Hi, I'm a newbie and I need some help on the Kalita Wave 155 because I find it kinda hard to tame this pour over brewer. First of all how to properly rinse/pre-wet the filter? No matter how much I tried I keep ruining the wave form lol. Second one is brewing time; I usually go with 1:15 ratio (15g coffee, 225ml water) with medium-coarse or coarse grind but I never got it below 3 mins although a lot of people said they managed to got it under 3 mins. If anyone can share their tips/advice it will be much appreciated .

I think it's probably a problem with the grind. Pouring hot water is not a complex brewing method. In fact, next to brewing tea, it's probably the easiest method I can think of for making excellent coffee.

1. Good coffee
2. Good grinder
3. Good water, within brew temp range (195-205F)
4. The right ratio ('right' varies from person to person. Not everyone likes strong coffee, but no one likes weak coffee either). Mine is 30g/350G of water.


I suggest before you invest in a better grinder, sift out some of the fines. Very easy to do:

Dump your grounds in a bowl, and shake it side to side. Use a table spoon and scoop out most of the coffee, discarding the finest particles at the bottom (aka the 'fines') You should immediately see vastly different flow rate. IF it flows too fast, discard less amount of the fines. In any case, this simple step can give you the right grind distribution without having to buy an expensive grinder, if you don't mind the extra step.. You can also use a fine strainer but it's bit messier unless you find one that's small enough to put in a little dosing cup.

Anyway, ultimately you will want to get a proper grinder if you want to skip this extra step. If you're just doing drip brews, I suggest a Baratza Virtuoso.

Hi weebit_nutty thanks for the reply. I tried your advice discarding the fines using a steel mesh and it does make the flow better. But I find that I lost a few amounts of coffee doing this so I have to add a couple of extra grams to my ratio. I use Porlex hand grinder but never have tried discarding fines before, so I guess this is something new for me to try on other brewing methods.

Good to hear you're getting better results (hopefully?) I'll be honest in saying I don't brew much with the 155 these days and I do realize the surface area is significantly less those on the 185 brewer. So moving up to 185 may be more forgiving. You can still brew single cups in the 185, as I do.

BTW, are you blooming your coffee? I find doing so slightly improves flow as well, at least in the case of my Melitta single hole brewers (all sizes).

weebit_nutty wrote:Good to hear you're getting better results (hopefully?) I'll be honest in saying I don't brew much with the 155 these days and I do realize the surface area is significantly less those on the 185 brewer. So moving up to 185 may be more forgiving. You can still brew single cups in the 185, as I do.

BTW, are you blooming your coffee? I find doing so slightly improves flow as well, at least in the case of my Melitta single hole brewers (all sizes).

Yup the result is better as I'm sipping it right now . Well the reason why I chose the 155 is to get the tip of my kettle as close as possible to the coffee bed (as Nick Cho has advised in his blog lol) and because mostly I only brew small batch of coffee (mostly 15g, 18g top) and with 185 I think it would be too far because of the less of coffee ground used. I do bloom my coffee but not much just to get all the surface wet and I do it with all pour over brewer I own. I have 2 Melitta like brewer (I call it fan shaped brewer) with one and three holes, to be honest I prefer the one with 3 holes because the extraction is faster. I'm gonna try removing the fines on them and see what it's like

Rinsing filter: Some people put thumb and forefinger on filter edge as pour directly into centre. Don't need to fill it, just add a half inch or so and let it soak upwards. Also could use aero press funnel which is also good help for dosing

Bloom: I read adding 2x water to coffee weight for bloom and waiting 30seconds. Also pour gently to bloom... Can do in pulses

Brewing: you watched Cho's video so sounds good. Always pour into a bed of water not letting the bed drain out completely. A couple of possible reasons. One is to minimize thrashing of grounds. Other is to keep temps higher as you keep bed warm with pool of water

Fines: depends on grinder. My Bunn G1 produces nice grind. My encore sucks and sieving fines can help.

This is not entirely intuitive, but drawdown time for me is not just a factor of grind size. The more similar your grinds are, I think the less channeling you may have (water finding a faster tunnel through the coffee) vs passing through and extracting more evenly. So I can have a more consistent coarser grind that is as slow as or slower than a finer grind with less consistent particles.

I think pouring does have an effect on drawdown as well because depending on how you pour, you will thrash the grounds around more or less, creating more channeling or being more gentle and keeping the coffee bed more consistent, or perhaps moving finer particles down towards the bottom to slow things down. I do notice drawdown can slow down.

This Scott also finds the 185 to be considerably more forgiving than the 155. I've managed brews as low as 18g pretty successfully with the 185, but it shines closer to 24 - 25g and above. Target taste, not time - different techniques produce great tasting coffee in different total brew times, although you're right to want to be consistent.

The filters are also much easier to manage on the 185...

I use the brown filters which are sturdier. I just fill it with hot water and let it drain. No problems. No impact on flavor that I can taste.

I seem to have settled in on a grind around 23 on a Baratza Preciso. Use 16 grams coffee (home roasted) to 300 g water which seems like a lower ratio than what most people use but works for my tastes. I use a regular kettle, bloom with about 30-35g, finish pouring at around 3 mins or a bit longer, then let it drain.

Took me a while to dial in a ratio that worked for me.

The brown filters are terrible. Paper taste is pretty dominant. I found massive improvement after I switched to white ones.

Start to rinse with cold water. Pour just a bit on bottom untill your brew water heats up. Thus waves stick to wall and will not collapse later. Then rinse thoroughly with brew temperature water washing off paper taste and heating cone material to make brew bed more temperature stable.