How to Brew Coffee Like a Barista: Easy Pour-Over Recipe

Hey guys, what's up? Today we're going to be talking about pour over coffees. So a pour over is my favorite way to brew coffee. I think that it creates a really nice delicate cup that can produce nice florals, can produce like acidity, sweetness, fruitiness, and can be kind of like an all-in-one brewing method. Like almost every single coffee out there is going to be really nice at this brewing method and it's just a super delicious safe way to brew coffee. So you're going to need some things to get started. First thing you're going to need to brew coffee is a scale. This doesn't have to be a fancy coffee scale. It can be literally just any kitten scale that you find at the grocery store. This one is a Time War scale. This is probably my preference for brewing coffee. I think it's around $80 Canadian. So it's not crazy expensive in terms of coffee scales. That being said, it's perfect. Like I've got no plums or quarrels. It is, it just does the job fantastic. So this is the one that I would probably recommend for somebody who's like ready to get going on their coffee journey. And the important thing about the scale is that it goes to 0.1 gram. Ideally something with a timer is nice because if you don't have a timer on your scale, you're probably going to want to put one on your phone. And the reason you're going to want to scale is that there's two very important things in brewing coffee. There's time and there's ratio. And both of these things can manipulate how strong or weak your coffee is going to be. So basically the longer you leave your coffee in water, the more it is going to extract. So this is why like French press coffees have like a really heavy texture to them is because they're sitting in coffee for like five, eight minutes, 10 minutes, depending on whatever recipe you're following. But for a pour over, it's generally around three minutes, but we'll get to that. And as far as ratio goes, that's just how much water to coffee you're using. So if you use less water to coffee, then you're going to have, again, a stronger texture. If you use a higher water percentage in your ratio, then it's going to be a little bit more tea-like and a little bit less texture. For pour overs, I generally recommend between two and three minutes. Generally, anything under three minutes is my goal when I brew coffee. If it's around two minutes and 30 seconds, I'm like, that's the golden zone. That's the sweet spot for a nice light roasted coffee. And for my ratio, I'm either doing one to 15 to one to 17. So that would be one gram of coffee for every 16-ish grams of water. I don't really mess with the perfectionism of my ratio. If I'm a couple of grams here or there, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. It's going to taste very similar to what you would get if you're two grams more water versus two grams less water. I think anywhere from like 18 to 22 grams is very reasonable amount of coffee for somebody to drink in the morning. So for 20 grams of coffee, you're going to go around 320 grams, 340 grams of water. We're not going to get into the details about which coffee you brew this way, which coffee you do that way. We're going to keep it very basic. And the next thing you're going to need is a coffee grinder. Ideally something with repeatable numbers. You want to be able to grind something and have that grind be consistent. So spice grinders where you push a button and then hold it and then it grinds for a while and then you just stop it whenever you feel like it's ground correctly. Those don't work. Don't use those. This one here is the cheaper fellow grinder called the Opus. I think this one's around 250, 280 Canadian, something like that, which is a lot of money. Like that is expensive for a coffee grinder. And this is the cheaper one. So you can get a lot of cheaper options than this. If you're willing to do the work, you can do hand grinders. If you don't want to do the work, you definitely don't have to. You can get cheaper coffee grinders for around 60, $70 from Bodum, which I've had before. And they work just as well as something like this. The important thing is that you're grinding consistently because your time and your ratio won't matter at all. If your grind is fluctuating all over the place, then you won't want to brew coffee anymore because you're getting frustrated. Like why does it not taste good? Just something with repeatable consistency. That's it. Next thing you're going to need is a kettle. Ideally something with a gooseneck like this. This means that you're able to pour really smoothly and accurately because when you're brewing your coffee and you see a little bubble of like coffee grounds that aren't wet, you're able to target it. This is also from Fellow. This is 185 Canadian. Again, coffee equipment can be expensive. The nice thing about this is that it's temperature controlled. You don't need something with a gooseneck. You can use something that has a wide spout as well. It is a little bit harder to pour, but you can totally get the job done with something like that. So you really don't need to be spending all this money. Or if you just have a carafe that pours nicely, you can take your hot water, pour it in the carafe, and then brew your coffee like that. And speaking of carafes, we