I’m often asked about brewing methods and home equipment setups. What’s the best manual brewer? Well, as often is the case, it depends. What kind of coffee appeals to you? What’s your budget? How much attention do you want to pay to the brewing process? These are all good questions that can help you select the right brewer to fit your taste and style. I thought we’d spend a moment here diving into two of the more popular brewing styles (pour over and full immersion) to better equip you when looking for a home brewing setup.

One quick note, when thinking about your coffee budget, I like to suggest an 80/20 split. This means whatever you’d determined you can spend on your brewing gear (grinder + brewing device), spend 80% of that budget on the best grinder you can find, and 20% of the brewer. Remember, your coffee can only be as good as your grinder allows it to be.

Pour Over vs Full Immersion

While there are hundreds of brewing devices, filters and do-dads available for manual coffee preparation, they can mostly be placed into two distinct brewing styles – pour over and full immersion. With pour over coffee, water is dripped down into a coffee bed more slowly and filtered into a container. With relatively brief contact time with water, a medium or fine grind setting is appropriate. As we’ll note below, it’s the filter that plays a significant role in the resulting brew. With a full immersion style, the coffee is left completely submerged in water. Since each particle has a vastly longer interaction with brewing water, you’ll need to use a coarser ground for this style of brewing.

(Note, in a previous post we’ve looked at the impact of grind setting on brewing. Notably, finer grinds result in more surface area and relatively brief contact time between coffee and water. Coarser grinds result in less surface area, so greater time is needed to fully extract the flavoring materials.)

Pour over coffee is generally associated with a more vibrant cup, cleaner taste, juiciness and a more tea-like mouthfeel. This is largely due to the paper filters that are used in this brewing style, which restrict the amount of oils and non-dissolved particles in the coffee.

We brew with the Kalita Wave at Mammoth Espresso, which is mostly a low-fuss style of brewing that yields a high clarity of cup while still promoting sweetness in the finished brew. I love Kalita Waves because they’re ideal for pulse pouring (adding small amounts of water over time in one central location). A very high-fuss alternative is the Hario V60. This brewing type relies on the user’s practice and attention to concentric, constant pouring (pouring in a precise location moving in circles around the brew bed). Then there is the Chemex, a great brewer that uses a very thick paper filter. This proprietary filter restricts the most oils and solids from the finished brew (i.e., it has a very high clarity of cup), but can often taste stringy or exceedingly light.

On the other end is full immersion brewing. By far, the most often used full immersion brewer is the French press. In this brewing style, coffee particles remain intermingled with the brewing water for a period of time (i.e., fully immersed) before being filtered out right before serving. Typically, full immersion brewers use a metal screen, which allows the most solid content and oils to escape into the cup. If you favor body (i.e., the presence of tiny coffee particles you can feel in your mouth) over clarity, then full immersion is for you. As a slight variation on this style, brewers like the Clever Dripper allow you to brew using full immersion, then filter the coffee with a paper filter instead. This method offers some flexibility and control over the amount of solids and oils that find their way into the cup.

While pour over and full immersion are the most popular manual brewing options, there are an array of other options that we may get into later – Aeropress, Siphon/Vacuum and others. These are all covered in a book (Grounded) that we have available at the shop. Or, just visit with your Mammoth barista for tips on finding the right coffee gear and brewing excellent coffee at home.