How to Make Pour Over Coffee
The right pour over ratio (1:15–1:17), grind and water temperature, step-by-step V60 photos, a built-in brew timer, the 4:6 method and fixes for sour or bitter cups.
Ratios and timings follow established specialty-coffee recipes, credited in the brew widget. How we test · Editorial policy
Pour over is the simplest way to taste what a coffee really tastes like. You pour hot water over fresh grounds in a paper filter, and gravity does the rest. The result is a clean, bright, sweet cup with none of the sludge of a French press. It looks fussy, but it comes down to four things: ratio, grind, water temperature and how fast you pour.
- Ratio: 1:15 to 1:17. 15 g of coffee to 250 g of water makes one mug.
- Grind: medium-fine, like table salt.
- Water: 93–96 °C (200–205 °F), about 30 seconds off the boil.
- Method: bloom with twice the coffee’s weight in water for 45 seconds, then pour the rest in slow circles.
- Time: done in about 3–3½ minutes. Faster and sour? Grind finer. Slower and bitter? Grind coarser.
The brew timer at the top of this page does the maths and the timing for you. Pick the number of cups, press Start brewing, and it tells you when to pour and what your scale should read.
What you need
- A dripper and paper filters. A Hario V60, Kalita Wave, Melitta cone or Chemex all work. The steps below use a V60, and there’s a comparison further down.
- A burr grinder. Pour over shows every flaw in the grind. Blade grinders make dust that clogs the filter and turns the cup bitter. See our coffee grinder guide.
- A kitchen scale with a timer, or a scale and your phone. Weighing as you pour is what makes pour over repeatable.
- A kettle. A gooseneck kettle makes a slow, steady pour much easier, but it isn’t essential. See the FAQ.
- Fresh whole-bean coffee, ideally roasted within the last month.
Pour over ratio: how much coffee to use
Use 1 gram of coffee for every 15–17 grams of water. At 1:15 the cup is fuller and stronger; at 1:17 it’s lighter and more tea-like. 1:16 is the usual middle ground. The National Coffee Association gives a range of 1:13 to 1:16.
| Brew size | Water | Stronger (1:15) | Lighter (1:17) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 cup | 250 ml (8 oz) | 17 g · 3½ tbsp | 15 g · 3 tbsp |
| 1 large mug | 350 ml (12 oz) | 23 g · 4½ tbsp | 21 g · 4 tbsp |
| 2 cups | 500 ml (17 oz) | 33 g · 6½ tbsp | 29 g · 6 tbsp |
| Chemex (6-cup) | 750 ml (25 oz) | 50 g · 10 tbsp | 44 g · 9 tbsp |
A paper filter holds back about twice the coffee’s weight in water, so you’ll end up with a little less in the cup than you poured. For other amounts, use our coffee-to-water ratio calculator.
Grind size for pour over
Start at medium-fine, about the texture of table salt. This is finer than French press and a bit finer than the pre-ground coffee sold for drip machines. Chemex is the exception: its thick filters drain slowly, so go one or two steps coarser, closer to kosher salt. Our Chemex guide has the details.
Here’s the trick most guides skip: your brew time tells you whether the grind is right. With the same recipe and the same pour, a finer grind drains more slowly and extracts more; a coarser grind drains faster and extracts less. For a single cup in a V60, aim to finish at about 3:00–3:30:
- Done before 2:30 and the cup tastes sour or thin? Grind finer.
- Still dripping after 4:00 and the cup is bitter or dry? Grind coarser.
Change the grind one step at a time, and keep everything else the same. Our coffee grind chart shows the sizes side by side.
Water temperature
The Specialty Coffee Association recommends 90–96 °C (195–205 °F). Pour over loses heat quickly in an open dripper, so the hot end usually tastes best:
- Light roasts: 94–96 °C, or just off the boil. They are dense and need the energy.
- Medium roasts: 92–94 °C.
- Dark roasts: 88–90 °C, to keep the bitterness down.
No thermometer? Boil the kettle and wait about 30 seconds. Use filtered water if your tap water tastes of chlorine. Pour over is a clean brew, and you’ll taste the water.
How to make pour over coffee, step by step
This recipe makes one cup in a V60: 15 g of coffee and 250 g of water (1:16.7) at 95 °C. It’s the same recipe as the Everyday V60 in our timer, based on James Hoffmann’s Ultimate V60 Technique, scaled down to one cup. The photos are from one of our brews.
