How we brew a pour over at the bar

The pour over is the most naked preparation there is: hot water, ground coffee and a paper filter. No pressure, no milk, nowhere to hide. That's why it's the cup we most like to serve — and the one that tells a coffee's story best. This is the logic we work with at the bar, laid out so you can repeat it at home.

The ratio: your starting point

Everything starts with a ratio, not a magic recipe. A good opening range is 1:15 to 1:16 — one gram of coffee for every 15 or 16 of water. In practice: 15 grams of coffee for a 240 millilitre cup. From there, adjust to taste: more coffee for a more intense cup, more water for a lighter one.

Grind and water

The pour-over grind sits in the middle: something like sea salt, neither powder nor pebbles. If the cup comes out bitter and heavy, grind coarser; if it's thin and sour, grind finer. It's the most powerful lever you have.

Water matters as much as coffee: if you wouldn't drink it on its own, don't brew with it. The ideal temperature lives between 92 and 96 degrees Celsius — in practice, water that boiled and rested for half a minute.

The method, step by step

1. Rinse the filter with hot water. It removes the paper taste and preheats everything.
2. Add the ground coffee and level the bed with a gentle tap.
3. Bloom: pour twice the coffee's weight in water (30 g of water for 15 g of coffee) and wait 30 to 45 seconds. Fresh coffee swells and releases gas; that bubbling is a good sign.
4. Pour the remaining water in two or three stages, in slow circles from the centre outwards, without touching the filter.
5. Total brew time should land between 2:30 and 3:30 minutes. Much faster: grind finer. Much slower: grind coarser.

Taste before you measure

The numbers are scaffolding, not dogma. The only test that counts happens in the cup: is it sweet? Can you tell the notes apart? Does it ask for another sip? If the answer is yes, your recipe is right even if it contradicts the manual. If it's no, change one variable at a time — grind first — and taste again.

A good pour over isn't measured on a scale but by the simplest question: do I want another cup?

Team Gramo

And if one day you want to watch the process up close, order a pour over at any of our bars and stay by the table: the whole method takes under four minutes and makes more sense live than in any text.