QUEST
Pour-over coffee
The year my boyfriend introduced me to Brian Eno’s dreamy ambient music was the same year I discovered the Melitta method, as it was then known. (Percolators were put out to pasture by everyone except the parents.) Simply pour hot water over ground coffee. Talk about low maintenance! The cheap plastic cones were then ditched as we all took to the more involved preparation of espresso.
Should I have been surprised, then, when more than 40 years later and grooving on the funk and soul tunes of D’Angelo, I was informed that my old drip method is once again dope? There’s a swell new name too: the pour-over. Can we see a difference, or is it the same old thing?
Well, for starters, today we have excellent coffee — find terroir-driven tastes from Sumatra to Nicaragua to Rwanda. As Bridgehead Coffee pres Tracey Clark says, “Pour-over is a great place to showcase nuanced coffee.” I tried a cup of Bridgehead’s Yirgacheffe and found the coffee as cleantasting as a good pinot noir. Flowery too — wholly absent of any bitterness. As for Bridgehead’s pour-over, the all-in-one machine resembles the steampunk headgear of mad scientist Krank in The City of Lost Children. Stainless-steel grinder, water heater, and scale for weighing coffee and water: they all work together, consistently giving a good cup.
By contrast, Otto Hall of Westboro’s Equator Coffee Roasters is shown here skilfully making a pour-over by hand. Except for its drip tray, scale, and elegant glass cone and carafe, this is the Melitta risen again. Hall pays constant attention, bringing the water to the correct temperature, warming the carafe, stirring the grounds. Strict ritual is crucial to making a perfect cup of coffee. “Coffee is such a part of our routine, it’s fun to try new ways,” says Equator’s Chris Petrie. Or, in this case, a revamp of the old. I say, strike up the band!