I Wish I Knew This Sooner about Pourovers

0:00 Everyone says you need a gooseeneck kettle to make better pourovers. But uh what if that's actually to your detriment? Now, for the longest time, in order to get into pourover coffees, people recommend you get a gooseeneck kettle. Something with a thin neck that will allow you to control the speed and the flow of the water entering the bed. Makes sense. You can get more precision. You can change up flow rates. You can change up the heights. You can get turbulent or laminer flow. You can dribble. You can do whatever you want with them. They're great. And the opposite of that would be something like this with a massive mouth on it. Water just gushes out. You can't control it. But what if we're looking at this all wrong? What if we take a different approach? Today I've got three brewers with me. I've got the air press, the

0:45 Clever Dripper, and I've got the Hario Switch. And I'm going to do a little testing on it to kind of show you the difference between using something like a gooseeneck kettle versus this alternative method. And then you can try this at home and be the judge yourself of what you might prefer. I also have my kind of ghetto rigged melodrip. This melodrip came without a stick on it because it came with my Oreo Z1 and I just kind of rammed a uh essentially a bit inside of it in order to emulate what a melodrip is. The reason I'm bringing this up is because there is a pesky issue many of us have encountered many a time, which is your filter clogging. This clogging happens in a V60 all the time. You'll notice that if you go a little too fine or if you do a few too many pores, you'll have a really slow draw down. It can happen with Ethiopia coffees cuz how

1:31 many fines they have. It can happen with decafs and the like. You get really frustrated and go, "Oh, I just need to go coarser." But then you go coarser and you make the brew and it doesn't stall. And then it tastes weak. It tastes vegetital. It tastes under extracted and sour. And you're like, "What the heck can I do? I either go fine enough and it chokes the pore or I go too coarse and it flies through." What's happening is when you're using a gooseeneck kettle with a pointed flow or even a normal kettle where you're dropping water onto the bed, that bed of grounds goes into a frenzy. Now, we can show that pretty easily by shutting off the bottom of the V60 and seeing how coffee grounds react. We take the kettle and we pour. Now, watch underneath. You see all those grounds flurrying around? You can see the kettle stream against the wall from how ferocious that flow is.

2:19 See how the grounds are floating, going everywhere kind of crazy. So, what's happening is they're trying to resettle and we have the bigger grounds coming to the top and we have smaller ones going that will inevitably go into the filter causing some clogging. The reason you find some filters clog more than others is not all filters are built the same. Some filters have the capability of absorbing a lot of fines and microparticles without clogging as much. Then some don't have that capability because they're a little lesser quality. they might clog very easily and this can cause delayed draw downs and unpleasant tastes in your coffee regardless of how you dial it in. You'll get worse clogs without a gooseeneck that's for sure because you'll be pouring at a much more turbulent and higher flow rate. But the gooseseneck doesn't really mitigate these issues. Even when you pour with a

3:05 slow laminer flow, you still are going to get a crazy disruption of the bed like we saw right here. Some grinders, it doesn't matter how coarse you go with some coffees, you get a really stalled draw down up to five or six minutes on occasion. So, how can we get around that? I'm going to take a clever and we will brew a clever with just a normal way. We'll put the coffee in, then we'll pour the water in, let it sit for a few minutes, and we'll drain it. And we're going to note how long it takes to drain. Then, we're going to put the water in first, toss the coffee in, and we'll just kind of stir the coffee grounds. and we're going to note how long that draw down takes. Now, a lot of people like to kind of break the crust at the top. We can do

3:51 that at about a minute. I'll be very gentle so as to not add too much agitation, but to just ensure we get a really nice extraction. the bare kettle pour, which had about the same agitation cuz I stirred the other, drained in about 63 seconds, whereas this one took 26 seconds. So, less than half the time in order to fully drain. And as you see on the beds, you can tell this one had a lot more fines and sludge kind of matted into the filter itself. Whereas this one had some boulders near the top, but it was an immersion brew. So those aren't left out

4:37 of the extraction. They've been extracted. Uh, and a lot less of that muddy filter look. With the S on the bottom will be the straight kettle, the bear kettle. And then I guess the three on the bottom is water first. And now of course we have Ugo mix and match the distance. I don't care how far I'll be taste the difference. Okay. If you have misophonia skip forward because we're going to slurp town.

