How to Make Great Pour-Over Coffee Anywhere?

A garden hidden in the forest, a tropical fruit grove, exotic spices, and rich chocolate – yes, these are all the notes your local barista can bring to your nose when they make a good pour-over coffee.

Now you are wondering: how come each time I brew it is never as good as they make it in the shop? Of course, you bought their beans, and they made it right in front of you, but why it tastes so sour? Or why is it so astringent and bitter? Or you may wonder where did that beautiful purple bell smell went? This is not the “sorry, it’s not you, it’s me” moment with your coffee beans, before you give up on it, let us try to improve your relationship with your coffee. So you may brew a cup of coffee that you would love, anywhere.

Lesson 1: How old is your coffee?

Unfortunately, coffee is better when they are young. I mean…look at Kevin Costner, beauty doesn’t last forever, and neither is the freshness of your coffee.

You should always look for the roast date on the coffee bag. If it is within a month between now and the roast date, you should have no problem using this coffee. If it is more than 90 days since the roast, I would approach this with caution. The older beans will start to have that stale taste, or maybe even oily rubber smell.

Lesson 2: How did you grind your beans?

If your grind looks something like this pile to uneven mess above, then you are going to have a hard time drinking your coffee. You will need to grind your coffee like this image below.

The grains of your grind should resemble the size of brown sugar. And you may ask why should you do this?

Imagine putting whole coffee beans in your filter cone and pouring hot water over it, and imagine what that will taste like? Nothing, that is what you will taste. The more surface area exposed during the brewing process, the more you flavor you will extract out of the coffee. But trust me for now, don’t grind too fine, that way your pour-over will likely extract the bitter/unpleasantly sour taste out of the coffee. If you grind it finer than salt, then that’s for good for espresso, usually not for pour-over.

Now you might be asking, but Matt, my grinder is a blade grinder, and it only grinds things into fine flour-like powder, is there a way for me to achieve the brown sugar consistency? Well, we actually have a solution for that in a future article called I Love My Blade Grinder but I Also Love Filter Coffee, What Should I do.