Coffee for pour-over: start here, then experiment
A flat-bottom dripper, a concentrated 1:10-1:12 ratio, and room for happy accidents. Reviewed November 9, 2026. Coffees rotate; check the current menu before choosing.
Which coffee should you use in a pour-over?
Any well-made specialty coffee. We can't think of a coffee bean that would not taste good as a pour-over, and pour-over is the method that lets a complex coffee show the most of what it has. So choose by the flavors you enjoy:
- Sweet and bright: Guatemala Finca El Tesoro, $25 per 8 oz whole-bean bag. Light roast, fully washed, Bourbon, tasting notes of cane sugar, orange and pear.
- Rich and sweet: Nicaragua Finca Santa Matilde, $20 per 8 oz whole-bean bag. Light roast, fully washed, Red Catuai, tasting notes of plum, toffee and brown sugar.
- Decaf: Water Process Decaf Colombia Excelso, $20. Medium roast, balanced, sweet and lemon. The only decaf on the menu.
The dripper we recommend
For most people, the Kalita Wave. Its flat bottom delivers a consistently excellent cup, and the stainless steel 185 size is fantastically portable: one small dripper and a pack of filters, and you can make a great cup anywhere.
Conical drippers are common in cafes and make good coffee too. They ask more of you: rush the pour and it is easy to oversaturate the grounds.
Our ratio: a more concentrated cup
We brew pour-over at 1 part coffee to 10-12 parts water by weight. Most guides we see start from 1:15. We like a more concentrated cup. Our advice: pick a ratio, taste, then move up or down from there.
Our example recipe
For 30 g of coffee, aiming for 330 mL of water in total (an 11:1 ratio):
- Bloom: saturate the grounds with about 50-60 mL of water. Wait 30 to 40 seconds.
- Second pour: add another 60-80 mL. Wait 10 to 20 seconds as the water starts filtering through.
- Pour the rest steadily until you reach 330 mL in total.
This is a technique we might use. Treat it as a starting point and adjust to your taste.
Grind: judge it by time
Grind size is something you play with. Too coarse, and the water runs straight through without enough time on the grounds. Too fine, like silt, and the water can hardly get through at all.
Our starting guide for 30 g: aim for a total brew time around 3.5 to 5 minutes. Finishing past 5 minutes suggests the grind is too fine; under 3 minutes, too coarse. Adjust and taste.
Why pour-over rewards experimenting
Our philosophy: all brewing methods are valid, and trying different coffees across them leads to happy accidents. Pour-over is the method we reach for when we want a complex coffee to show the most of what it has.
Start with a coffee whose notes appeal to you, use the recipe above as a base, and change one variable at a time.