Pu’er Coffee

“WOW!!! Why does your coffee bed look like a perfect bowl—so big and so evenly shaped?!” I’m not exaggerating (okay, maybe a little ). Friends often react this way after watching me finish a pour-over. Most of the time, the coffee bed left in my dripper looks exactly like what you’ve seen—a deep, symmetrical crater. Even though I often say that the final shape of the coffee bed doesn’t determine whether a cup tastes good, it’s hard not to feel a bit mesmerized by a perfectly carved-out coffee crater—especially when you’re just getting into pour-over brewing. Some people can’t help but wonder: How do you make a coffee bed look like that? Why does mine always end up flat? So today, let’s break down how to create a beautiful, bowl-shaped coffee bed—and why, in the end, it has very little to do with flavor. How Do You Create a Deep Crater? You don’t need advanced brewing skills. If you meet these three conditions, forming a bowl-shaped bed is surprisingly easy: Use lower-density coffee ...

 Sometimes you might just want a small cup of coffee—maybe for a special blend, or simply to enjoy a few sips without going all in. Every now and then, friends tell me they want to “brew a small cup using just a few grams of beans.” But if you’ve actually tried it, you’ll probably agree: brewing a good cup with a small dose of coffee is much harder than brewing with a regular amount. Just recently, a friend told me he tried making coffee with only 5 grams of beans, but no matter what he did, it just didn’t taste right. The flavor and body were completely different from what he’d get using a normal dose. So, why is it so hard to brew coffee with such a small amount of beans? The short answer: the smaller the dose, the more brewing challenges you’ll run into. Why Small-Dose Brewing Is Tricky In a previous post, I mentioned that each dripper design has its own “sweet spot” for optimal coffee dose. For example, the Hario V60 01 dripper works best with about 10–20 grams of coffee, ...