1. Heat the water and rinse the filter
Bring the water to a boil. Fold the paper filter along its seam, put it in the dripper, set the dripper on your mug or server, and pour hot water through it. This rinses out the papery taste and warms everything up. Tip the rinse water away.
2. Grind and add the coffee
Grind 15 g of coffee medium-fine, tip it into the filter and give the dripper a gentle shake to level the bed. Poke a small dip in the middle with your finger, so the first pour soaks in evenly. Put everything on the scale and tare it to zero.
3. Bloom: 30 g of water, wait 45 seconds
Start the timer and pour about twice the coffee’s weight in water (30 g), wetting every ground. Give the dripper a gentle swirl so there are no dry clumps. The coffee will puff up and bubble. That’s carbon dioxide from roasting escaping. If you skip this step, the gas pushes water away from the coffee and the brew extracts unevenly. Fresh coffee blooms a lot; a flat bed is a sign of stale beans.
4. Pour the rest in two stages
At 0:45, pour in slow, small circles to 150 g over about 30 seconds. Keep the stream in the middle and avoid pouring straight onto the paper, where water runs down the side without touching the coffee. At 1:15, keep pouring a little more gently up to 250 g, finishing by about 1:45.
5. Stir, swirl and let it drain
Give it one quick stir with a spoon, once clockwise and once anticlockwise, to knock grounds off the walls. Then give the dripper a gentle swirl. This leaves a flat bed, so the water drains evenly through all the coffee. Let it drip through. It should finish at about 3:00–3:30, leaving a flat, even bed with no grounds stuck high on the paper.
6. Swirl and serve
Take the dripper off, give the coffee a swirl to mix it (the first and last drops taste very different), and pour. Let it cool for a few minutes: pour over gets sweeter and more interesting as it drops from scalding to warm.
Try this next: the 4:6 method
Tetsu Kasuya won the 2016 World Brewers Cup with a recipe simple enough for a sleepy Monday. It also teaches you how pouring changes the taste. Use 20 g of coffee and 300 g of water (1:15), ground medium-coarse, and pour in five equal parts of 60 g, every 45 seconds. Remove the dripper at about 3:30.
- The first 40% (two pours) sets the taste. If the first pour is smaller than the second, the cup is sweeter. If it’s bigger, it’s brighter and more acidic.
- The last 60% sets the strength. Pour it all at once for a lighter cup, or in three pours for a stronger one.
Kasuya also recommends cooler water for darker coffee: about 93 °C for light roasts, 88 °C for medium and 83 °C for dark. Pick 4:6 method in the timer above and it will call each pour for you.
V60, Kalita, Chemex or Melitta: which dripper?
All drippers use the same basic method. What differs is how fast the water drains, and therefore how much your pouring matters.
| Dripper | How it brews | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Hario V60 | 60° cone, one big hole. Fast, so your pour controls the brew. Clean, bright cup. | People who like to tweak |
| Kalita Wave | Flat bottom, three small holes. Drains evenly. Balanced, sweet cup. | Consistent results with less technique |
| Chemex | Cone with a thick filter. Slow drain. Very clean, light body. | 2–6 cups at once (grind coarser) |
| Melitta / Bee House | Wedge cone, small holes. Slower and forgiving. Fuller, rounder cup. | Beginners; standard #2 or #4 filters |
| Clever Dripper | Steeps, then drains when set on a cup. Rich, like a clean French press. | Hands-off brewing |
If you’re starting out, a plastic V60 or a Melitta cone costs very little and is very hard to break. Ceramic looks lovely, but you have to rinse it with hot water to preheat it, or it soaks up heat from the brew.
Troubleshooting: fix your pour over
Check your brew time first. Change one thing at a time, and start with the grind.
| What happened | Likely cause | Try this |
|---|---|---|
| Sour, thin, salty; drained fast | Under-extracted: grind too coarse, or water too cool | Grind finer. Use hotter water. |
| Bitter, harsh, drying; drained slowly | Over-extracted: grind too fine | Grind coarser. Pour more gently. |
| Weak or watery | Not enough coffee | Move from 1:17 towards 1:15. Weigh, don’t scoop. |
| Drain stalls near the end | Fines clogging the paper, often from a blade grinder or a very fine setting | Grind coarser. Swirl gently instead of stirring hard. |
| Both bitter and sour | Uneven extraction: dry pockets, or water running down the paper | Bloom with a swirl. Pour in the centre. Swirl at the end for a flat bed. |
| Papery taste | Unrinsed filter | Rinse the filter with plenty of hot water. |
| Flat, no aroma, and barely blooms | Stale coffee | Buy smaller bags of whole beans and grind just before brewing. |
What coffee works best for pour over?
