How to Use a Pour Over Coffee Maker (Beginner’s Guide)

A pour-over coffee maker is one of the best ways to brew a rich, flavorful cup with complete control over the process. Unlike automatic machines, this method allows you to fine-tune variables like water temperature, pour speed, and grind size to highlight the unique flavors of your coffee beans.

Using a pour-over may seem intimidating at first, but it’s a straightforward process once you understand the key steps. The right equipment, proper grind size, and a steady pour are essential for achieving a well-extracted brew. In this guide, you’ll learn how to set up your pour-over, perfect your technique, and avoid common mistakes that can lead to bitterness or under-extraction.

What You’ll Need:

• Food or coffee scale
• Burr grinder
• Gooseneck kettle
• Timer
• Pour over cone
• Paper cone filters (make sure they fit the size of your pour over cone)
• Carafe or mug
• 21 grams of coffee
• 350 grams of water

How to Use a Pour-Over Coffee Maker: Step by Step

Step 1: Measure your ingredients

• Weigh 21 grams worth of coffee beans on a food scale.
• You can also weigh 350 grams of water into your kettle, or use the scale to make sure you pour 350 grams of water total by the end of brewing.

Step 2: Grind the beans

• Grind the beans to a medium coarse consistency.
• The grounds should resemble the consistency of kosher salt.

Step 3: Rinse the filter, put it in the cone and add coffee

• Place the paper filter into your cone and rest the cone on top of a carafe or a mug.
• Make sure the mug is large enough so that your brewed coffee doesn’t touch the bottom of the cone.

Once that’s done, you’ll need to rinse your filter and heat the cone.

• Heat water to 96-100 degrees Celsius (205-212 degrees Fahrenheit). This is not the same water you’ll use for brewing — this is just to heat the cone and wet the filter.
• Rinse your paper filter and then dump this water out of your carafe before you begin brewing.
• If you’re using a ceramic cone, this will also help heat the cone.

After you pour the water out, here’s what you should do:

• Add your coffee grounds to the cone and give it a shake to level out the grounds.
• Place the cone back on your carafe.
• Place both on top of the scale, then tare it. This will help you weigh the water you are using (you won’t be using it all at once).

Step 4: Start adding water

• Start your timer and pour 60 grams of water over the bed of coffee. Make sure to saturate all of the grounds at once.

• After 30-45 seconds, pour 145 grams of water in concentric circles over the bed of coffee. You can also pour the water in a spiral motion.
• The main technique is to make sure the stream of water is falling at a consistent flow rate.

• Once the previous water is filtered through, pour another 145 grams of water.

According to the amount of coffee and water you used, around 3-5 minutes should have elapsed by this point.

Step 5: Enjoy your coffee

• Wait for the water to filter through.
• Dump the used filter into a trash or compost bin and enjoy your coffee!

How Does A Pour Over Coffee Maker Work

A pour over coffee mimics the motion of falling water over a bed of coffee grounds, similar to the way a drip coffee machine disperses water over coffee grounds. Through both of these methods, hot water extracts the flavors from the coffee as it seeps through the grounds, resulting in your brewed cup of coffee.

However, with a pour over, the water is manually poured over the grounds by hand. The flow rate of this water tends to be more gentle than automatically brewed coffee, which results in a more nuanced extraction of better flavors.

Although there is a general amount of water and coffee that users tend to brew for pour over coffee, a pour over coffee is a handcrafted method that allows you to customize these amounts when you become more experienced in brewing.

You can alter the grind size of the coffee, the weight of the beans, and the temperature of the water to better highlight the flavors of particular coffees depending on their region, when they were roasted, and more.

Pour over cones also come in several shapes and materials, which will affect how your coffee brews. While you can alter your brewing recipes to reflect this, the consistent trait amongst all pour over methods is that you are manually pouring water over a bed of coffee to filter the grounds.

How to Make the Most Of Your Pour Over Coffee Maker

• Use good coffee. Pour over coffee makers are meant to highlight the qualities of thoughtfully sourced coffee, especially single origin beans. Try to buy whole bean coffee so you can grind fresh, and use the coffee within the month of purchase.
• Grind evenly. Grinding evenly means making sure every particle of your coffee grounds is the same size for a consistent extraction of flavors. A burr grinder is the type of grinder that will get you this. If you’re unable to purchase one, ask a coffee shop or grocery store who likely has one in-store to grind the coffee for you.
• Brew with filtered water. Pour over coffee is a brewing method intended for delicate coffees, and filtered water will also be more delicate than tap water–which is filled with hard minerals like chlorine and calcium carbonate. Filtered water has more ideal minerals for brewing, which will better showcase the flavors of your coffee.
• Use a gooseneck kettle. Tea kettles, water boilers, and pots without a gooseneck spout tend to pour water over coffee at an inconsistent rate, making it difficult to control the water flow. Flow rate is crucial for evenly extracted pour over coffee. Because a gooseneck kettle disperses water at a much slower pace, it is easier to control.
• Use a scale. It’s important to weigh both your coffee and your water in order to avoid overextraction. Without a scale, it is easy to over or underextract your coffee.

Troubleshooting Your Pour Over

• My coffee tastes astringent or sour. It’s likely that your coffee is underextracted, which means there was not enough flavor taken from your grounds. Try to adjust the grind size to be finer. If this doesn’t work, try decreasing the amount of coffee used by 1-3 grams, or increase the amount of water accordingly.
• My coffee tastes ashy, burnt, or bitter. Your coffee could be overextracted, which means too much flavor was absorbed from the grounds. Your grind size might be too fine, or you used too much coffee. Try to adjust the grind to be more coarse, and if this doesn’t work, use 1-3 grams less coffee.
• My coffee tastes watery, sour, and bitter. You may have used too much water, or your pour over technique may have an inconsistent flow rate. It is important to adjust your technique so that you are touching every part of the coffee bed with the same amount of water at the same flow rate. With time and practice you’ll improve!

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