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June 09, 2023

the coffee pulse newsletter

Issue 007

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Good Morning, Mark!

First, some housekeeping. I want to offer sincere apologies for the lack of newsletters the past 60+ days. There are more details about this later on in this issue. And don't forget to read on to enter this issue's giveaway contest! For now, let’s get into this issue’s focus!

Let’s talk about pour over coffee. The brewing technique involves pouring hot water over freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee, filtering it through a paper filter into a cup, for an individual service of between 200 and 500ml of finished brew under most applications.

Pour over coffee has been around for over a century now, with a major resurgence in popularity due in part to specialty coffee shops and coffee connoisseurs rediscovering its benefits. Another big part was the introduction of the Hario V60 coffee system, and how it took off with high end “third wave” cafes in the late 2000s. 

The V60 system spawned entire sub industries, including scale makers, water kettle designs, and alternative filter designs, many of which made the pour over process more complicated and intricate.

This isn’t a bad thing per se: it has led to some innovative and complex brewing techniques that have improved the finished product.

Unfortunately, these complex applications of technique have led to a backlash amongst some coffee lovers who feel the constant timer watching, pauses, pours, pauses, etc., all make things too complicated to be enjoyed.

Pour over, at its heart, was supposed to be something very easy to do!

The good news is, you don’t have to get complicated with your pour over to get a great cup! There are brewers available today that make the process almost completely hands off, and we’ll look at three of them.

First up is Hario – the inventor of the V60 and in some ways the instigator of complicated brewing methods for pour over – and a new product they’ve recently introduced. It is called the Mugen Pour Dripper. It may look like a V60 at first glance, but a closer look reveals it has solid sides (with small air-channels) and lacks the ribs that V60 brewers have to allow for increased flow through extraction while brewing coffee.

The Mugen is designed so you simply add the ground coffee, then pour all the brewing water into it within 15 seconds. Then you walk away and let the brewer do its job. They recommend 25g coffee and 300ml water used. The grind should be fine enough to allow for 90-120 seconds (depending on how light the roast is) for full flow through into the cup. Once you have these simple parameters set and delivered, the result is a very tasty, full bodied and developed cup of coffee.

We have a blog review of the Mugen dripper on CoffeeGeek, if you want to find out more.

Next is the OXO product with an abnormally long name: The OXO Pour-Over Coffee Maker with Water Tank. I just call it the OXO Single Serve Brewer. 

This device is a nicely engineered, inexpensive piece of kit. So much so that one of our blog contributors thinks it makes better pour over coffee than her own practiced technique. It works with Melitta #2 filters, and is designed to be a hands off brewer delivering precise water volumes for your morning pour over experience. Simply add the ground coffee, put the reservoir on top, add water to the marked line you choose, put the lid on, and walk away.

We also reviewed this product on CoffeeGeek. My wife still uses hers every day for her morning office coffee, five years on.

Lastly, there’s a hands off pourover device that has been around for 70 years: the Chemex Coffee Maker. In specialty coffee, we tend to make the venerable brewing device more complicated than it needs to be (CoffeeGeek's just as guilty of this: witness our How To on the brewer) but in reality, it was designed as a simple, hands off brewer, and perhaps we should be getting back to that way of using it.

In many ways, the Hario Mugen is their version of the Chemex. Solid side walls with a single airflow chamber (so your coffee brew doesn’t stall). All the extraction flow is through the bottom of the cone filter. The Chemex is a bigger brewer (you can get them up to a 12 cup size!) but it can be used very similar to the Mugen as a pour it and forget it system. 

I tried doubling the Mugen’s recipe: 50g of coffee in, and 600ml poured within 25-30 seconds. Allow up to 3 minutes for flow through, and this is where you adjust your grind to allow for that kind of brewing time. The end result was a satisfying cup. Was it as good as the more intrinsic, detail rich brew methods you can do with a Chemex? Nope. But for a generally hands off brewing method, it delivered the goods.

When it all boils down, you can make pour over coffee as hands on, intricate and ritual-filled as you want. But it is also good to know that you can go fairly hands off and still get a great cup of personal, just for you coffee.

The Lack of Coffee Pulse Newsletters Lately

I am sorry we’ve been radio silent with the Coffee Pulse Newsletter since Issue 006, the Espresso Everywhere issue, back at the end of March. We’ve had some technical difficulties, including our last giveaway contest, which required a lot of behind the scenes work. There were attempts to cheat the contest, the details of which I won’t get into.

Because of this, that contest is invalidated and we will be re-running the Issue 006 Bambino Plus giveaway in the next issue, Issue 008. We’ve resolved the issues, and will be back to our twice a month publishing schedule, which I hope we’ll increase to 3 issues a month by mid-summer. 

Enjoy your weekend folks, and make sure to have some great coffee!

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