This is a guest post by Peter. If you’d like to guest post on this blog, click here.
For a long time no one really cared about pour over coffee. Sure, a few baristas were talking about it, and maybe if you were really lucky you knew of an obscure espresso bar that actually served it to order.
Since that time, pour over coffee benefits have certainly been touted and savored in this day and age of sophisticated coffee drinkers.
And on top of everything, you don’t even need to leave your house to be drinking this fresh, perfectly extracted nirvana.
But why bother? You ask.
Benefits of Pour Over Coffee
1. Pour over coffee results in a cleaner cup of coffee
The pour over coffee method is arguably the cleanest and purest way to make and drink coffee. There is no residue left in the cup because the water is not dripped and is not fully immersed.
205 degree Fahrenheit water is poured into the cone, stirred briefly, and moments later the finished product has entirely drained into the mug. The first time you try pour over coffee you may be taken aback as it is bold yet without even a hint of residue.
2. More efficient if you only want to drink one cup
Oftentimes I want a single cup of coffee at home. I didn’t want to leave to buy a cup but I didn’t want to make a whole pot.
Whether I used a drip pot or a French press I would be left with either significant waste or too little caffeine. The pour over resolves this issue. Just place the cone on top of your mug, pour a single serving, and you’re done.
3. Better extraction than drip, without the mess of French press
The pour over coffee method allows for a very robust extraction because the water is preheated and because the slurry is stirred before all the water soaks through.
This creates a very bold, well extracted mug of coffee in your hands without the long, tedious cleanup required with a press pot. Utilizing the many features of a Cosori gooseneck kettle will make your pouring experience that much easier and much more accurate.
4. Minimal investment to get started
This might be the very best thing about the pour over apparatus. Most of the ones you’ll find for sale, like the Hario v6, as shown on the left, are a single ceramic drip cone that fits on top of a coffee mug.
These are my personal favorites, and the ones I recommend above the others. You can order one for right around $25 setting it apart from drip coffee makers and most French presses.
It’s a simpler version of the one cup coffee maker without the electricity and the ongoing maintenance of cleaning the unit. You can also look into the Chemex glass pour over coffee maker, seen in the image on the left. The Chemex will run you just a little over $30 but makes up to 3 cups.
These resemble an hourglass with the top cut off (without the sand). The filter with the coffee is placed in the top half and the hot water is poured in the top while the coffee nectar flows into the bottom. It is a great option if you are looking to make many cups at one time.
5. Pour over coffee travels
If you’re on vacation or travelling for work, all you have to pack is a pour over coffee dripper, ground coffee, and a filter, and you’ll be drinking great coffee wherever you are. As long as you have access to a way to heat water to 205°F, you’ll be in business.
Most hotel rooms have microwaves so you can heat your water. Bring along a small glass measuring cup (1 – 2 cup size) and you’ll easily be able to pour the hot water over the grounds. (Pour over coffee method is shown further down in the article).
Even if you are camping out in the wild you can take advantage of the simplicity of pour over coffee. With access to a campfire or a Coleman stove to heat up water, you can enjoy a great cup of coffee even in the wilderness!
6. Controllable to your taste
How often have you gone into a coffee house or fast food restaurant and the coffee you purchased doesn’t match what you’re used to at home?
Well, with pour over coffee you can control the strength and taste that you prefer. If you’re dragging and need a bit more strength you have that ability.
7. It’s repeatable
As long as you use the same ingredients each time using the same water temperature, the repeatability of a great cup of pour over coffee is constant. You’ll never have to worry about how your coffee is going to turn out with the pour over coffee method.
8. No coffee maker maintenance
With any type of coffee maker, in time, the taste of the coffee degrades unless you are constantly cleaning it. You have to worry about flushing the unit with a mixture of vinegar and hot water on a regular basis.
This is a maintenance step you can forget about with using the pour over coffee method.
9. Exceptional flavor in every cup
You simply cannot beat the flavor of a pour over cup of coffee. As long as the process is repeated, the flavor will always be outstanding.
10. It’s extremely practical
In today’s minimalist world, pour over coffee is one of the most practical ways of brewing coffee. No need to purchase a fancy and expensive coffee machine to get great coffee any longer. It’s a simple and easy way to consistently brew great coffee!
The Pour Over Coffee Method
(click on any image for a larger view)
But most coffee shops just didn’t care about it – probably because it wasn’t as feasible a way of selling mass quantities of coffee inexpensively. Fair enough.
Now things are different. More and more cafés are jumping on the bandwagon setting up a full-scale pour over coffee bar. Well-trained barista happily pour water into little ceramic cones like the Hario white ceramic funnel all day long. Most of the shops don’t even charge extra for it because it’s becoming such a staple of the routine coffee drinker’s life.
Here are a couple of other articles on this site dealing with pour-over coffee drippers.
OXO Good Grips Pour Over Coffee Dripper is a Cut Above the Rest
Pour Over Coffee Dripper Review – Plastic vs Ceramic
You, in essence, become the pour over coffee maker when you embark on this innovative and simple method for making coffee. You just might be joining a whole new legion of pour over coffee makers.
Three Highly-Rated Electric Kettles
Perfect for Pour Over Coffee
The Benefits of Pour Over Coffee are Numerous
Pour over coffee almost seems too simple and inexpensive to make such a great tasting cup of java. There’s got to be something wrong with it, doesn’t there?
Nope. Pour over coffee benefits are many. It is less expensive than other coffee brewing methods and it will save you time and the waste of excess coffee that you didn’t drink. If you become a pour over coffee brewer, you just might never go back to traditional methods of brewing your favorite cup of java.
Since I ditched the automatic coffee dripper for my pour over coffee dripper I’ve never turned back!
Peter John McLean loves nothing more than brewing up perfectly extracted madness in the deep recesses of his coffee lab..