5:30 Okay. So, this one right here, really clean, really crisp, really like really nice flavor separation. It's uh it's just it's a really nice brew. High sweetness, juicy. This one is good, but it definitely has a bit less of the acidity presentation. This one has a bit less crisp, and it's kind of it tastes a little more faded or dull. So, I'm going to assume this is the S, that is the S, and this is the three. What's interesting that you all might like to know is these were almost identical extractions. Uh, the one with the bare kettle extracted a little bit higher, which you would imagine with the more intense agitation and potentially particle discharge into the final bit, which may be skewing the reading slightly. Who knows? But, um, they're

6:16 very similar within like 3/10en of a percentage of extraction. So this one was at a 1 point this one was at 1.42 TDS. This is at a 1.39 TDS. Let's be real. 03% TDS and and barely any extraction difference is not going to cause such a great difference in taste. The culprit here is definitely that draw down, that extended draw down and the fact that more things were discharged through the paper filter. So paper filters are not perfect. Things under 30 microns or so can get through paper's pores. And so that means if you are intense with that agitation, you cannot really use the bed as its natural filter. The cake of coffee is the best filter we have. So if you're disrupting that filter, you are causing things to get into that final cup that can obiscate the pallet, make a less good cup than if you were to use the bed as

7:03 as it's as it should be used. And that's where the melodrip comes in. Years ago, Ray Murakawa out in California developed this little device. essentially who worked many many many many many times in order to get this to work in a way where when you pour water through it droplets come out. Other creators have tried to you know replicate what this does. So for instance when you look at the next level pulsar it has a similar thing going on where when you pour through it the idea is to have nice separated droplets that come out so as to not really disturb the bed much. And the reason for that is because if you were to pour bare kettle onto a no bypass brewer it would clog instantaneously. An air press while it is immersion and pressure doesn't have to be. You can use just this side and make it a no bypass brewer just like the tricklet, just like

7:49 the next level pulsar, just like the Oreo Z1. But if you were to do it with a kettle only, it would clog immediately. So, let's show that real quick. All right, let's see how this pourover goes. We'll start with a bloom and then pour all the way to our weight. So, here we go. We'll bloom it with 45 grams. It's a 15 g dose. All right. And although I would like to swirl or I would like to do something to make sure it's all saturated, I don't want to slow it down even further. Look at this drip out. Now I'm using a comically large pitcher here because well, nothing else that I have fits the air press head because it's a big old head. Then after a 30 second bloom, we'll go ahead and pour up to 240. I'm trying hard not to be crazy with my pour. All right, and there we have it. Let's see if this

8:34 will drain. [Music] All right, done at 8 minutes. All right, let's see what's left in here. This is how you can tell if pouring through the hiss, pushing through the hiss, is good or is good for you. First off, take a look how cloudy that is. That's what happens when you push through the hiss. Okay, you get lots of particullet and matt. Anyway, you can just take a sip of that. It tasted like tobacco. Not joking.

9:22 This actually does quite a decent job of replicating a melodrip. It's not as good due to the extended nipples on this, which really helps separate the droplets, but you can watch how this one works. It does an okay job. Obviously, it's not the best, but a budget friendly one where you can tape a stick to the side and go to town. Let's pour this to the side and brew up one with the melodrip. Start with that 45 g bloom. You know what? Because we didn't cause too much issue, I'm going to go and give it a little just a little something something. Nothing much. Just to make sure we got it all saturated.

10:10 Now you'll notice a very different phenomenon is happening. We are not ruffling up that bed a ton. The water droplets are hitting the top of the bed and it's just kind of slowly sinking through that coffee bed. It's a 240. There we are. 240. All right. Now we wait. All right, that one took four and a half minutes. So three and a half minutes. Actually, a little bit more than that.

