature, water-to-powder ratio, coffee bean type, coffee bean processing method, coffee bean roasting, etc. If you encounter any problems, you may wish to communicate with your peers and learn together. Of course, you can also leave a message to the editor, and the editor will do its best to answer it~

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