Techniques

Pour patterns Where you place water on the bed decides how the bed extracts. Two things are at play, and they're separate: the **shape** you trace — center or spiral — and the **rhythm** you pour it in — one continuous stream or a series of pulses. You can pour a spiral continuously or in pulses; the shape and the rhythm are independent choices. Intermediate 4 min Bloom strategies The bloom is when the foundations meet the recipe. Foundations gives you the *why*; here's the *how-much* and the *how*. Intermediate 4 min Agitation Agitation is anything you do that moves water *through* the grounds rather than just placing water *on top of* them. It's the most under-discussed lever in pour-over and the easiest one to abuse. Intermediate 5 min Drawdown The drawdown is the period after your last pour when water is leaving the bed but you're not adding any more. It's where most diagnoses happen — the bed reveals what your pour did, and the timing tells you whether the grind is right. Advanced 5 min Water minerality Coffee is 98–99% water. Whatever the water carries, the coffee shows. Most home brewers spend hundreds on grinders and pennies on water — that's backwards. Advanced 5 min Retasting Most brewers taste a coffee once, decide what it is, and never go back. That's how you build a static palate. Retasting — going back to the same coffee twice or three times across a week — is how you actually learn it. Intermediate 4 min Scaling recipes A recipe that works for one cup doesn't always work for two. The math says it should — double the coffee, double the water, same ratio. The cup says it doesn't, and there are reasons. Intermediate 3 min Channeling Channeling is when water finds a single path through the bed and uses it to skip past most of the coffee. The cup tastes hollow, sour, and under-extracted — but the bed *looks* like it brewed. It's the most diagnostic-resistant problem in pour-over because the timing often looks right. Advanced 5 min