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Ultimate Guide to Pourover Coffee

24 OCT 2019

This is the ultimate guide to pourover coffee, brought to you by NOC.

Brewing is the final stage of the coffee making process. It’s the part where you finally extract those delicious flavour notes and aromas out of the roasted and ground beans to make the drink we all love so much. Out of all the more traditional manual brewing methods, the humble pourover is definitely one of our all-time favourites because it’s so simple and meditative. It’s also getting increasingly popular with coffee enthusiasts, who are interested in experimenting with different variables and creating their own coffee recipes in the comfort of their own homes.

In this week’s Brew Guide, we will provide a starting place for those of you who would like to start brewing your own pourover coffee at home with NOC house blends or single origins.

Ingredients and material

You will need:

– NOC beans
– A pourover kettle: we use the Fellow Stagg pourover kettle
– A coffee grinder
– Filter paper (if required for the dripper you have at home)
– A server/coffee mug
– A pourover dripper: we use the December dripper
– Hot water
– Thermometer
– Scale
– Timer
– Coffee spoon

Getting the water temperature right is crucial for you to achieve a delicious coffee. Avoid using boiling water and check the water temperature before your start brewing – the optimal water temperature is 91-92 degrees Celsius.

Check that you have the equipment in the right size. Drippers work best when they are half or two-thirds full: if you have the Hario V60-VD01, which is meant for making 2 cups of drip coffee maximum, don’t try to make 5 cups of coffee at once because the dripper will overflow.

The amount of coffee and hot water you will need depends on how many cups of coffee you would like to brew. For every cup of coffee we serve in store, we use 240g of hot water and 16g of ground coffee.

Grind size matters: a finer ground will allow more extraction and result in a stronger cup of coffee, while a coarser ground will allow less extraction and result in a weaker cup of coffee – adjust your grind size to taste.

Step-by-step Process

STEP 1: Line your dripper with filter paper and put it on top of the server. Wet the filter paper with hot water and dispose of the water that drips into the server.

STEP 2: Grind coffee to a fine, sugar-like grind. To preserve the flavours in your coffee, it’s best to grind your coffee seconds before you start brewing.

Photo Credit: littlecoffeeplace.com

STEP 3: Pour the ground coffee into the dripper. Give your dripper a little shake, to make sure the coffee ground is distributed evenly in the dripper.

STEP 4: Zero your scale. Pour 40g of hot water into your dripper in an outward spiral, starting from the centre of the dripper. Finish pouring in 30 seconds. Your ground coffee will rise like yeast – this is called blooming, a process in which the CO2 escapes from your coffee beans.

STEP 5: Pour an extra 120g of hot water in an outward spiral, starting from the centre of the dripper; when you reach the edge of the dripper, begin pouring in an inward spiral and finish at the centre. Finish pouring in 50 seconds.

STEP 6: Pour another 200g of hot water into the dripper in an outward, then inward spiral motion. Once finished, put down your kettle and observe your coffee.

STEP 7: When your coffee ground starts to dry, and almost all the water has dripped down to the server, pour another 40 g of water at the centre of your dripper.

STEP 8: Set aside your dripper and give your coffee a little stir. Your home-brewed NOC goodness is ready to serve.

Last but not least, it will take some trial and error for you to figure out the best pourover recipe for every coffee. The taste of a pourover may vary according to the roast level of coffee, your choice of dripper, water temperature and more. For more brewing tips, please take a look at the brew guide video below, or feel free to have a chat with our baristas the next time you drop by for a coffee: