RISTRETTO – Pour-Over Coffee Drips Into New York

by OLIVER STRAND

In Ristretto, Oliver Strand, the curator of the Times Topics coffee page, explores the world of coffee gadgets, coffee beans and why it’s never been easier to get a perfect shot of espresso.

As coffee-brewing techniques go, pour over is slow and mannered. It’s low tech. It has a funny name. And yet, pour over is an ongoing obsession within the coffee world. It’s been around for years, though interest has spiked in recent months. It could be because the coffee it makes is so clean, so round and fruity, that you can fully taste all those complex layers of flavor that are supposed to be lurking in the best single-origin and micro-lot beans. It could be because coffee bars have been looking to replace the Clover ever since the company was swallowed up by Starbucks.

Or it could be because it involves some cool and relatively cheap coffee accessories from Japan.

Basically, pour over isn’t so different from coffee made with a filter cone. Or any sort of drip device, such as Melita or Chemex. You put a filter in a cone, add ground coffee and hot water. Drink.

The difference is that instead of flooding the cone with water and letting the coffee seep and drip, you pour hot water in a thin, continuous stream for one to four minutes — coffee geeks are still sorting the ideal brew time — that maximizes extraction. (More on that later.) Pouring a steady stream of water for, say, three minutes isn’t easy. If coffee is dump-and-drip, then pour over is a tea ceremony.

Which brings in the Buono kettle, manufactured by Hario in Japan. (Other manufacturers make similar kettles, though this seems to be the model of choice.) It’s more than just a pretty profile. The narrow swan-neck spout naturally delivers a thin, steady stream. And the balance gives you better control: you pour with your arm, not your wrist. It’s a sign of good design when an object that seems so simple feels so good in your hand.

When you control the flow of the water, you control the extraction. (Or, to be clinical, you better control the extraction, because water temperature and grind size also are factors.) The idea behind pour over is that the water level should never rise above the coffee grounds. First, you pre-wet the coffee: hot water causes the grounds to “bloom” and turn frothy as they release carbon dioxide. Then, you start the pour over: as the grounds naturally rise up the side of the cone, you keep the coffee saturated but not submerged by pouring the water in a circular (some say crisscross) pattern. The water should be going through the grounds, not over them. You know you’re doing it right if the coffee in the cone is foamy and the color of caramel.

Of course, there are video clips online. These were complied by Barismo, a roaster in Arlington, Mass. And there’s this from James Hoffmann of Square Mile Roasters in London. He always chooses his music carefully.

Maialino The full service pour-over coffee bar at Maialino.

Or you could watch it in person at Maialino. The Italian restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel has a full-service coffee bar in the morning, including a stately pour-over setup (the actual drip bar was custom-designed by David Rockwell), with beans from Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco.

The full ritual is on display: first the coffee is ground to order, the water is heated and the filter is rinsed, then the pour over begins. Here, the pour lasts about 80 seconds, which is on the fast side. (Extraction time depends not only on how quickly the water is poured, but also the size of the grind: the smaller the grounds, the slower the drip.) Still, the technique at Maialino is good, and the resulting coffee is clear and distinct, the flavors juicy and elegant. It’s floral. It’s pretty.

Pour over hasn’t quite caught on in New York. Maybe it’s the waiting: who wants to stand around that long for a cup of coffee? Maybe it’s real estate: not every coffee bar is blessed with the space of Maialino.

Still, a few serious coffee bars have pour-over coffee: Abraço, Gimme! (Williamsburg location only), Joe (Upper West Side location only) and Third Rail .

Or I should say, they have a version of pour-over coffee. Because they all use conventional cones, which taper to a narrow hole, while the coffee world is now fixated with the V60, also by Hario, which became available in the United States in June.

The inside of the V60 cone is a vortex of deep ridges that end in a nickel-size opening. The pour-over coffee that comes out of a V60 is, according to coffee geeks, far superior to anything else out there. And they have fun speculating why.

Because professional-level pour over is easy to do at home. Or at least, it’s possible.

Unlike espresso, which calls for an expensive machine and good training (do you really think your countertop appliance can match the Mistral at Stumptown Coffee Roasters at the Ace Hotel?), you can make near-perfect pour-over coffee with a couple of pieces of inexpensive equipment (available at Intelligentsia, Barismo and other online sources), or freshly roasted coffee and just enough obsessiveness for you to click through to the links on this page, including this one to Terroir Coffee, which has a detailed how-to PDF, and pay attention to what they say about temperature, grind and weight.

Or if you just want to be entertained, you can watch how in Japan they’re taking pour over to the next level. (Originally spotted on Barismo.)

To see the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejROvUC-gWU&feature=player_embedded#

More http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/ristretto-pour-over-coffee-drips-into-new-york/