The Pour Over Coffee

Let me start out by saying this is a P inspired/driven post. If you read this, you would know I’m primarily a tea drinker. So, why am I featuring coffee? 1. This is interesting and educational 2. If I’m going to drink coffee at home, then this is the way to enjoy it. The pour over method seriously brings out a different taste in coffee versus drip or even french press. Have you ever noticed the description that goes along with coffees (and no not flavored coffees)? Coffees’ list descriptors like juicy, berry, chocolate, bourbon, vanilla, etc, much like wines. After tasting coffee brewed using the pour over method, I now understand these descriptors. This whole process is 100% P’s. I cannot even make coffee in the coffee-maker and this is just way too much math for me to obtain a beverage. I did make the graphic and it is still me writing, or is it…kidding it’s me 🙂 Anyway, for anyone who is into coffee or thinking about branching out in their coffee making experience, here we go.

Ratio: The key to the pour over method is getting the right water to coffee weight ratio. A good starting ratio is 16 grams of water to 1 gram of coffee. However, different varieties of coffees may have different ratios. If you know a coffee tends to be strong then reduce the ratio a little bit. This is going to take some tweaking to get your perfect cup of coffee. So let’s get started:

1. Place the mug you are going to use onto the scale. Zero out scale, add in water to get weight of water in grams. Divide grams of water by 16 to get how how many grams of coffee to use. For example: 10 oz of water weighs 300 grams, 300/16=18.75 grams of coffee.
2. Pour water from mug into your kettle (we use this one), weigh out an extra 100 grams of water and add to kettle. Start kettle. Your target temperature is 195-205 F.
3. Weigh out coffee amount obtained in step one. Grind coffee. Your coffee grind should be finer than drip but not nearly as fine as espresso grind.
4. Place mug back on scale, and place pour over cone fitted with a filter on top of the mug. Zero out the scale. When water is to temperature (195-205) pour 100 grams over filter to dampen. This cleans the filter to remove any potential paper flavor. Discard water that has accumulated in mug.
5. Set all back together over scale, and add ground coffee to filter. Zero the scale. Pour just enough water over the grinds to saturate grinds and let sit for 30 seconds. This step is called “blooming” the coffee, allowing the release of Co2 from the grinds.
6. Add remaining water in 2 to 3 equal increments, allowing the water to drain completely before adding the next water addition. If you are using a large amount of water you may need more than 3 additions, you don’t want to overfill the cone.
7. That is it! Even though it seems complicated, it is only about a 3-5 minute process once the water is heated. Sit back and enjoy your perfectly brewed cup of Joe.
Considering how involved this is I feel like calling it Joe is a bit too common, maybe JoStanten the VI hailing from the coast of Columbia (or whatever country/region your coffee is from) would be more fitting. I’ll leave the naming up to you 🙂

For those of you who do not have a scale, here are some basic measurements: for a typical 10 fl oz cup of coffee you will need 3 tbs of ground coffee.

The Rest of the Week:

• French Onion Soup (weekend): we used beef broth purchased from a local meat shop (Rose’s Meat Market), it was very tasty.
• Pasta with Leeks and Bacon: we just used fettuccine in place of the pappardelle.
• Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes: so good, loved the glaze on this. Used ground beef from Coon Rock Farms.
• Thai Basil with Chicken: we subbed out the beef for chicken, since we were already eating ground beef this week. Shrimp would also be good. We also added the carrots, scallions, lime juice, chili, and basil after the first addition of basil was added, and cooked that for about 3 minutes.
• Palmiers: don’t make these…seriously you will eat all of them. Save yourselves now!