Coffee log: a month of pour-over experiments
I do not have a palate worth bragging about, so I treated this like a small experiment: one variable per week, same beans, same grinder, same water.
Week one: water temperature
Off-boil versus 92 °C. The cooler water tasted flatter and more forgiving. I settled at 93 °C for this bean and stopped thinking about it.
Week two: grind size
This was the variable that mattered most. Two clicks finer on the grinder turned an under-extracted, sour cup into something balanced. The lesson is unglamorous: grind consistency beats every accessory I own.
Week three: pour structure
Bloom, then two pours versus bloom, then four. The four-pour cup was cleaner if I kept the water level low; it was worse if I let it drain between pours. My conclusion is that the number of pours is a proxy for agitation, and agitation is the real dial.
Week four: everything at once
Uncontrolled, as a sanity check. The result was fine, which is a useful result: after a month I could hit "fine" without reading a recipe. That was the actual goal, and I am now saving money on cafés I no longer need to visit on the way to the desk.