Kalita Wave

Our Standard Recipe

30g coffee • 470g water • 210ºF

Brewing Method

Four pours. The biggest challenges in larger brews are maintaining an even saturation and a consistent drain rate. With more water comes more pulses and additional turbulence, risking clogging the filter and over-extraction. This method aims to put the bulk of extraction at the beginning, and finishes with two small, gentle pulses to maintain slurry height and flowrate.

1. Rinse Filter: Begin by rinsing your filter with hot water (210ºF) to preheat the brewer and your vessels. After draining, add your ground coffee, ensuring the proper weight of the grounds (30g). Gently shake the brewer to level the coffee bed.
2. 0:00 - Bloom: Pour 80g of water in a quick, spiral motion to evenly saturate all the grounds.
3. 0:40 - Second Pour: Pour to 270g starting at the outside and moving inward with a spiral motion. Repeat this motion, saturating the slurry evenly. 
4. 1:20 - Third Pour: Pour to 370g, briefly wetting the edge where grounds meet the filter to knock down any “high and dry” grounds. Without pausing, transition to a steady center pour.
5. 1:50 - Fourth Pour: Pour steadily in the center until reaching 470g.

Tips

• With larger volume recipes it is tempting to tap, swirl, or stir the brew so that the coffee bed is flat after drawdown. We advise against this especially for beginners, as it often introduces an unpredictable amount of agitation for a process which is already so sensitive to changes. Once confident and achieving consistent results, feel free to experiment with these techniques.
• Aim for a total brew time between 2:30 to 4 minutes. If the brew time is too long or short, adjust the grind size. A finer grind will slow down the drawdown and result in a higher extraction. That said, make changes based on how the coffee tastes rather than exclusively chasing numbers.
• "High and dry grounds" are coffee particles not participating in extraction from being trapped on the filter above the slurry mass. Knocking them down in step 4 is typically enough to avoid this for the final drawdown. If you continue to find this challenging, adjust your kettle flowrate to be slower throughout steps 4 and 5.

Every coffee is different, so these are our general rules of thumb to achieve consistently tasty cups with little effort. We encourage you to use this guide as a starting point and experiment from there!