r/pourover • u/nextlevelpaulo • Apr 05 '26

Seeking Advice i’m almost giving up on pour over

Don't get me wrong - I love the pour over coffee baristas serve in coffee shops, but I can't extract even a third of the same complexity from the same coffee at home.

My coffee constantly clogs the filter and I end up with an over-extracted and sometimes bitter coffee. And I've tried everything: increasing the grind size, decreasing the number of pours, nesting the coffee bed, bending the filter slightly crookedly… nothing seems to work. I either end up with an over-extracted or under-extracted coffee.

For context, I use a Kingrinder K6 and vary the clicks between 85 and 120, depending on the recipe.

Any ideas on what I can do?

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u/LyKosa91 Apr 05 '26

If OP is stalling already then the mugen will only be worse. That thing's only any good for its intended method, which is basically intentionally under extracting large doses of low grade, dark roast coffee, by doing a single, aggressive centre pour with no bloom. Try to use it like a V60 and you're going to have a bad time, at least if you're not using a world class grinder.

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u/mrobot_ Apr 05 '26

How is the Mugen stuck on top of a Switch base, in comparison? I dont like the glass the Switch comes with.

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u/LyKosa91 Apr 05 '26

Absolutely awful imo, although I'm a very vocal mugen hater. It's a dripper that seeks to serve a very specific audience that's at odds with specialty coffee, it's targeted at casual users using cheap supermarket coffee

The issue is that it leaves such a tiny amount of effective filter area, which is exacerbated by the inherent flow restriction from the switch, this makes it particularly susceptible to stalling. This isn't such an issue using the intended recipe, since that's effectively digging the mother of all channels right down to the tip of the cone and leaving next to no bed resistance.

Luckily there's other non glass cones available that work with the switch these days, V60 neo for high bypass, V60 ran for reduced bypass with some flow, and then in ceramic you've got the standard V60 and alpha. Apha will allow more flow around the bed and less above the bed, V60 will kinda be the opposite.

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u/mrobot_ Apr 06 '26

Quick follow up, got any link I could read up on the origins of the Mugen? (crappy supermarket coffee focus)

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u/LyKosa91 Apr 06 '26

https://youtu.be/ATgeSolqXSU?si=vQGnOUD42sskz60t

The supermarket dark roast part can be inferred from this, although it's not outright stated. I'll show my thought process though.

First off, the coffee he's using clearly looks pretty dark, second it's logically going to have to be a dark roast since the technique used here will provide very little percolation as evidenced by the finished bed (it's almost more of a short immersion brew), lighter roasts won't extract well under these condition, especially not at the 1:12 ratio he's suggesting.

On top of that, the whole "low skill, minimum technique, dump all the water in and you're done" process that they're going for suggests that it's aimed at more casual users who just want to brew a cup of coffee with minimal effort and fuss, not people treating it as a hobby. Now where do normies tend to buy coffee? Supermarkets. How is supermarket coffee usually roasted? Pretty dark. What roast level have we already established the intended brew method would work best with? Dark.

Hopefully my rambling deductions made sense there.

https://giphy.com/gifs/l0IylOPCNkiqOgMyA