Dialling in pour-over

Since 2024, Lance Hedrick has kept pour-over deliberately simple, with one familiar recipe, a grind that leans coarse, and changes only to the big variables. His earlier videos are mostly about grinders rather than recipes.

1. Baseline recipe

• Fix a structure and keep it. Use two or three pours and change only the large variables first, meaning grind, ratio and temperature in steps of 3 to 6 °C. Tiny tweaks are unlikely to show up in the cup 14:16.
• Lance Hedrick's baselines:
  • Bloom with about three times the coffee weight (50 to 55 g for 20 g), grind coarse (coarser than most people use) and brew at 1:17, with a bloom of 30 s to 2 min 2:04.
  • 15 g to 250 g. Bloom with 3× the dose for 30 s to 2 min, then pour the rest. Use 95 to 97 °C for the lightest coffees and 92 to 94 °C for the rest 7:10.
  • For a heavily processed light coffee, about 90 °C (90 to 91 °C for Nordic roasts), 15 g to 230 to 240 g and about 600 µm. Do two blooms (45 g, wait 30 s, 45 g) and then pour up to 240 g, aiming for a drawdown just over 2 min 6:03.
• Dose. 15 g gives better bed depth, sweetness and body than 12 g, which forces lots of pours and a hollower cup 3:01.
• For an expensive coffee, use your normal framework and only adjust temperature, the number of pours and the grind 5:02.
• One grind for many coffees. With a constant recipe he adjusts ratio, temperature, bloom length and how hard he pours, and leaves most grinders at one setting 3:06. On his Q2 he only changed the grind for decaf 6:40.

2. What the grind does in pour-over

• Going finer makes bitterness and channelling more likely. Going coarser makes under-extraction and short contact more likely, though good grinders drain fast even when coarse and poor ones drain slowly 6:10.
• In Lance Hedrick's 2026 grind test on a Zerno (750 down to 550 µm with a fixed recipe), the coarsest cup was the most vibrant and the two finest were bitter and muted 8:52. If a cup is bitter, leathery and muted, go coarser 7:22.
• He'd rather move extraction with grind, agitation or the number of pours than with hotter water, and brews at 91 to 93 °C 11:22.
• A recipe built on one grinder rarely suits another. A ZP6 or an EK43 with brew burrs spreads particles very differently from a Comandante or Normcore 7:10.
• On almost any grinder, aiming for a flow rate or drawdown time you know gets you decent coffee, because it forces a balance between some under- and over-extraction 13:22.

3. Pours, agitation and drawdown

• Fewer pours. Each pour lifts and settles the bed and sends fines down to the paper, so fewer pours and gentler agitation leave fewer particles in the cup 10:42. More pours and longer contact behave like immersion and mute aroma and tea-like clarity, so Lance Hedrick avoids recipes with four to six pours 12:15.
• Slow drawdown: pour in the centre without moving, or use a laminar pour, and give a small shake at the end to level the bed 12:13.
• Fast drawdown: a gentle swirl at the end flattens the bed and traps fines against the paper 9:44 7:34.
• Grinders that make lots of boulders: grind very coarse and swirl after pouring, so the boulders sitting on top get pulled in 29:06.
• Level the bed with a small shake, and use WDT before brewing if you aren't using a cone 12:44.
• Always stir the brewed coffee before tasting it. It separates into layers, and swirling isn't enough 18:26.

4. Temperature and bloom

• With light roasts, Lance Hedrick gets less bitterness at about 95 °C than at 99 °C, and darker roasts go lower 7:40.
• A cooler bloom, even at 60 °C, still extracts acids well if the later pours are hotter 17:55.
• In his measurements, extraction rose as the bloom got longer. For very light coffees he lets it run for as long as about 2 minutes 19:57.
• A second bloom releases more CO2, which reduces the carbonic bite and improves extraction 6:33.

5. Adjusting by coffee

6. Chaff and fines

• Removing chaff, by grinding without RDT and blowing it off or by grinding coarse first, reduces a drying, papery note 11:46 2:35. Blowing the chaff out of light roasts protects their florals 4:32.
• Light sifting can lift pour-over from a cheap or espresso-oriented grinder, but don't strip out every fine 15:50.