10:56 Less than the bear kettle one. So let's see what all is left here. Pushing through the hiss. Never a good time. But this one's actually Nope. It's still gross. Still gross. All right. That's That's what you're getting when you push through the H. You don't need that. Now, I typically in prefer cooler coffees cuz I feel like you get more um more complexity out of it. You get a bit more of the acidic character about it. So, in theory, I should like this one better because it's cooler, but I doubt that to be the case. Now, this one's not blind because the temperature disparity is big enough that uh I equalizing the temperature is not going to help as much cuz how much I'd have to oxidize this and it's going to be introduce a whole other set of issues. But

11:45 yeah, yet again, this one has like a a mudded type of taste about it. It's I mean, this is a a anorobic washed coffee, so it should be really loud and popping. This one, you can taste that it's definitely anorobic, but it's more muddy. This one, however, super clear. It's still still has a bit of bitterness. Four and a half minutes is still a long brew time for me. I'm not a big fan of no bypass brewing uh largely um just because the drips the drip rate is going to be a lot slower. I used air press filters which aren't ideal for um a faster draw down on no bypass, but this one is definitely it's the clear winner. But of course, you would imagine that with an eight a little over 8 minute brew time versus four and a half minutes. You would imagine that to be the case. So

12:32 obviously there's a big difference whenever you are just trickling water onto the bed so you're not messing up the the slurry itself versus just destroying the slurry with a goose nettle with a kettle in general. There's a reason there's been so much success with this little tool. Even though it is very expensive, it's like 35 bucks for this little dish, which is kind of crazy, but it's giving you a a a more tight dispersion of little rain droplets that aren't disturbing the bed as much. In fact, I used this in my United States Brewers Cup routine back in 2019. So, I did a couple of bear kettle pores and then I ended with small pulses using this in order to give a more balanced cup without as much bitterness, without as much chalkiness, and lessening extraction there at the end. Not saying to go out and buy a Mel drip. I'm not saying that at all. I'm also not really saying goose neck kettles are bad. The

13:18 idea is to try and continually teach you all what these different variables are in brewing. So when you're doing a two pour brew versus a five pour brew, you're getting more consistent direct kettle agitation throughout the whole brew when you increase your pores, which will cause more particle ejection into your cup, which definitely does obuscate the pallet. It will cause more fines to clog up your brew, which can cause choking, and it can also just elongate the brew way too long, which can mute aromomas. What we've learned from this chilled extract type of science is that whenever you have cold, like you have a cold reaction right after the extraction, you can retain volatiles. They're also time dependent. They want to leave very immediately. So, in theory, the quicker you can get your brew done with an adequate extraction, the better off you are. The longer the brew is going to take, the more of those

14:03 aromomas are just sitting there and escaping. And so, in order to enjoy that full brew, I tend to go for faster brews as long as I get an adequate extraction. I find the most aromatic and beautiful brews happen when I can get a two-minute brew and immediately consume it. This is not actually a a diet tribe against using a kettle on your pourover. I think they're very helpful. I think controlling the flow rate and being able to be very precise with your pore is helpful and they'll definitely help you have less ejection than if you were to dribble water out of a teacettle. That being said, there are teac kettles that have a much more, you know, pretty flow coming out of it that will help you control the amount of agitation into your grounds. Pouring water into grounds is always going to cause that gravel effect much more heavily than if you were to be able to include the water slowly like with a melodrip or if you're

14:49 using a anything that uses a filter, having the water in first if you can, is going to be better than later. So, if you have a Hario switch, you can always start with that valve closed, put water in first, then put your coffee in. You can gently swirl it because that little swirling motion is not as intense as the water penetrating it. And then you can let that bloom be done. And then after that, you can pour gently through something like this because after you do your bloom with water first, you can't then do it again, right? The coffee is already in there. You need to add water. So then you can use something like a melodrip or you can use an air press cap or you can do something that will slowly add the water on top. Or as I've shown many times, you can use a spoon. And a spoon if you put it right above it, which I'll show you in a second, can act sort of like a melodrip in a way. We're

