By Michael Barker
We recently added a ‘Brew Recipes’ tab to our website. On this tab you can find helpful guides on brewing coffee in different ways, along with pourover recipe guides for specific coffees that we have in our current selection. It’s been proving popular amongst customers, so we thought it was worth answering a question we’re often asked about coffee - how do you build a brew recipe?
There is of course no wrong way to brew a cup of pourover coffee, so long as you enjoy the result. But for many of us, the more coffee we drink; the more important the brewing process becomes. With different coffees having such distinct characteristics, and so much flavour that can be pulled out, perfecting your brewing skills can massively improve the result in your final cup, and make that morning brew even more delicious.
So, how do you build a brew recipe? How do you take that mystery bag of coffee beans and brew a cup that tastes incredible? What can you do to get the most out of your morning coffee?
The Recipe Foundations
There are four basic elements that you need to consider when building a brew recipe:
Dose:
Your dose is the amount of coffee that you’re using. This will have a surprisingly big impact on extraction, so being consistent with your dose every time will allow for consistency in the final cup.
Yield:
Your yield is the amount of coffee you end up with, and will be determined by the amount of water you use. Similar to espresso, dose and yield work hand-in-hand, and you’re looking to find a ratio that provides good flavour whilst not tasting overly dense, or too watery.
Grind size:
Your grind size is how coarse or fine you grind your coffee beans. The effect on extraction can be understood by thinking of your ground coffee like sand and rocks. If water is poured over very coarse coffee, it is easier for the water to find a path through it, and so the water will flow through faster and extract less as it flows - like water flowing through small rocks. If water is poured over very fine coffee, it will struggle to find a path through it, and so the water will flow through a lot slower and extract a lot more as it flows - like water flowing through sand. Over-extracted and under-extracted coffee will negatively impact flavour in different ways, and so the goal is to find a perfect middle-ground that is not too coarse and not too fine - this will change depending on the brew method and the coffee itself.
Brew time:
Your brew time is a good indicator of your grind size, along with your pourover technique, and will give you a good idea of how well your coffee has been extracted. Finer coffee will take longer, and coarser coffee will be faster. Equally, the level of agitation in your coffee bed will have an impact on extraction and brew time.
You’re ultimately looking for the goldilocks middle-ground. An overly short brew time is likely to mean an under-extracted, sour cup. An overly long brew time suggests over-extraction, which might mean harsh, bitter flavours in your final cup. The goal is to find a healthy balance where the coffee has extracted well in a reasonable time. In terms of pouring the water and agitation, it can get a bit complicated in regard to its impact on extraction, so the best thing you can do is be consistent with your pour throughout the entire brew.
How do you start?
When trying to figure out a brewing recipe, you want to make sure you begin from a good starting point to avoid burning through your beans on less enjoyable brews. This is where a baseline recipe is your friend - a tried and tested recipe that you know well which is going to create a nice enough cup for any coffee that you brew with.
A great starting point for a brewing ratio is 60g of coffee to 1L of water. This is not to say that you should brew 1 litre every time you want a coffee, but I would work to this ratio comparatively across the board (e.g. a 250ml brew requires 15g of coffee). After this, it’s worth figuring out a baseline grind for the pourover brewer that you are using. Each brewer is different, and you’ll be able to find a bunch of information online for each individual brewer and recommended grind size, but you can assume a much coarser grind to espresso, generally closer to that of rock salt. Finally, for different brewers they will have slightly different recommended brew times, but here is a great starter recipe that translates fairly well across most brewers:
Dose: 15g
Yield: 250g water
Time: 2.30-3.30
First pour (bloom): 50g at 0s.
Second pour: another 50g at 30s.
Third pour: another 50g at 1.10.
Fourth pour: another 50g at 1.30.
Final pour: 50g at 1.50.
In terms of pour speed, I would recommend pouring at around 5 grams per second, but if that bores your brains out, simply ignore me! A good way to think about it is keeping the pour nice and steady, as if you were pouring a teapot for your gran, and pouring in a spiral motion around the coffee bed to cover the grounds from the centre to the outer circumference.
Problem Solving
So, you’ve got a brew! How does it taste? Hopefully you’ll have a delicious cup, but if you’re searching for greatness there are some further steps we can take to tailor the recipe to your coffee and your personal palate. Firstly, did it pour in the time you expected? If it took no time at all, grind a little finer. If you aged a year in the process, grind coarser.
We’ve then got to consider a number of elements - the coffee’s acidity, sweetness, body and flavour.
How’s the acidity?