have one here from Kinto. This is a 600 ml carafe. You can find this at Ellis Studio. Not sponsored, just saying. You can find it at Ellis Studio. That's where they are. The reason you want something like this is because coffee, when it is freshly, freshly brewed, it is extremely hot. And there's nothing worse than like taking that first sip of coffee in the morning and then scalding your tongue and then not being able to taste anything for the rest of the day. So the nice thing is that this is going to maintain all of your temperature and you can pour it into a drinking vessel like a little cup here. And then your cup is going to decrease in temperature so it's nice, easy to drink. But your carafe has a lot more thermal mass so it's going to stay warm and then you can slowly just like keep topping it up. And then you're never going to burn your tongue again. Next you're going to need something to brew the coffee with. So here we have a little origami and a little wooden holder for it. This is a ceramic origami. You can get these in plastic. You can get them in different shapes. Kinto makes them. Hario makes them. Origami makes them. Everybody makes a type of brewer that is going to be a little bit different than everybody else. This is the one I prefer. I like these conical shapes. I think that you get the best extraction out of the coffee. Everything gets wet. Goes through the funnel nice and easily. Feels more consistent to me than something that has a flat bottom. But there's definitely benefits to those as well. I just think that for beginners and for just like entry-level conical brewers like this, anything in a cone is just going to be the best thing to get started with. Another reason I like origami is that it has these sides here and it doesn't come into full contact with your filter paper. So when you put your filter paper in and it touches all the way around, you're creating a surface tension barrier there. And in theory, coffee is going to have a lot harder time passing through that space and it's going to cling onto the sidewalls and then you're going to feel like it's getting stuck a lot easier. So that's why I like something like the origami. It just like has a lot less surface tension there so the coffee is able to freely flow down from the sides of the funnel and then theoretically brews a little bit faster. Now let's talk about the method. There's three big pours that I use in my pour-over method. I didn't develop this. Somebody else developed this. I just use it because I think it's really really good. So your first pour is going to be within the first 30 seconds of time. So as soon as you start pouring, you start your timer. And in that first 30 seconds, you're going to use some water to bloom the coffee. I use three times the amount of water to coffee. So if I use 20 grams of coffee, I use 60 grams of water for my bloom. Coffee, when it is roasted, it creates carbon dioxide which gets trapped inside the beans. So when you grind it, really fresh coffee is going to have a lot of carbon dioxide. When you're blooming your coffee, that first 30 second pour, you're trying to let all those bubbles come out and escape and not get trapped within the bulk of the brew. So we're just saturating the coffee, letting it all gas out, and then we're going to start our second pour at the 30 second mark. I try and be a little bit aggressive with this next pour. I think that this is a way for you to really gauge the speed of how fast you're brewing coffee. If you're just taking your time and you're pouring really slowly, your coffee is going to brew slow. And then if you're really aggressive and you pour quickly, your coffee is going to brew faster. And the more water that's inside your dripper or your brewer is going to mean that there's a heavier gravitational pull through the coffee. And it's going to push all that coffee through the filter a little bit faster. So that's why I like to put a big second pour. So that's why I'm doing 140 grams. So my first pour was 60 grams of water. My second pour is 140 grams. This is the biggest pour that we're going to use. The more water I add, the heavier this dripper is going to be and the faster that is going to drain down. And we get to our third pour. This is just whatever water is left over. So for 20 grams of coffee, we're brewing a complete total of 320 grams of water. So that means my third pour is going to add 120 grams of water at the one minute and five second mark. And this pour is a little bit more gentle. I'm just trying not to disrupt the coffee bed at this time. I'm trying to keep all the coffee nice and flat at the so that it's a nice even extraction. And this is just the remaining water to finish our brew. And then finally, I give it a little swirl just to make sure everything is incorporated nicely. If you're having major issues, you probably want to adjust your grind size. And that's why having a grinder with adjustable measurements is so important. And you can find the carafe, the holder and the dripper at Ellis Studio. If you guys are interested in getting something like that, you can go check it out. It's available online or in store. But yeah, that's it. Hope you guys enjoyed. And if you have any questions, I'll answer them down in the comments. And we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching. Peace