Coffee is an extremely fickle drink when it comes to its creation. Weight, temperature, and time are all key factors in brewing a great cup, but those variables rarely stay the same for the making of any given cup. What you can master however, is technique, and when it comes to brewing pour-over coffee with the Kalita Wave Dripper, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better video than this.
More than just an instruction manual, the best part of this video is that it meticulously explains how all of your actions affect the pending cup. Yes, the circular manner in which you pour water matters, because too much agitation is bad, and you want the coffee to be uniformly extracted from the grounds. That glorious bloom of coffee grounds? It’s a key visual signifier of carbon dioxide escaping from the coffee grounds, which will in turn allow for water to pass through the grounds more effectively.
By the end of the video, you’ll be able to do more than just mimicking the coffee masters. You’ll be able to speak the language of the coffee bean, and start to have an understanding of tweaks you can make in brewing the forever-elusive perfect cup of coffee. Or you can just go back to drinking those shitty K-cups. Whatever. [Nick Cho via Matt Buchanan]