Acidity is often mistaken by brewing beginners as an inherently bad quality, but acidity in coffee is what brings out its juiciness and bold fruits. No acidity in a coffee can lead it to taste bland, boring, or even harsh and bitter. However, too much acidity is unpleasant, and can run the risk of coffee tasting outright sour. The impact of acidity will also depend on its quality - is the acidity hollow, harsh, leaving your mouth dry? Or is it, crisp, fresh, like biting into a juicy peach?
If your coffee is tasting overly sour, there’s a potential that the coffee is under-extracted. To fix this, try grinding finer next time, allowing the water to have more contact with the coffee and slowing down the extraction process. You’ll lessen the acidity, bring out a fuller body and potentially more sweetness in the brew.
If your coffee is tasting dull, or even harsh and bitter, it’s potentially over-extracted. To fix this, try grinding coarser the next time, allowing a quicker extraction and bringing out a little more acidity. You might lose a little bit of body, but you’ll gain greater clarity, and a better balance of sweetness and acidity.
How’s the flavour?
Are you looking at the tasting notes and wondering how on earth the roastery thought them up? There’s always a potential for hyperbole in this case, but equally your brewing process can have a big impact on pulling out those flavours in the coffee, in the same way that the roasting process can have a huge impact on pulling out flavours too. A coffee can’t be made any better than the green bean that arrived into the roastery, but it can definitely be made a lot worse on its journey from green bean to roasted bag of coffee to your morning cup.
Some tips:
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Bringing out florals in coffee often requires brewing a lighter body, more tea-like brew. This can be achieved through greater acidity, and a lighter brew. Try using less coffee, or even grinding a little coarser and bringing out more acidity.
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Bringing out chocolatey notes can be hard when there’s too much acidity. Equally, heavier fruits like stone fruits and dark cherry might be lost in a lighter brew. For these flavours, you probably want to find a fuller body in the cup, which can be done through grinding a little finer, or using a little more coffee. Just be careful finding the balance in bringing out a heavier body and losing a coffee’s bright characteristics - it’s a tight line to walk!
Advanced Steps
Now, if you’re still reading, I’m going to assume you’re in the inner circle of coffee geeks that REALLY want to perfect their brew, so here’s a couple extra things to consider…
Water Temperature:
Small differences in water temperature can have surprising effects on your final cup. Too hot, and you can risk over-extracting the coffee and dulling the overall flavour, often producing a cup that is more bitter or harsh. If you use water that is too cold, you can end up flattening the flavour as a result of under-extraction, producing something weak and watery that ultimately doesn’t represent what the coffee has to offer.
For your average coffee consumer, water straight off the boil will often do the trick. However, I’d recommend exploring brewing with water in the region of 90-95 degrees, even experimenting in the 80s, as different coffees will shine at different temperatures.
Water Quality:
It’s worth remembering that around 95% of your final cup is going to be water. The coffee works hard to mask that fact, but if you brew with poor quality water it’s inherently going to impact the flavour. Using mineralised, bottled water is a great way to ensure a high-quality cup, or you might want to consider venturing into the world of adding your own minerals before/after brewing, something that is happening more frequently in specialty cafes and competitions around the world…
Measuring TDS:
Finally, if you’re not already aware of it I’d love to introduce you to the world of TDS - Total Dissolved Solids. When creating our own recipes in the roastery, we use a TDS refractometer (Photo below).
This allows us to measure the total dissolved solids per ml of coffee, and if we use an equation to calculate our TDS against our final yield and our dose, we can get a final percentage which measures our outright coffee extraction. We can then use a graph to compare where our coffee lands in terms of what is considered optimum extraction, and adjust different attributes accordingly to bring ourselves into this window. This is a great way to know if you’re pulling all the flavour available out of your coffee, and equally if you’re overdoing it and losing more delicate notes.
I’ve attached a graph below to follow, and a link to Orea’s very helpful Coffee Extraction Calculator that they’ve created: https://www.orea.uk/coffee-extraction-calculator
This tool will automatically perform the calculation for you, and give you an emoji response (perhaps leaning on passive-aggressive) to let you know if your brew is sub-optimal…
And here’s a graph to check your final TDS percentage against:
From this graph, we can take our extraction percentage and our TDS reading to plot our final brew on the graph. We are generally aiming to be within the square of optimal and balanced, and your placement within that square will come down to personal preference and what you’re specifically looking for in the brew.
After all of this, you should have a pretty delicious brew! I would overrule all of this with one piece of advice - take what works for you, leave what doesn’t, and ultimately make sure to enjoy the process along the way. Coffee can be as complicated as you like, and there’s a never-ending list of ways to optimise your brew… but only if you want to!
Alternatively, check out the Brew Recipes tab on our website for more tips and specific recipes from the team roasting our coffees.
Happy Brewing!