Sometimes curiosity about coffee leads to simple experiments that reveal surprisingly clear lessons.
I wanted to understand how flavor evolves during extraction in a pour-over. Instead of allowing everything to flow into one cup, I separated the brew into three different stages and tasted them individually.
The results were more revealing than I expected.
Three Stages of Coffee Extraction
I wanted to understand the differences in coffee extraction during three stages in a pour-over. I did not use a paper filter, as I enjoy coffee with oils included rather than a completely clean cup.
Today I used Blue Tokai’s light roast Almatas coffee beans.
I took 12 grams of these and hand-ground them slightly coarser than the finest setting on my 1Zpress manual grinder. It was fine enough to slowly allow water filtering through the coffee bed.
I used 200 grams of drinking water, boiled and allowed to cool slightly while I prepared everything. It would've brought down the temperature to about 94 or 96 celcius.
Knowing that the ground beans absorb roughly 35 grams of water, I aimed for about 65 grams of coffee extraction in the first phase, followed by about 50 grams each in the next two stages.
I poured 100 grams of water for the first stage, beginning with a 50-gram bloom, finishing the stage in about one minute. So this includes both bloom time as well as slow pour time.
Then I poured the remaining 50 grams of water and stopped the flow into the first-stage cup once extraction finished.
I quickly swapped to another cup and poured approximately 50 grams of water for the second stage, removing the cup when that extraction completed.
Finally, I swapped to a third cup and poured the remaining water for the third stage.
Because of some manual error—and realizing the coffee bed retained more water in other stages too not just first, the distribution was not perfectly accurate between the three. Slightly more coffee was extracted in the first stage and less in the second. The third stage ended up with around 50 grams of final extraction.
To avoid bias from lingering strong flavors, I tasted the cups in reverse order, starting with the third stage. I also neutralized my palate by sipping water between tastings.
Here are my observations.
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Third Stage
Surprisingly, even this coffee had a decent aroma, though clearly not the strongest.
The flavor was difficult to describe because it was so mild. Visually it still had a light brown color. The taste was mostly neutral with a very mild bitterness. The bitterness was so subtle that it almost had to be searched for. I think using a light roast also made the bitterness very mild.
My conclusion was that it was not worthwhile to perform this third extraction. It would be better to dilute the earlier coffee with plain water than to include this stage in the cup.
I did not enjoy this third-stage coffee. After repeated tastings, I was even tempted to discard what remained.
Second Stage
This had good coffee character.
There was no noticeable bitterness, and the aroma was pleasant. Visually it had a nice medium-brown color.
I was comfortable drinking this extraction on its own. The coffee taste was moderate but lacked a defining flavor note. It was certainly not flavorless, but nothing stood out distinctly.
The cup felt balanced but somewhat neutral. I did not notice any sweetness, though my sensitivity to sweetness in coffee may be limited.
First Stage
Boy! This gave me an instant high-kick when I sampled it. Genuinely a high kick!
The aroma was strong and already complex. There was no imagination needed to notice it.
The taste was quite strong, with a complex mix of flavors. I liked it a lot despite its intensity.
In fact, it resembled espresso so closely that I felt I could experience something close to espresso right at home. That is not an exaggeration.
There was a very strong coffee flavor with noticeable sourness as well. From this experience I concluded that perhaps I could experiment with a stronger coffee-to-water ratio going forward. All the complex notes were part of this stage. I am not sensitive to individually notice notes, but certainly did observe complex flavor profile in this stage than the other two.
I really liked this stage of coffee.
Some sediment could be seen at the bottom of the cup, while the second and third stages appeared completely clean. Coffee oils were also visible, forming a thin layer floating on the surface of the first stage.
Combining the Stages
I then sampled combinations:
First and second together
All three together
Combining the first and second stages worked well. However, adding the third stage reduced the quality of the cup, even if only slightly.
This made it clear that the third stage extraction should not be included in my daily cups.
I have already been experimenting this way for the past few days. Simply adding plain water for dilution at the end works better than including the third stage.
Conclusion
This experiment helped me understand something interesting.
The first stage alone can deliver something close to espresso-like intensity at home.
The third stage extraction is better avoided completely.
Skipping the first stage and drinking only the second stage would also not be a good idea.
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