Letting the Coffee Bed Run Dry: Tool or Sin?

In this episode, I sit with a question that's been quietly bothering me about pour over brewing. Why are we so afraid to let the coffee bed run completely dry? It's one of those rules in the specialty coffee world that gets repeated until it feels like law: keep water on the bed, never let it dry out, race your next pour in before the surface cracks. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to just test it. I brewed an Ethiopian white honey coffee two ways. One with a careful Melodrip pour, water always on top of the bed. The other where I let the bed go completely dry after my pours. The difference in the cup surprised me, and it changed how I think about pour over technique.

What you'll learn in this episode is what actually happens when you let the coffee bed run dry: a bolder, heavier cup with more body, almost like a French press came through your dripper. More importantly, you'll hear me work through the bigger question this experiment opened up for me. How many other coffee rules am I following without ever asking why? How much of what we call "wrong" in pour over brewing is actually just a tool we haven't learned to use yet? If you've ever felt boxed in by specialty coffee dogma, this conversation is for you. I'm encouraging you, as always, to trust your own palate, run your own experiments, and remember that you are the one drinking the coffee.

Transcript

[00:00] Letting the coffee bed run completely dry isn't a mistake. It's a tool. It's no different than this experiment right here.

That's what I went through a couple of weeks ago. I was wondering, why aren't we doing this more often? Is it taboo to let the coffee bed run completely dry? You know exactly what I'm talking about. We do it all the time. At least I do. As soon as that bed looks like it's about to get dry, you pour another pour of water. Sometimes you're racing to the actual coffee bed to make sure that you don't really mess it up.

[01:00] But then I was thinking, student experiment. Even though it may seem very taboo to make sure that there's water always in the coffee bed, let's just do an experiment of trying it when it runs all the way down.

I was surprised. I was shocked. It was one of those things where you're like, wow, why do we really follow these rules sometimes? Why do we do things in a way that's more so a detriment to ourselves? And this is no different here.

[02:00] So I did an experiment, as I always do. You'll see it on the channel eventually. I used the Ethiopian white honey coffee. It was a very slow, exaggerated drawdown anyway. That's just the way it operated. But I used that coffee not so much because of the slow drawdown. It was because I just wanted to experiment. I wanted to see if you can actually just brew the cup as we normally do, where right before the water exits out of the pores, we immediately put another pour of water on top of the coffee bed in a pour over.

[03:00] So I did it that way. I used a Melodrip one way. The other way, I let the water completely go dry after my pours, as we do in the bloom anyway. And I sat there. I wasn't team keep water in the bed, or team let it run dry. It wasn't that at all. I was more so just seeing it for what it is. I just wanted to taste it for what it was.

TDS was a factor. It really was. But truthfully, the biggest thing of really why we do this, because TDS is just an indicator of something. Strength level, whatever. It's about flavor. It's about taste. It's about what we're actually tasting in a cup of coffee. We know that. I can go back and forth about this whole TDS game, but that's probably a story for another day.

[04:00] At the end of the day, I wanted to see what that coffee actually tasted like. So I drank the first one. It was smooth. It was clear. It was fine. It was something that I expected.

When it came time to drink the other coffee, the one where the water bed was completely dry, it was evident. It was there. I wondered if it was just that coffee. Maybe I needed to try it a little bit more. But throughout the past couple of weeks, I have tried it, and it's more so the same situation.

[05:00] The coffee was bolder. It was heavier. The body was just thick. I think I preferred that one in this case, in that situation. And I just sat there and I was like, whoa, interesting.

So that particular technique, that particular mistake, made the coffee a little bit more full-body than what it was before. Before, it reminded me more of a delicate type of tea taste and body. There's no problem with that. There's no problem with that whatsoever. I guess really what I'm saying here is that it was different.

[06:00] And then I started to think, wait. Why did I shy away from that? Why did I listen to either myself, or just doing something for a very long time, or others saying that you don't do this, you don't do that, and not really give you the reason why? Why did I fall to that notion, to that thought, to that way of being, to that whole thing that we always think we need to follow and do? Those are some of the things that I was thinking about.

[07:00] And as I kept drinking this coffee, it was more apparent that I realized this was a tool. This is something I can do from time to time, depending on the coffee, depending on how I want to agitate it, manipulate it, to bring different things out of the coffee. This is another tool that I can use for myself as I go through this journey of coffee.

