3 Pour Over Mistakes Beginners Make

Pour over coffee is, in my opinion, the ultimate way to brew coffee at home. But there are some small yet important details that are crucial to get right. So today I'll go over the three most common mistakes that beginners tend to make at home when they first get into pour over. So the first big mistake that I see is that beginners tend to underestimate the impact of water. Having the right kind of water is just so crucial when it comes to coffee, especially for manual brewing. Espresso tends to be a bit more forgiving. I would compare the importance of water to how big a factor lighting is in photography and video. So for instance, if you have a great camera with a very expensive lens, you'll still get really bad shots if you don't have good lighting. It's exactly the same in coffee. If you have the best grinder and the nicest beans, they're still not going to taste great as pour-over coffee if you're using hard water with a high alkalinity. I would actually say there's almost no reason to buy expensive light roasted coffee from a third-wave roaster unless you have access to really good water. So what is good water you might ask? A few years ago there was a lot of talk about adding minerals such as magnesium and calcium to the water to boost extraction. But in my opinion, the most important thing to pay attention to is that the water is soft and relatively low in alkalinity. I have a long post about this topic on my blog, I'll put a link down in the description below. But the TLDR is that you should go to the supermarket, buy a bottle of soft good water and try to brew your coffee with it just one time so you can experience the impact that this makes. Don't go for one of the expensive brands of mineral water because those actually tend to be pretty high in minerals, be pretty hard. Instead go for something that's labeled as Drinking water, as these types tend to be purified. And be a lot softer. If you look at the label of the water, it's usually good to go for something that's low in TDS. So that would be something around 30 to 80 TDS. But as long as it's under 120, it's usually okay. The second tip is about adjusting the brew ratio. So the brew ratio is just a way to express the amount of coffee and the amount of water that you're using in your brew. However, if you're using a brew ratio that's not right for the equipment that you have, you risk either getting very thin coffee or coffee that tends to be bitter and feeling kind of astringent. So if you're getting inspiration from coffee blogs or gurus on YouTube, they will often suggest that you use a quite wide brew ratio And that can be okay, as long as you have a good flat burr grinder. But if you're using more affordable entry-level equipment, that would be a grinder such as the Baratza Encore, or maybe the Hario hand grinder. Those grinders are not really able to grind that consistent. They tend to create uneven particles and a lot of fines. And as a result, they can easily create bitter coffee if you're using a wide brew ratio. With this type of grinder, usually it's better to go a little bit coarser and then make the brew ratio a little bit stronger. I would suggest somewhere around 1 to 15. So another way to explain that would be that you should use 66 grams of coffee per liter of water. Wider brew ratios such as 1 to 17, 1 to 18 are perfectly fine once you have a bit more experience, but I wouldn't suggest them for beginners. Another mistake that I often see is that beginners tend to create too much agitation. So one reason that this can happen is that you don't have a gooseneck kettle like this with a precision spout, but instead you're using your regular electric kettle at home. So when you're pouring with this type of kettle the stream will be very strong and that will kind of churn up the brew bed and that can cause excessive bitterness in your coffee. Luckily there's some pretty easy solutions. So the first one is just to get a cheap gooseneck kettle which I would say is a really useful accessory if you're going to get into pour over. But another cheap option is that you can get this one here the Hario drip assist and then you can simply place it on ...on top of the brewer and then that will take care of the agitation. So stirring, swirling and all kinds of agitation really all help to push the extraction higher, which is something that you will need sometimes if you're brewing a very light roasted coffee that's not that soluble. But I think that's often not the case for beginners. They're usually brewing more medium roasted coffees and for that reason I think it's a good idea to be careful with the agitation. If your coffee is tasting bitter, sharp, astringent and the brew bed looks kind of muddy, Then usually it's a good idea to take it a little bit easy with the agitation. If you have any pour over tips that you want to share with your fellow coffee friends, then drop them in the comment section down below. By the way, if you want to learn more about agitation and how to minimize it, then I have a whole video about the Hario Drip Assist and how to use it. I'll put the video right here and then you can just click it and then I'll see you over in that video.