6 Best Coffee Beans for Pour Over

How to Choose the Right Coffee for Pour Over

Though pour-over coffee has become a fixture at high-end cafes, there’s no reason a homebrewer should be intimidated. Read on to learn all about this method and which are the best coffee beans for a pour over brew.

An Intro to Pour Over Brewing

A pour over is a simple way of brewing coffee beans, almost as smooth as instant coffee. It’s just pouring water over ground coffee in a filter, with the extracted coffee dripping through the filter.

Compared with other methods, pouring over is perfect for accentuating intricate flavors, making it a popular choice for single origins, with their subtle tastes and aroma (1). An infusion brew provides the most efficient extraction, and the paper filter ensures a clean cup (2).

Pour overs need only a simple and inexpensive set of equipment, hot water, a funnel, a filter, a kettle, and a vessel to catch that delicious brew. The most popular is the Chemex, then the V60, and the Kalita Wave. Each has specific design features that influence your cup of coffee.

Choosing the Right Beans

Your taste is the most crucial factor when choosing a bean for pour-overs, so make sure you look for a flavor profile and roast level you enjoy. There’s no reason you can’t try your favorite coffee for French press, espresso beans, or even decaf. If you’re not sure, consider one of the best coffee subscriptions for variety.

In general, people recommend single origins because the clean and unmuddied flavors of a well made pour over highlight their unique characteristics (3). For example, the Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee or the Costa Rica coffee. For the same reason, the best light roast coffee, with its mild flavors and mellow body, is also suggested.

The 6 Best Coffee Beans for Pour Over in 2024

Now that you have an idea of what you’re looking for, here are six beans guaranteed to yield a delicious pour over.

The Real Good Coffee Company was founded 30 years ago in Seattle, a city known for its flourishing coffee culture. With a global network of growers and producers, they import only the finest quality arabica beans.

Their dark roast consists of single-origin organic coffee beans harvested in Sumatra, Indonesia, a region known for unique flavors and processing methods stemming from its humid climate, before being perfectly roasted in small batches in Seattle. The result is a full-bodied beverage with bright flavors of bell pepper, cedar, and lemony acidity balanced by roasted notes and a subtle South Asian spice.

Because coffee for cold brew requires special attention to the beans’ quality and roast level, Stone Street has released Cold Brew Reserve beans. They are single-origin 100% arabica Colombian Supremo beans, sourced for their ideal flavor profile and dark roasted for the ultimate cold brew experience. 

The flavors tend toward dark and earthy, but with a balancing cherry sweetness. They are remarkably low acidity and provide a smooth and well-balanced beverage.

Chemex brews a clean cup while maintaining body and balancing floral notes, and this has made it famous for Peruvian beans, with their gentle sweetness and diverse fruit flavors.

They feature a predominantly nutty flavor profile with subtle notes of fruit and a mild sweetness accompanied by low acidity and light-medium body. The medium roast provides just a hint of toastiness that enhances rather than masks the inherent taste of the beans.

Sourced from the Marcala region of Honduras, Subtle Earth single-origin beans are grown at high altitudes, which yields a dense and flavorful bean. The result is a full-bodied low acid coffee with a velvety smoothness and a profound depth of flavor. Prepare for notes of deep, rich chocolate, honey, caramel, and vanilla, each with just a hint of caramelization thanks to the carefully chosen medium-dark roast.

Piñon is a unique New Mexico offering, blending roasted beans with locally grown piñon nuts or natural piñon flavoring. New Mexico Piñon Coffee, the most recognized brand in the market, uses a blend of high-altitude grown arabica beans roasted to medium. It yields a smooth, easy-drinking coffee with a medium body. 

The primary flavor notes are the piñon nuts themselves, which have a mild nuttiness and slight pine flavor, and buttery vanilla. The combination is rich and almost dessert-like, but subtle enough to benefit from a pour over brew.

While some have described Bulletproof Coffee’s loyal following as cult-like, their high-quality beans still deserve recognition, whether you drink them as a pour-over or blended with butter (4). They are certified organic, a proprietary roasting process minimizes the formation of mold toxins, and after roasting, the beans are lab tested to ensure they meet rigorous purity standards.

The Mentalist is a medium-dark roast featuring single-origin beans harvested from high-altitude estates in Guatemala. They taste dark cocoa and vanilla with a hint of cherry sweetness, accompanied by the almond aroma and caramel for vibrant and soothing start to your day.

The Verdict

Brewing a pour over is a great way to taste the subtleties of your beans. So when it comes down to it, the coffee for pour over is the one you want to taste. 

Our pick for this year is Real Good Coffee Company’s signature dark roast, a single-origin Sumatran bean offering flavors of bell pepper, cedar, and South Asian spice, all balanced by bright, lemony acidity.

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