[08:00] And like I said, the past couple weeks have been pretty cool, just because if I particularly don't get to it in time, the coffee bed when I'm making my coffee, sometimes I just lean into it. Sometimes I purposely do it, to the point where I'm like, okay, this is where we're at right now. These are the things that we're doing right now. These are the different experiments that I can do and understand and explore with coffee, because now I understand the situation a little bit more.

It's not a mystery. It's not something that I run away from. It's something that I actually look forward to, just because I know that I can manipulate, I can change, I can bring something different out of my coffee.

[09:00] Was the coffee more extracted? Yeah, it was. Was it that significant? A decent amount, but not something to go crazy about. But again, it comes back to that flavor. It comes back to that taste. It comes back to what I care about with coffee at that moment in time.

It could be, using this particular experiment, that it may be the thing that really gets you going with this particular coffee. That boldness, that way of getting that juiciness out of the coffee in a different manner. This is probably just one thing that you can do to manipulate and get the best out of the coffee as much as you can.

[10:00] So I sat there and thought and wondered, wow, what other things are we doing here that are not getting us anywhere, or pushing us back from understanding coffee even more? What other taboo things are we doing, not understanding, when it comes to this whole thing of coffee making? Those are the things I think about now.

Because I'm sure there's so many other things that we don't do. And granted, there are things that we don't do for a particular reason. It doesn't make sense to do them whatsoever. But I know that there's other things, and I need to figure out what those things are. I figure them out from time to time, and I've shared them here in this arena, so to speak.

[11:00] This drawdown thing has got me thinking and wondering and pondering and wanting to explore even more all the things that I really want to do with coffee. I want to know it all. And I hope that you want to know it all too.

I guess really what I'm saying here is that I'm just one person in this whole arena of saying, do this, don't do that, stop that, that's dumb online. There's bigger channels, there are people who always talk about different things, who give tips and tricks and all that stuff. I'm no different, because at the end of the day, we're just experiencing it for whatever we want to. And we're just naive or dumb enough to actually share it with other people.

[12:00] But the cool thing about all of this is that I'm just a person. You are a person. You're actually the person who's drinking your coffee when you drink it. I'm not there. Whoever you talk to and deal with, it doesn't matter. You're there front and center with that coffee.

[13:00] I don't think you need me to allow you, or to give you that push of not listening to any one of us. If something doesn't feel right, question it. Even if it does feel right, question it. Try your own experiments. See what works, see what doesn't work for your palate. See if you can get to the same conclusion. Do things that are just off the wall, that you've always been hesitant to try, just because somebody said that it wasn't the right thing to do.

[14:00] Try it anyway. Because that's one of the biggest things that this has allowed me to understand more than anything. The other what-ifs, the other things that I want to do with coffee, why I want to do them. Those are some of the things that I'm thinking about right now, and of course continuing on with this whole tool. Because now it's a tool. Now it's a way that I see and experience coffee. It's another way that I know it's going to be something great when I actually try it. Or not great, depending on the coffee, depending on the situation, depending on my pour technique, depending on the filter that I decide to use that day. That's what's going to change all of this.

[15:00] Now something that I was so hesitant about trusting, and thinking that it was bad, I now look forward to. I look forward to actually just experiencing it for what it is. And I hope that you get the chance and opportunity to do the same too. Because all we're doing here is just experimenting anyway. We're trying to match our palate, trying to push our palate, in order to see what this beverage does for us.

Yeah, it's bold, it's heavy. A French press type of way coming from a pour over. That's pretty cool.

As I sit here and drink this coffee and conclude with you right now, I think that's the biggest takeaway I can give you with all of this. We have to push past the things that we think we're not supposed to do. And when we do that, we're going to learn something about ourselves. Whether we jot it down, talk to others online about this, or just sit there for a little bit, just to enjoy the coffee, realizing that this is just another thing that we can use in order to let the coffee express itself to us.

So what other things do you go through when it comes to this whole coffee thing that hold you back, or that you've thought about that you wouldn't dare do? What are they? Is letting the coffee bed run dry one of them? Why is that? It doesn't really matter why. Try it out. Forget everything that everybody has said and just try it out anyway. Make your own determination. Talk to you later. Bye.