How I Nail/Screw the Pour-Over Coffee-Making Process: My First Experience of Coffee-Making Workshop
- kman.w
- Apr 30, 2019
- 3 min read
A workshop to fix the broken soul of a stressed-out final year university student.
As a stressful final year uni student, I took a day off from reality, joined by my partners-in-crime Aun Hui and Mavis, by attending a beginner level’s pour-over coffee workshop hosted by the SLO Atelier in a studio space provided by Cite Garden Bookstore in KL area and hoping for a therapeutic session and get overwhelmed by the fragrance of coffee.
The reason for attending the workshop was pretty spontaneous: my interest for pour-over coffee just sparked out of nowhere, or it simply could be I was addicted to coffee yet getting bored of the ones from 7-E.
The whole workshop was comprised of two sessions, which are an introduction talk and later practical session.
Upon arrival, printed handout and voucher were placed on the seats prepared for everyone and the session started off with introduction from everyone.
Source: GIPHY
Finally, after a few moments of zoning out during the talk and a short while of break, the practical session started with the demonstration by the barista, who was also the main speaker.
The coffee making process seemed easy at the first place but what mattered were the timing and techniques which would affect the outcome and the taste of final product. Although we were having 2 different practical sessions using only different pour-over brewers, the coffee-making steps were similar but the difference would be the techniques used. done with different techniques.
Basically, this was how the entire workshop went!
Step 1: Place a piece of coffee (paper) filter in a pour-over brewer and dampen it (MUST!) before pouring in the freshly ground coffee.
Step 2: Pour the freshly ground coffee into the pour-over brewer.
(The amount of effort to get this pour-in-coffee-powder shot OOFFF)
Step 3: Pour in the prepared hot water with a gooseneck kettle according to the timing and techniques.
Step 4: Swirl the coffee well for a moment and pour it out. Drink, share and discuss!
Based on the steps above, my opinion is that making a cup of pour over coffee is easy but to make it WELL is the challenging part. According to the barista, the taste of a good cup of coffee should be based on 3 elements that appear in sequence which are the sourness, bitterness and sweetness developed at the back of tongue (甘甜).
My first attempt was indeed a horrible one because the extraction from the ground coffee was lacking so it turned out to taste like some kind of Chinese traditional medicine instead EWW :3
One once said that the outcome of a cup of pour-over coffee shows the personality of the person who made the coffee. Comments for me were I was too anxious about the figures (as in the timer and time taken to pour in hot water each time after a break) and techniques at the same time so eventually the coffee was not fully developed before flowing down to the cup. In other words, my comments for myself was that I was impatient and not being serious for the first time.
For the second session, it went pretty well, by learning from my previous mistakeS. the coffee I made was close to ideal although not a perfect one.
OK that’s the summary for the second session and I’m not going to type the whole grandma story out or else I will sound like as if I am bragging about it. *flipping non-existent long hair*
Sharing some post-workshop(s) thoughts here:
Overall, the discussion was a good one as we got the chance to taste one another’s coffee and discuss about the flaws for later improvements.
My first experience for a pour-coffee workshop was pretty LEGIT for me. Not only I learnt about some basic knowledge of coffee but also realised that paying attention to details is what I have to improve. WELL at least to make a good cup of pour-over coffee needs it because it is really easy to identity whether someone is being attentive or just trying to muddle throughout the whole manual brewing process *pretentious cough*.
My conclusion after having joined several workshops of different themes is that what makes the outcome to be LEGIT is to invest money and time in that particular interest so that the knowledge and skills towards that field is constantly updating and enhanced at times.
So, legit anot? It's really up to you to decide.
Post-Scripts
All of the us were given a packet of coffee beans before leaving the place at the end of workshop. Guess what, we were too enthusiastic for the coffee-making process and eventually forgot to request for the coffee beans to be ground. ;)
What about you, my fellow readers? Comment below or drop me an email if you have any other real LEGIT suggestions for artsy workshops to attend in KL!
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