Published on 5. September 2024 by Holy Bean Coffee Roasters
Why We Love Pour Over
Pour over – the most beloved brewing method among coffee nerds. A brewing method that truly allows the coffee to shine by letting the many unique characteristics and flavor notes be expressed.
If you love coffee and are curious about how terroir, processing, and especially the roasting profile affect your coffee experience, then you should hand-brew your coffee. The manual brewing process, which pour over is, gives you full control over the brewing process and gives you as a coffee lover the full coffee experience.
What is pour over Pour over is a manual traditional brewing method, where you, very simply explained, slowly pour hot water over ground coffee in a filter. It is a method where you have full control over all processes in the brewing such as the amount of coffee and water, the temperature of the water and not least the brewing time itself. For this brewing method, we always use a gooseneck kettle to achieve the best possible control when pouring the water over the coffee. To achieve the ultimate coffee experience, it is also important whether you use filtered water or not and how you pour your water over the coffee, blooming, etc. At Holy Bean, through many years of experience and work with different water, we have experienced how important the quality of the water is. A coffee brewed using exactly the same method can taste very different, whether you use unfiltered water or whether you brew in Funen or Copenhagen. Therefore, we prefer to use filtered water, so we remove all disturbances from the coffee experience itself.
Does the coffee taste better when you hand-brew? If you ask us, the simple answer is YES. When you brew your coffee as a pour over, you can control the many details that help to highlight the coffee’s natural flavor notes and aromas. And this brewing method highlights precisely the subtle nuances in the coffee, which are often overlooked by other brewing methods. All types of coffee can be brewed with this method, but we would still recommend a light-roasted specialty coffee, where high quality and the roasting profile itself mean that you can taste the unique flavor notes that come from terroir, processing method and the roasting itself. If you choose a coffee from Holy Bean, it is precisely the balance and harmony in the coffee that we focus on when we roast our coffees. The balance between the acidic and the sweet, between richness and fullness as well as the light and delicate.
Which pour over brewing method is the best? It is difficult to say which pour over brewing method is the best. It depends a lot on what you want to bring out in your coffee, which again depends a lot on preferences. Let’s take three different brewing methods as a starting point, which we can alternate between depending on what we want to highlight with the individual coffee. These are the three classics Kalita, Hario V60 and Chemex. All three brewing methods can do something different. If you want to highlight the fruity and acidic nuances in your coffee, then a brewing method on Hario V60 is preferable. If, on the other hand, you want to tone down the acidity, as you prefer sweetness and fullness, then it is a good idea to brew on Kalita Wave. If you brew on the Chemex pot, you achieve a good balance and body.
Brewing guide
All our coffees can of course be brewed as you wish. But if you want to try out what we are talking about when we say pour over, then we would recommend that you try Ethiopia Shakisso or El Salvador La Cumbre. Our Ethiopian coffee is precisely a very floral coffee with notes of black tea and citrus. It is high in acidity, and this really comes to the fore when you brew it as a pour over. If you want a less acidic coffee, you can also go with our coffee from La Cumbre in El Salvador. It is a coffee that is low in acidity and with a more soft and round taste. The notes are butterscotch and ripe berries. We would recommend you, if pour over is relatively new to you, to brew on Kalita Wave filter funnel, size 185 or Hario V60 . It is easy to brew on and reduces the risk of errors.
You will need:
30 grams of ground coffee.
Grind level medium-coarse.
Kalita Wave 185 funnel + paper filter + scale.
500 ml water 92-96 C (if possible, filtered for lime).
Total brewing time 3.5-4 min.
How to do it:
Pre-wet the filter with a little of your hot water.
Pour approx. 70 grams of water over the coffee. Let the coffee bloom for approx. 30 sec.
Now pour approx. 200 grams of water on in circular motions.
At 1.5 min. add a further 2 x 115 grams. The coffee must not run dry.
