The short answer: medium ground coffee, water just off the boil, wet the grounds and let them breathe, then pour in slow circles. Two to three minutes and you're drinking.
Filter coffee is the clean one. The paper catches the oils and the dust, so what you taste is the coffee itself: bright, clear, nothing at the bottom of the cup. It asks a bit more attention than a cafetiere and pays it back in flavour.
You will need
- A filter dripper (V60 or similar) and matching papers. Any budget one works.
- Medium ground coffee. Table salt texture. Finer than cafetiere, coarser than espresso.
- A kettle. A gooseneck spout helps, a normal one is fine, just pour slower.
- Scales if you have them. Spoon-counting works too, but scales make it repeatable.
The amounts
- 60g of coffee per litre of water. For a 250ml mug that's about 15g, a heaped dessert spoon.
- Water just off the boil. Give the kettle 30 seconds after it clicks, same as the cafetiere.
The method
- Paper in the dripper and rinse it with hot water. That takes the papery taste out and warms everything up. Tip the rinse water away.
- Coffee in, gentle shake so it sits flat.
- Wet all the grounds with a splash of water, roughly double the weight of the coffee, and wait 30 to 45 seconds. This is the bloom: the coffee puffs up and bubbles as it lets off gas. Fresh coffee blooms big. It looks like the grounds taking a breath.
- Pour in slow circles, middle outwards, keeping the water level steady, until you've hit your amount. All in, the brew should take 2 to 3 minutes.
- Let it drain fully, swirl the cup, drink.
The things people get wrong
- Skipping the paper rinse. Your coffee ends up tasting like a car park ticket.
- Dumping all the water in at once. It runs straight through without brewing.
- Grind too fine: the water jams, the brew drags on and comes out bitter. Too coarse: it gushes through weak and sour.
- Boiling water straight on. Half a minute off the boil, every method, every time.
How to spot a good cup
Clean and bright, with the flavour sitting up straight rather than hiding under weight. Bitter means grind finer than it wanted or water too hot. Sour and thin means grind finer or use more coffee.
A few extras
- A sharp-tasting first pour-over is usually the grind, not the coffee.
- The same bag works in a cafetiere and a filter, you just grind differently. Our grind size guide has the in-between covered.
- Decaf works exactly the same. Same amounts, same method.
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