Pour over coffee: it doesn’t just taste good, it actually teaches us a lot about design!

Stumbled on this article this morning called an Ode to pour over coffee which totally resonates with me. I am a recent convert to pour over coffee which – as a coffee fanatic – I have to say tastes not just marginally better but a lot better than even French press (which aside of pour over makes the best coffee if you have good beans as the coffee lingers in the water giving it a richer flavor)

In tech or design talk we call this a ‘step change’ in the coffee experience J . It’s not just optimization or marginal improvement. It’s  a leap forward. Moreover – as in any design process – step improvement often comes from thinking about the problem in a different way altogether and simplifying the solution.

Think of this:  companies like illy, Nestle, Lavazza and so many others are investing more and more in sophisticated technology to create the perfect  water pressure to extract the right amount of flavor from a coffee, pour over coffee does better using gravity, and just the right cone shape with which the right amount of coffee (26 grams to be precise)  ground to the right grain size. That creates just enough friction for the water to trickle down at exactly the right pace.  A little too fast and the coffee is watery and tasteless. A little too slow and its too dense and bitter.continue reading »