7. How much the grinder matters

• With medium and dark roasts the grinder matters far less for filter, because those coffees extract easily 5:04.
• Coffee and water quality matter far more than choosing between a good mid-range hand grinder and an EG-1 27:16.

8. No-bypass brewers like the Ceado Hoop

The Hoop takes the pouring out of pour-over. The coffee sits in a flow tower in the middle, you fill the ring around it with all the water at once, and small holes let it in at a steady rate. Nothing bypasses the bed, so every drop passes through the coffee 1:23 6:03.

• Start at 15 g to 250 g and expect about 4 minutes. James Hoffmann knocks down any crust early and otherwise leaves it alone 2:22.
• The paper decides the brew time more than anything else. Ceado's stock paper is slow enough to stretch a 4 minute brew to 8, and Hoffmann much preferred the NextLevel x Scott Rao high-flow paper 5:07. AeroPress papers fit too 0:31.
• Because nothing bypasses, a grind change moves the cup more than it would on a V60, and there's no pouring technique to fall back on. Change the grind in small steps 7:22.
• Fill the ring in one go. Pouring slowly keeps the water low and changes how fast it flows in 10:30. Pour gently too, because Brian Quan found a fast pour lifts the bed and pushes grounds out into the ring 9:36.
• If it stalls or runs very long, Bluebird suggest grinding coarser and using coffee that has rested for a while 8:10.

Stated pour-over settings

James Hoffmann's approach

• Ultimate V60 (2019): 30 g to 500 g, ground slightly finer than medium. Bloom with twice the coffee weight (up to 3×), swirl and rest for up to 45 s. Have 60% of the water in by 1:15 and all of it by 1:45, then stir once each way and swirl for a flat bed 4:04 5:37 8:10. Use water as hot as possible for light roasts, while dark roasts can sit 15 to 25 s off the boil 5:05.
• One-cup V60 (2022): 15 g to 250 g with water just off the boil, in a preheated plastic V60. Bloom with 50 g and swirl until 0:45, then pour 50 g every 10 s in low circles to reach 250 g by 2:00. Swirl gently, and the drawdown should finish around 3:00 3:04. A two-cup V60 works the same way 1:35. On a Comandante he starts around 30 clicks, within a range of 25 to 30 3:35.
• Dialling by taste: an empty or hollow cup means go finer, and a dry, bitter one means go coarser 4:35 10:45. Go as fine as you can until bitterness and astringency from channelling appear, then back off 9:48. If the brewer is full to the brim on the last pour, grind coarser 4:39. Medium roasts go a little coarser than light, and dark coarser again 4:05, with dark roasts at 80 to 85 °C and medium at 90 to 95 °C 7:45.
• Agitation balance: too little agitation forces you to grind coarser, and too much creates channels 6:38. With a grinder that makes lots of fines, stir the bloom gently instead of swirling hard, so it doesn't clog 1:03.
• Rescuing a wrong grind (2026). The bloom tells you. Muddy and soupy means too fine, and drying out fast means too coarse 1:02. If it's too fine, take the cup away once your normal brew time is up, even with liquid still in the cone, and top it up with hot water to your usual yield 4:08. If it's too coarse, use five to seven fast pours that drain fully, plus an extra 25 to 50 ml pour if you like 7:15 8:47. Then fix the grind for next time 12:25. You have to go surprisingly coarse before a dialled-in brew falls apart 6:14.
• Order of suspects when a brew tastes bad: grind and grinder quality, then water, then the coffee, and only then technique 8:47. A muddy, powdery, bitter cup despite good technique points to the grinder 8:14.

James Hoffmann goes finer until the cup turns and then backs off. Lance Hedrick has leaned towards coarser grinds and modest extractions (17 to 21%) since 2024 10:22 10:14. Both let taste make the final call.

Daddy Got Coffee's view

• On very clear burrs the brew can look muddy from fines and still taste great, so judge by taste rather than how the bed looks or the drawdown time 11:48 11:44.
• With the Kinu Pour Over burr, a coarse setting (3 to 4 turns) gives clarity and needs more agitation or a longer bloom. A turn finer, with a short ratio and gentle pours, gives a sweeter, heavier cup 9:16 10:16 10:46.
• On a Q Air, grinding slightly coarser than the usual advice and pouring in slower pulses cleaned up the cup 9:20.
• For clarity, leave the fines in a fines catcher (Timemore 078) or use a very coarse setting on a MiLab M1 9:14 13:48.
• Medium-dark everyday coffees can taste better on a rounded grinder than on a clarity specialist 13:25.

