· 4 min read
The best coffee beans for pour over
The best coffee beans for pour over are fresh, whole bean, light to medium roasts. What to read on the bag, washed or natural, and which of ours we use.
The best coffee beans for pour over are whole beans, roasted light to medium, roasted recently, from a bag that tells you where and how they were grown. Those four things matter more than any brand. After that, the choice is about taste: a washed coffee for a clean, crisp cup, or a natural for fruit.
Why pour over is picky
A paper filter holds back the coffee's oils and almost all of the fine particles. What reaches your mug is a clear, light bodied cup, and a clear cup hides nothing. Fruit, flowers and sweetness show up plainly. So does a stale bean, a scorched roast or an uneven grind.
That is why the beans you choose matter more here than in a French press or a latte, where body and milk cover a lot.
Roast level: light to medium
Roasting builds its own flavors: caramel and chocolate at first, then smoke and bitterness the further it goes. In a light roast you taste mostly the farm, the variety and the process. In a dark roast you mostly taste the roast.
For pour over, stay between light and medium.
- A light roast gives the most fruit and the brightest acidity. It is also denser and harder to extract, so it wants hot water, around 200°F or a little above, and a grind fine enough to slow the water down.
- A medium roast trades some of that fruit for more sweetness and body, and it is easier to brew well. If you are new to pour over, it forgives mistakes.
- A dark roast tends to taste thin and bitter through paper. Its heavy body is what makes it good, and paper filters much of that away.
Washed or natural
The process line on the bag tells you how the fruit was taken off the seed, and it changes the cup as much as the roast does.
A washed coffee has its fruit removed before drying. At our family's farms the cherries are pulped the same afternoon they are picked, fermented in small tanks for 36 hours, washed in spring water and dried on raised beds for 18 to 21 days. Washed coffees taste clean and precise, with crisp acidity. They are the easiest place to start.
A natural dries whole, inside the cherry. On our Ethiopia the cherries dry on raised beds for up to three weeks, turned by hand every hour. The seed takes on some of the fruit, and naturals taste riper and heavier, sometimes jammy. When they are good they are wonderful in a pour over. When the drying is careless, they taste fermented and boozy.
Honey process sits between the two. Our guide to natural vs washed coffee walks through each step.
Origin and altitude
A good pour over bag names a country, a region and ideally a farm or a washing station. That detail is a sign the roaster knows where the coffee came from and wants you to taste it.
Altitude is worth a look too. Coffee grown high ripens slowly in cool air, and slow ripening tends to give denser beans with brighter acidity and more intense flavor.
Ethiopian and Kenyan coffees are pour over favorites because their fruit and floral notes come through clearly in paper. Washed Colombian and Central American coffees make a rounder, sweeter cup and are a safe first choice.
Freshness: look for a roast date
Look for the date the coffee was roasted, not only a best by date that may be a year away. Pour over tastes best from a few days after roasting to about a month after. Coffee only a few days from roasting is fine for pour over, because the bloom lets the trapped gas out before the main pours.
Buy what you will finish. At 25 g a cup, a 12 oz bag makes about 14 pour overs. We suggest drinking a bag within a month of it arriving, and how long coffee beans stay fresh explains why.
Whole bean, ground at home
Ground coffee loses its aroma far faster than whole beans, because grinding exposes so much more surface to the air. Pour over also depends on grind more than most methods. When a cup tastes sour you grind finer, and when it tastes bitter you grind coarser. With pre ground coffee you lose that control. Between the two, that is why every bag we sell is whole bean.
What we brew as pour over
Our light roast from Ethiopia is the coffee we brew this way. Elena grows it in Sidama at 2,050 meters: Ethiopian heirloom, natural process, with hints of blueberry, jasmine, peach. Its product page calls it best as pour over, with a slightly coarser grind and water just off the boil. It is also a strong personality, and a light Ethiopian natural is not for everybody.
If you want something calmer, our medium roast from Colombia is washed, with hints of red cherry, panela, cacao nib. It makes a sweet, balanced pour over and is the one we suggest to anyone unsure where to start.
We would not choose our dark roast from Guatemala for pour over. It is built for espresso and milk, and a paper filter strips away the body that makes it good.
When you have your beans, our pour over recipe gives the grams, the temperature and the timing.
