# When pouring pourovers in stages …



## mathof (Mar 24, 2012)

When pouring pourovers in stages, do you let the coffee-bed become visible before adding more water?

Matt


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

You can but it takes longer & makes dialling in the grind, based on normal range of brew time, harder.

E.g. you could grind very coarse an add 20g every 20s then gradually grind finer until you hit the flavour balance, for that ratio & weight, that you want.

But normally, no, I start adding water in prescribed weights and intervals & usually there is still water above the bed when I add the next stage.


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## the_partisan (Feb 29, 2016)

You can, but I don't think it's a good idea unless you're using a dispersion/shower screen. First it will be quite slow and you'll lose a lot of temperature, second each time you hit the bed with fresh water it will kick up lot of silt around, disturbing the bed. Having a layer of water above should help to even out the extraction and also acts as a buffer to minimize disturbance.


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## malling (Dec 8, 2014)

It is not necessarily slow, that really depends on the size of your pours and coffee used.

I agree that you shouldn't normally let the grind become visible of the reasons already mentioned, however with certain coffees it can be difficult to avoid it, as those particular coffees drains fast, and not letting the grind be somewhat visible will result in less ideal extraction.

And you might think grinding finder or splitting it up will do the trick, but it is not always that simple.

However I would always try to make sure there is water over the coffee bed. Using the same size pours and intervals.


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## Scotford (Apr 24, 2014)

Nah I just throw it all in after a decent saturation phase


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