Kyle Rowsell's view

• For his centre-pour championship V60, aim for a drawdown of about two minutes. If it's much longer, grind coarser, and if it's much shorter, grind finer 5:38.
• With the 4:6 method, keep the grind coarse because the many pours add agitation. If any pour takes more than about 45 s to drain, go coarser next time 3:11 5:21.

The Coffee Chronicler's view

• Base. His starting point is a long brew with a coarse grind and gentle pouring. A finished bed should look like wet sand, and silt on top means the grind is too fine or the pour too rough 4:45. Agitation helps hard light roasts but rarely helps beginners with medium roasts, and a bitter cup over a swampy bed needs less stirring 4:00. For clarity, agitate early after the bloom and then pour gently so the bed filters 6:34.
• Water and paper. He uses soft water with low alkalinity, ideally about 30 to 80 TDS and under about 110 to 120, and bleached papers rather than brown 2:39 1:00. Filter paper changes the drawdown so much that timings may not carry over 6:44.
• Drippers. A V60 is sharp and acid-forward, while flat-bottoms are balanced and sweet 3:38. Kalita Wave versions differ. The traditional one is slow and easy to clog, the glass one faster and the Mino fastest 6:09. Flat beds scale poorly, so match the dose to the size, with 10 to 16 g in a small Kalita, 18 to 30 g in a large one and roughly 12 to 18 g in a Timemore B75 14:29.
• By coffee. Grind anaerobic or heavily fermented coffees uncomfortably coarse and brew them fast 2:01, at 1:16 to 1:17, while gentle washed coffees can be brewed as tight as 1:15 6:10. A cup that turned salty and rough came from a roast darker than its label said, and dropping to 87 °C fixed it 13:54.
• He works to time windows (2:00 to 3:30 in one recipe, 3:15 to 3:45 in another) and adjusts the grind to stay inside them 6:40 6:14. A Comandante C40 drains fast, which lets him grind fine and still keep the drawdown above two minutes 21:30. Daddy Got Coffee, by contrast, warns against judging by drawdown time on very clear burrs.

Sprometheus's view

• Skipping the bloom on fresh coffee gave hollow, bitter, astringent cups, and a 30 s bloom fixed it 5:39, though his tests without a bloom still reached the mid-20s in extraction 4:38. Throwing away the bloom ("top and tail") removed easy fines and heavy compounds for a brighter, lighter cup 2:33.
• Light roasts go straight off the boil. For darker roasts, let the kettle rest 20 to 30 s to about 93 °C 3:03. Pouring only in the centre ("osmotic" pouring) probably over-extracts the middle and gives a dry, bitter finish 6:06.
• With SSP multi-purpose burrs, grind only a little finer than usual for filter 8:13. SSP high-uniformity burrs ran fast and then stalled, so they need more care 4:34. In a recipe with several phases, too fine a grind can stretch the drawdown past eight minutes without necessarily over-extracting 4:08.

European Coffee Trip's view

• Emi Fukahori's Hario Switch recipe starts a Comandante at 25 clicks. If it's bitter or dry, go coarser, and if it's thin or too acidic, go finer. 94 to 95 °C brightens the cup and 90 to 92 °C calms it, and a brew slower than about 2:20 leans bitter 3:03 4:12.
• Martin Wölfl grinds around 630 µm on an Orea V4 with fast paper 8:49 and moves the temperature between 93 and 95 °C depending on the roast 6:14. Jackie Tran drops the final pour to 80 °C to curb bitterness 2:34.
• Brodie (The Nomad Barista) says that if a Chemex clogs, grind coarser and lift the filter to break the seal 3:40. Espresso roasts brewed as pour-over want a coarser grind, cooler water and gentle pours 5:08.
• They compared three V60 methods on one coffee. James Hoffmann's gave a rounded body and lasting sweetness but turned drying with too much agitation, Kasuya's 4:6 gave crisp acidity, and osmotic flow gave a mild, syrupy cup 15:53.
• When a recipe app gives timings but no grind, adjust the grind until the total time matches 3:19.

