|
Happy Friday, Mark!
Don't you find it captivating that a brewing method born well a century ago only truly took off as a major coffee obsession in the last decade? Of course, I’m referring to pour over coffee, the subject of this Coffee Pulse Issue.
Before we get into that, don't forget to scroll down and enter the contest of 3-month subscriptions from beanz.com by Breville. Six lucky subscribers will win!
Brewing coffee is something we've been doing for a full millennium (and possibly longer). For half that time, coffee was brewed without any kind of filter, other than gravity or the unique shape of the brewer separating roasted coffee from the brewed liquid. It took primitive filtering in the 1600s for Europeans to finally embrace the beverage. Filters based on perforated metal or cloth were used in most coffee brewer designs.
A woman in Germany felt there had to be a better way. Cloth filters were hard to clean. Metal perforated filters let too much grit and sludge pour into the cup. Melitta Bentz was ruminating about this one day in 1906 when she picked up some blotting paper. She had an idea.
Bentz held the blotting paper over a bowl and poured hot water onto it. The paper was strong enough to not tear, but water still seeped through it. Intrigued, she cut some blotting paper into a circular disc to fit a rather crude coffee brewer with a perforated flat top filter.
The disc was positioned on the brewer's metal filter. Ground coffee was added on top of the paper, and Bentz poured near-boiling water onto the coffee and sat back. The brewed coffee filtered through the blotting paper into the vessel below, delivering her a nice, clean cup.
The pour over was born.
Pour Over Coffee's Golden Age
When you hear “golden age”, you might think it is some bygone time. It may be surprising to learn that we’re living – right now – in pour over coffee’s golden age.
For most of pour over coffee’s history, it was a marginal brewing method, barely practiced in the USA, and only slightly more popular in Europe. The Japanese embraced the brewing method but for decades stuck with cloth as the filter choice.
In 2004, Hario, already well known in specialty coffee for its siphons and simple metal-filter dripper systems, developed the V60 and its completely unique real cone shaped paper filter. In 2009, the brewer started appearing in the USA after mentions on several coffee blogs, including Barismo. It became the new, sexy thing in specialty coffee.
Is the V60 introduction the main cause for this new golden age of pour over coffee? Only partially, because another thing was at play.
During this time, another brewing technology was taking off: capsule coffee. Specifically Nespresso for espresso, and Keurig for brewed cups of coffee. Today, their market share is crazy high.
Capsule systems are just the latest response to that age-old pursuit a certain segment of the coffee drinking public desires: automation and convenience. And like all other major “convenience” inventions in coffee’s history, these technologies can forsake quality in the cup for that convenience. They also make the coffee experience very generic and uninvolved.
This time around, that convenience comes with added costs: millions of capsules into our landfills every year, and people are paying up to $50/lb for the coffee inside of those capsules. But that’s something for another article.
One of the major reasons pour over coffee became popular in the last decade is a rebellion of sorts against the capsule automated coffee makers. Pour over – by definition – is hand crafted, uniquely individual coffee. Coffee connoisseurs see it as applying all the artisanal fun they were having with espresso, to a brewed cup of coffee.
The specialized tools – most being inexpensive compared to espresso tech – added to the aura. Grinding on demand, the distinctive kettles with gooseneck spouts that look so exotic, the pause for the bloom phase, followed up by a practiced, measured pour pattern onto the bed of ground coffee, all showed the personal touch of the brewing method.
Pour over coffee is, by its nature, hand crafted and personal. It is a ritual. Everyone can develop their own special technique, making it even more personal. Its entry cost is low, yet there’s also room to grow (and spend more) if you fall in love with the technique.
For many – myself included – pour over has become a calming moment in my day. It’s not my first coffee each morning, but it is the most relaxed, zen like coffee experience I have each day.
The moment I have a manual grinder in hand after setting the V60 up on a favourite mug, with both on top of a $12 scale, time seems to slow down. By the time I finish cranking away at 21g of coffee, the gooseneck kettle is up to temperature. Pour. Pause. Pour a bit more. Pause. Pour a bit more. Make a little game of stopping right at 300.0g. Compost the filter and coffee. Realize the peaceful moment of it all, as I hold this little gem of a hand crafted cup.
You can’t get that from popping a capsule into a machine and pressing a button.
Have a great weekend, folks.
Mark Prince, Senior Editor
| 
