Filter brewing
Rinsing a paper filter
Ten seconds of hot water through the paper before the coffee goes in. It does three useful things at once.
- Skill level
- Beginner
- How long it takes
- Ten seconds
- Equipment needed
- Paper filter, Pour-over dripper
- Steps
- 4
Why it works this way
Rinsing is one of those small habits that is easy to dismiss and hard to argue with once you have tasted the difference. Paper can contribute a distinct flavour to the brew, most noticeably with thicker and unbleached papers. Rinsing also makes the paper cling to the brewer wall, closing the gap water would otherwise run down, and warms the brewer and the vessel beneath it — a cold ceramic dripper takes a surprising amount of heat out of a small brew.
What you need
Required
Helpful, not essential
How to do it
Seat the filter in the dripper and pour hot water through it.
Enough to wet the whole paper, including the top edge.
Let the water run into the vessel below rather than straight to waste.
It preheats the carafe or cup at the same time.
Discard the rinse water before adding coffee.
Leaving it dilutes the brew and floods the bed from below.
Add the coffee and level it with a tap.
A level bed before the bloom is the easiest kind to keep level afterwards.
How to tell it worked
A cleaner cup with no cardboard note, and a brew that starts at the temperature you intended.
If it did not work
What you saw, what to change, and why the change works.
Still tasting paper
Change: Rinse with more water, and check the papers are stored somewhere odour-free.
Paper picks up smells from a cupboard as readily as it contributes its own.
Common mistakes
Forgetting to discard the rinse water
The brew is diluted and the bed floods from underneath.
Instead: Empty the vessel before adding coffee.