Brian Quan's view

• Agitation sets the presentation. Heavy agitation from the kettle and wet WDT push acidity forward. Slow pours with little agitation through a Melodrip bring sweetness and balance, and a mix of the two gives both 7:15 26:16 17:38. More wet WDT rescues a grind that's too coarse, but overdoing it muddies the cup 13:25 12:54. A small grind error can be partly fixed by pouring faster or slower 2:02.
• Paper. Fast Cafec T90 papers resist clogging, so he grinds fine 3:35. Preston of Flower Child Coffee uses slow T92 papers, a long 1:19 ratio and gentle pours for a brew of 4 to 5 minutes 9:27. Fast papers put acidity first with a tea-like texture, and slow, thick papers open with body 7:43.
• Temperature and ratio. Start new coffees at 94 to 96 °C and go hotter for more acidity 12:18. A kettle at 90 to 92 °C with gentle pouring rounds out and sweetens medium-light coffees 3:35. Ratios past roughly 1:18 to 1:19 rarely please him 12:48. On a 98 mm flat, keep going finer until the sweetness falls away 6:07.
• Brewer. A V60 gives clear acidity, flat-bottoms and the UFO give louder acidity, and a Deep 27 gives a very sweet cup 4:35. His guests vary. Pack Katisomsakul grinds finer and finishes in under two minutes 9:16, and Harry of Moonwake suggests roughly 1:16 for light roasts 6:41.
• His style of grinding fine and agitating is closer to James Hoffmann's "finer until bitter" than to The Coffee Chronicler's coarse, gentle base.

Bluebird Coffee Roastery's view

• One recipe, one dial. The café keeps the dose, pour pattern and timings fixed and moves only the grind (and now and then the kettle) for each new coffee 5:04 3:03. Grinder numbers drift between units of the same model, so their early videos suggest benchmarking against a coffee you know 4:04. Later ones give the grind in microns, with a guide that converts it for common grinders, and then tune by total time. Much slower than about 2:30 means go coarser, and faster means go finer 5:06 4:39.
• Long gaps. Most of their small-dose recipes are two 100 g pours with 1:15 to 1:30 between them. The pause lets the water work into the particles, so the second pour carries more away and lifts extraction and sweetness 1:32 3:09 3:39. A 90 s bloom adds contact time without touching the grind or the pours 6:32, and very fresh coffee gets the long wait so it can degas 5:04. If a brew runs long, trimming those gaps changes the cup less than a grind change would 7:43. This is close to Lance Hedrick's longer bloom for dense light coffees.
• Brewer shape. A cone's bed is deepest in the middle, so they pour into the centre first and wait longer. A flat bottom gives an even bed and drains more slowly, so the pours start in circles and the grind goes coarser or the gaps get shorter 1:32 3:37 4:03 3:35. When a coffee needed a finer grind for sweetness, the April drained too slowly, which moved them to an Origami with V60 papers for lighter roasts 4:00. A fast paper in a cone also helps Geishas that drain slowly 3:04. Leave a flat-bottom bed alone once pouring starts, and settle any bed gently, because agitation sends fines down to the paper 3:39 2:01.
• Coffee and process. Dense washed coffees, Kenyans in particular, often taste sweeter ground coarser for a quicker brew 2:04 1:01. Heavily processed and anaerobic lots extract easily. One of their videos brews them coarse and fast 4:12 3:35, while another grinds finer and adds a third pour because a very soluble lot ran through too quickly 5:17, so the direction depends on the coffee. A small dose wants a slightly finer grind and longer gaps 4:17. A wider ratio near 1:17 softens strong acidity and lets florals show 4:35, and cooler water (about 90 to 91 °C) keeps some delicate coffees clean 2:06 8:18.
• Reading the cup. Sharp citric acidity points to under-extraction, and stone fruit and brown sugar to a full extraction 7:40. Blurred flavour with tartness and a hollow middle at a long brew time turned out to be over-extraction, fixed by going half a step coarser 5:30. For iced pour-over, grind finer and brew stronger so the ice doesn't wash it out 3:33.

Summarised in our own words from the creators' videos, with every point linked to the moment it comes from. Notchbook isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any of these creators, so please watch the originals for full context. Sources

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