What is Pour-Over Coffee?

 4 Reasons You Should Be Drinking Pour Over Coffee

source: http://totallyuniquelife.com/4-reasons-you-should-be-drinking-pour-over-coffee/

Written by bob on October 11, 2011

A year ago 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. If you aren’t familiar with pour over coffee, here is a brief pictorial description of the process. (Click on any image below to see a larger image.)

Pour Over Coffee – The Process

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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, now more and more cafés are jumping on the bandwagon, setting up a full scale pour over coffee bar with a well-trained barista happily pouring 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.

And yet you don’t even need to leave your house to be drinking this fresh, perfectly extracted nirvana.

But why bother?  You ask.

1. Provides 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.  200 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 pourover coffee you may be taken aback, it is bold yet without even a hint of residue.

2. More efficient if you only want to drink one cup

So many times in the day I used to want a single cup of coffee whilst I sat at my house.  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 a little more caffeine than I was looking for.  The pour over resolves this.  Just place the cone on top of your mug, pour a single serving and you’re done.

Click to see a wide range of Pour Over Coffee items

3. Better extraction than drip, without the mess of French press

It might seem like I’m harping on the same point as Number 1, but I’m not.  There is a distinct difference here.  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.

4. You can buy one for around $25.

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

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, are a single ceramic drip cone that fits on top of a coffee mug.  These are my personal favorite, and the ones I recommend above the others.  You can order one for right around $25 – yet again 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 above on the right, which 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.  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.

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.  Not only is it less expensive than other coffee brewing methods, 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.