Pour over is clear, so it rewards coffees with something to say. Light and medium roasts are where it shines: a washed Ethiopian for floral, tea-like notes, Kenya for juicy berry acidity, Colombia or Guatemala for caramel and chocolate. Dark roasts work too, but brew them a little cooler and coarser. Pour over will show any burnt, ashy notes.
Freshness matters more than origin. Look for a roast date, and brew between about 4 days and 4 weeks after it. Very fresh coffee can bloom so hard that it brews unevenly, and light roasts often taste best after a week of rest.
Iced pour over (Japanese-style)
The best iced coffee you can make in five minutes. You brew hot coffee straight onto ice, so it chills instantly and keeps its aroma. Cold brew can’t match that, and it takes all night.
- Put 100 g of ice in your server or glass.
- Brew 20 g of coffee with 200 g of hot water (bloom with 40 g, then pour the rest in two stages), one step finer than usual.
- Swirl until the ice has mostly melted, then pour over fresh ice.
The ice is part of the water, so the overall ratio is still 1:15. Fruity, light-roast coffees are amazing this way. For a slow, overnight version, see our cold brew guide.
Paper or metal filter?
Paper filters trap almost all of the fine particles and coffee oils, which is where pour over gets its clean, bright character. Reusable stainless-steel filters let the oils through, so the cup is heavier, closer to a French press. Metal filters also let through more cafestol, a natural coffee oil that can raise LDL cholesterol. We explain this in our French press guide. If you drink a lot of coffee, paper is the better habit. Choose white (oxygen-bleached) filters for the most neutral taste, or rinse brown ones well.
Cleaning
The paper and grounds go straight into the compost. Rinse the dripper with hot water after each brew. Coffee oils build up and go rancid, so once a week wash the dripper and server with warm soapy water. If brown stains build up, soak them in a little white vinegar or a coffee-cleaning powder.
Pour over FAQ
For a single cup (15 g of coffee, 250 g of water) in a V60, aim to finish at about 3:00–3:30 from the first pour, including the bloom. Larger brews take longer: about 4–5 minutes for a full Chemex. If it finishes much faster and tastes sour, grind finer; if it takes much longer and tastes bitter, grind coarser.
No, but it helps. A gooseneck makes it easy to pour a slow, thin, steady stream into the centre of the bed. With a regular kettle, pour slowly in short bursts, or use the Kalita Wave or a Melitta cone, which drain more slowly and are less sensitive to how you pour.
Rinsing with hot water washes out the papery taste, which is easy to notice in a clean brew like pour over. It also seats the filter against the dripper and preheats the dripper and the cup. Throw the rinse water away before you brew.
Both are filter coffee: water drips through grounds in a paper filter. A drip machine sprays all the water at a fixed speed and temperature. With pour over, you control the temperature, the bloom and the pour speed. That gives a sweeter, more even cup, but takes a few minutes of your attention.
Yes. Pre-ground coffee for drip machines is close to a pour over grind, just a little coarser. Expect a faster drawdown, and use the hotter end of the temperature range. Freshly ground beans will always taste noticeably brighter and sweeter.
Not by itself. Strength comes from the ratio of coffee to water. At 1:15–1:17, pour over is about as strong as drip coffee, but it often tastes more intense because it’s more even and aromatic. A 250 ml cup made with 15 g of coffee typically contains roughly 100–150 mg of caffeine.
Melitta Bentz, a housewife in Dresden, Germany, invented the paper coffee filter in 1908. She lined a perforated brass pot with blotting paper from her son’s school notebook. She registered it at the patent office in Berlin and founded the Melitta company that same year. The Hario V60, the most popular dripper today, was launched in Japan in 2004 and is named after its 60-degree cone.
Sources
- Specialty Coffee Association, Coffee Standards (brewing temperature and ratios).
- National Coffee Association, Pour-over coffee (ratio range, grind and brew time).
- James Hoffmann, The Ultimate V60 Technique (the recipe our timer uses).
- Tetsu Kasuya / Philocoffea, The 4:6 Method.
- German Patent and Trade Mark Office, 110 years of the coffee filter (Melitta Bentz, 1908).
- European Coffee Trip, The Story and Development of Hario V60.
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