The best pour-over recipe for your Roastology beans

It's not a secret that pour-over coffee is slowly increasing in popularity, as more of the world is opened to the world of 'soft-brew' coffee (that being coffee made not with high amounts of pressure, such as espresso). In this blog post, I'll be going over one of my favourite pour-over coffee recipes that can be used with basically any dripper.

First, a quick disclaimer. This method I will be outlining is not something I have come up with nor do I intend for it to come across as such. This recipe (to my knowledge) was invented by Lance Hedrick, a well-known coffee YouTuber/expert. [Click here] to be taken to his video further explaining the recipe.

The Equipment:

Unlike espresso, in which a scale greatly helps but is not necessary to get a good coffee, I would argue that to get an actual good cup of pour-over coffee, you do need a scale, due to the amount of guesswork otherwise included.

• A scale, ideally with an inbuilt timer. If not, then also something to time the brew with. The scale also is ideally accurate to 0.1g.
• Roastology Coffee Co. coffee beans. A single-origin coffee will have clearer and often sweeter tasting notes than that of a blend, but our blends taste pretty good as filter as well as espresso.
• A coffee grinder of some sort, ideally a stainless steel burr grinder. But blade grinders are alright for filter; however, if you still have one, I highly recommend looking into a burr grinder as it will up your coffee game ten-fold.
• Any pour-over dripper. This method is pretty damn versatile, and I'm yet to find a dripper that doesn't have a nice result with this method. In saying that, my personal favourite drippers are (in no particular order): v60, Kalita Wave 185 (ceramic version preferred as the stainless steel ones tend to have stalling issues from my experience with them), Fellow Stagg XF, The Origami dripper, and of course, the classic Chemex.
• A cup/carafe to brew the coffee into.

The Recipe:

1. Boil your kettle to around 90-95°C (194-203°F). If you do not have a temperature-controlled kettle, this can be somewhat emulated by boiling the kettle then allowing it to sit for a minute or so before using it.
2. Grind anywhere from 15-30g (for me, the sweet spot is 20g dry coffee in, with 320g liquid out; this is a 1:16 ratio and doesn't make too much coffee but also not too little) of coffee beans at a medium setting (err slightly more on the coarse side). If you want, you can utilize RDT (Ross Droplet Technique), which is where you spritz a little bit of water (no more than maybe 5ml) onto your beans before grinding, give them a good shake to distribute the water around, and then this reduces static because the beans absorb the small amount of water.
3. Once you have your ground coffee, set your paper filter into your dripper and place it on top of your carafe/cup, place that on your scale, and tare it (reset the scale to 0g). You now want to get your hot water and rinse the paper filter so that not only do you wash out any nasty paper flavors that might've otherwise been imparted in your cup, but you also mold your filter to your dripper a bit.
4. Dump your coffee into your filter, taring it again, start the brewing by starting your timer, then pouring 3x the amount of water as you did coffee grinds (e.g., if you used 20g of coffee, pour 60g of water). You want to allow this to 'bloom' (this is where the coffee degasses due to the slightly smaller amount of water allowing CO2 out that was otherwise trapped) for the next 2 minutes (the original recipe says 1-2 minutes but I have had consistently better results with 2 minutes than 1). I know this may seem like a very long time if you have made pour-over before, but I promise, the results are impeccable.
5. Once the 2-minute mark is up, you want to start steadily and slowly pouring water into the center of the bloomed grounds, pour at a rate of about 5-10ml/s. I know this sounds complex, but it's actually rather easy to get right (provided you are using a scale, if not, I wish you luck), as long as you aren't pouring it too fast and, in turn, over-agitating the grounds, you will be alright. You want to continue pouring in one long continuous pour until you reach your desired weight of coffee. When this happens, stop pouring, and allow it to drain. Your brew should be finished by the 3-4 minute mark (assuming you used a 2-minute bloom, if you used a 1-minute bloom, it'll finish closer to the 2-3 minute mark). If it is draining too fast, swirl the dripper a bit to settle the grinds and prevent any major channeling. If it is draining too slowly, get a spoon or something you can use to get in there and just stir the water-grinds-slurry a bit (be careful not to pierce your filter, though).
6. After this is complete, you will have an amazing cup of coffee, ready to brighten your day!