15:35 doing 15 grams, so 250 grams. And it's going to be a steeped bloom, let it go, then a steeped immersion. Let it go. Pour this in. Start our timer. And we're going to submerge all those grounds. You can do agitation here. One of the advantages is you can do a more even and controlled agitation as opposed to relying on the stream from the kettle. And this is going to allow for less of those fines to clog that filter, get muddy, etc. If you want, right before we release, you can kind of break up that crust to let some of that CO2 release that's building up behind it. And then we can release this. Once it's fully drained, I did that at about a minute. I'll close the valve once more and we're going to do our big pour. First, make sure you tear your scale. I'm literally putting the spoon

16:20 onto the bed and then pouring my water. And as you can see, it is just kind of adding the water to the column. I'm going to see where I'm at. That's one of the issues with this is it's hard to know how much you've poured. We're at 188. A little bit more. There we go. 196. So, we're about half a gram under. Now, as you can see, that water is very clear. And that's why I'm doing a steep right now is because we're not disturbing the bed like at all. And in fact, what you can do is take your spoon down in and you can give it just a little kind of push around to expose some of those grounds without going crazy. Like so. Then we just let it sit and steep for another minute or so and we'll be good to go. Now, the idea here is we're not trying

17:06 to disturb that bed much at all. Yes, I did just disturb it, but not in the same way that a kettle would kind of blast it everywhere and force fines into the filter. We just gave it a nice gentle kind of push back and forth like rowing your boat. And then we're letting it just sit and steep. Once the steeping is done, like I said, after about a minute, we're going to go ahead and drain it. So, at about 2 and 1/2 minutes, I'll drain it now. So, what you'll notice is the filter is going to be incredibly clean on the sides. We will not have like any of those fines that you normally see in a V60. It's going to be You can compare this to what you brew at home if you normally use a bare kettle to do your V60. Take a look at the sides and how few fines we see in that filter. And look how fast this is draining through. And the full draw down took right at 30 seconds. It'll be right at 30 right now.

17:53 So maybe 32 seconds. And there we are. Now I like to give a little shake. Tap it to get the rest of that out. But as you can see, that is the cleanest filter we're going to get in a something like this. There we go. All right. So look at that. Super clean bed. Super clean walls. that is in case people are curious because that water does look really light. We'll go and measure extraction yield. It'll still be a pretty teaike brew because of how we approach this. We didn't do heavy pores. We uh we rely on immersion as opposed to heavy pores, but still went through the percolation phase. So, in the same way I do my V60s with two pores. I love to do less pores because I want as little of that kettle agitation as possible. In the same way we're doing that, we're doing two pours

18:39 here just with a little bit of extra steeping because we're not causing that insane agitation with the kettle. Okay, so we've got a 1.3 TDS, which when you run that through the equation, that's about a 19 12% extraction. Now, of course, you could do more. You could steep it longer. You could be more aggressive with the agitation or you can live with the sub20 which is where I like to live. So let's take a sip of this teaike but really sweet like raisins. This is uh a different coffee from what I was brewing earlier. Very floral, aromatic, orange peels. Oh, it's delicious. Anyway,

19:25 you don't need a gooseeneck kettle to make incredible filter. In fact, it could be inhibiting you from making the best cups for your own pallet. That doesn't mean it's the right for everyone to move away from using direct kettle pores. Everyone's got a spoon at their house. You can use a spoon and you can play around with using kind of this method. Just ensure if you're using a V60 or something, you do add a bit of manual agitation because it can cause bypass around that bed and you get you can get a really weak brew if you're not allowing the water and the uh coffee to really interact very well. That is a positive of having the kettle is it will cause a lot of agitation to ensure a proper extraction. The issue can of course be the ejection of particles as well as the slowing down of the draw down which can cause muting of acidity as well as bitterness in your coffee. But uh in the end all that really

20:11 matters is you brew what you like to brew. If that means you take a tea kettle and you do bare kettle with it and you just blow up that bed and you have a 15minute stalled brew but you like it great. That's awesome. The point here is for us to learn more together, grow together, and understand how coffee works a bit better so that we can always have something tasty. And I just spilled a little coffee on me, but you know what? That doesn't stop me from saying I hope that you brew something tasty today. And cheers. Good.