More Beans Won't Make Your Coffee Stronger — But This Will

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I admit it: When I want a stronger cup of coffee, I throw more ground beans in my drip machine. I can talk myself into thinking that this trick works, but it really doesn't make much of a difference. However, you can make a stronger cup of coffee using a pour-over method, and you don't have to waste beans to get a more robust brew. We learned about the technique from ex-barista Matt Woodburn-Simmonds, who heads up the coffee website Home Coffee Expert. He told us the key to a strong, flavorful cup of coffee is to make a pour-over and to ensure all the grounds get wet as you're brewing.

"It's all to do with how much of the coffee you've ground is actually having flavor extracted by the water you pour into the filter," explains Woodburn-Simmonds. "If you have coffee that is almost completely dry, then it isn't having any flavor extracted into your final brew and is essentially wasted."

His advice flies in the face of other online tips for making strong coffee, which suggest you should quickly pour the hot water over the grounds, or from a higher distance from the dripper, or right into the center of the grounds. It also contradicts the lazy instinct to put more grounds in the basket or double brew a batch to make it stronger. Woodburn-Simmonds says you should instead follow proper technique for making a pour-over for the best result. "Pouring in circles across the whole coffee bed to ensure you're getting full extraction from all your grounds," he shares. "Ensuring the whole coffee bed is wet will give a stronger brew than just pouring in the center."

We've gone to great lengths to discover the ideal method for A+ pour over coffee and learned that pour-overs require you to follow directions precisely. There's an exact art to how you grind the coffee and add water, and a formula to how long a pour-over should take to brew (3 to 3 ½ minutes, according to Matt Woodburn-Simmonds). You'll also need the right equipment: a gooseneck kettle and a pour-over dripper or pour-over system. And don't forget the scale. "Make sure you have your pour-over on a scale — it makes life a lot easier and will greatly increase the chances of getting great coffee," says Woodburn-Simmonds.

A 6-ounce cup of coffee needs the "Golden Ratio" —  10 grams of medium-finely ground coffee for an ideal 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio. Woodburn-Simmonds suggests that you first wet all the grounds in the dripper with hot water until the scale reads double the weight of the coffee (20 grams). Then comes the "blooming" phase, when you let that coffee sit and bubble for 30 to 45 seconds. As the seconds tick by, the coffee grounds will look like they're blooming, or foaming and growing, right out of the dripper. What's actually happening is the grounds are releasing carbon dioxide that's accumulated during roasting. Don't skip the blooming step — Woodburn-Simmonds says it's crucial to create an even extraction and make sure you get flavor out of all the grounds. 

After the grounds bloom, start the final pour in a clockwise manner, slowly from the center to the edges. "Make sure you don't pour on the very edge of the filter to avoid water bypassing the grounds entirely," notes Woodburn-Simmonds. "Do this in two stages until you've poured the correct amount of water for a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio."