James Hoffmann released a video on Immersion vs Percolation:
While he titles it, "Immersion Coffee Brewing Is Better Than Percolation", he does not conclude that. The point is that since immersion is more forgiving it might be better for people with inconsistent grinds.


It seems in agreement with this article which goes into more detail to explain the differences:

https://coffeeadastra.com/2019/07/16/wh ... different/

The crucial difference between a percolation and an immersion is simple: a percolation extracts coffee with clean water, and an immersion extracts coffee with water that is gradually becoming more and more concentrated, because water sits in with the coffee grounds for the whole brew.

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So far, it would seem like this only explains why an immersion would extract slower, not why it would extract a different profile of chemical compounds. But there's a catch: even if water is concentrated in a specific compound, it doesn't prevent it from extracting other compounds efficiently. Therefore, if you wait long enough, an immersion brew will very closely reflect the chemical composition that was initially in the coffee bean, as each individual chemical compound comes to balance with the slurry. If you stop the brew before everything is extracted (which we usually do), the slowest-extracting compounds will be a little bit underrepresented, but otherwise the chemical composition of your cup will be a pretty good reflection of the chemical composition in the coffee bean.

In a percolation brew, things happen very differently. This is true because at every moment, the slurry water is replaced with cleaner water, therefore forcing the extraction speed to remain high as long as it's not depleted from the coffee bean. As you might deduce, this means that the fast-extracting compounds will be over-represented in a percolation brew.

FWIW, pourover doesn't have to be (and really isn't exactly) percolation. The 4:6 pourover method, for instance, involves full draw-down with each pour, so the grounds are met with clean water repeatedly throughout the brew.

I prefer pour over. It tastes cleaner, more focused,good flavors get enhanced.
Immersion ....may taste more complex....but often not in a good way...good flavors are obscured by others.

To my taste buds that is

But he concludes immersion is far more forgiving....maybe

Without testing optimized brews ....for best results....not sure what it means

I agree that immersion is more forgiving. AP and FP are pretty foolproof. But in my experience the results can never reach the heights of a perfect pourover. Not even close, in fact.

Mbb wrote: Immersion ....may taste more complex....but often not in a good way...good flavors are obscured by others.

I find Immersion, using a Hario Switch Clever-like, and in cupping, to be more muted and a single taste, and pour-over to have more different tastes such as beginning of sip to middle to end. Is that latter description not complexity?

"Clarity", perhaps.

Cupping (immersion to near completion) seems to give me a better sense of everything in the bean, good and bad. From that I can pick extraction approaches that focus on the good and deemphasize the bad. I don't seem to get as much information with, for example, a V60 or Kalita.

Deleuzer wrote:FWIW, pourover doesn't have to be (and really isn't exactly) percolation. The 4:6 pourover method, for instance, involves full draw-down with each pour, so the grounds are met with clean water repeatedly throughout the brew.

Hoffmann was referring to percolation in the literal sense - brewing occurs as water is being sieved through a filter - so really every pour over method would be included.

Deleuzer wrote:FWIW, pourover doesn't have to be (and really isn't exactly) percolation. The 4:6 pourover method, for instance, involves full draw-down with each pour, so the grounds are met with clean water repeatedly throughout the brew.

percolation is liquid being passed through a filtration process of some sort. you might be thinking the paper filter makes it percolation but it really doesn't, it is the coffee bed itself that is the filter that water slowly passes through. 4:6 methods or continuous pouring each have a constant drawdown while pouring fresh clean water over the coffee bed and the pulsing or no pulsing doesn't change this process. this is a fairly classic definition of percolation, only if you were to plug the bottom and stop the drawdown then you have immersion.

What Hoffmann points out is that regardless of grind size immersion will still adequately extract and you still get decent brews but with percolation too coarse or too fine will have a dramatic impact on the brew. Broadly he ranks immersion as the better of the two because of its versatility with any grind size but blind cupping of the best pour-over vs the best immersion might have a different result.

Rao brings this point up as well in his blog -

Scott Rao (on his blog) wrote:I would love to see more cafes choose steep-and-release devices such as the Clever Dripper more often for their hand pours. I find the best-made V60s and Kalitas to be slightly more to my liking than the best Clevers, but the Clever is much easier to make well, an important consideration.

However, you need to take professionals like Rao, Perger, Hoffmann in the right context which Rao's thoughts dip into. They often don't tell you what the best results are but rather what the most consistent results are best suited in a cafe environment. 4:6 method is not a cafe friendly method and it takes an experienced hand to perfect, where a continuous pouring method takes little skill and still a clever method takes even less skill. The goal of these guys are methods that are quick, easy and consistently tasty, not slow, difficult and a wash with the results.

I notice you live in Asia and I have come to conclude Asian markets prefer spending time in the process of the brew (like the 4:6 method) to ensure quality, it's just not the coffee they are serving but a story built around that service. where western systems are about efficiency trying to get the best result with the least costs and they don't care what story it tells. Simply put, a brew method that requires more of your baristas' time in a busy cafe means more customers waiting not handing over their money which is not a desired western model.

DamianWarS wrote:However, you need to take professionals like Rao, Perger, Hoffmann in the right context which Rao's thoughts dip into. They often don't tell you what the best results are but rather what the most consistent results are best suited in a cafe environment. 4:6 method is not a cafe friendly method and it takes an experienced hand to perfect, where a continuous pouring method takes little skill and still a clever method takes even less skill. The goal of these guys are methods that are quick, easy and consistently tasty, not slow, difficult and a wash with the results.

I notice you live in Asia and I have come to conclude Asian markets prefer spending time in the process of the brew (like the 4:6 method) to ensure quality, it's just not the coffee they are serving but a story built around that service. where western systems are about efficiency trying to get the best result with the least costs and they don't care what story it tells. Simply put, a brew method that requires more of your baristas' time in a busy cafe means more customers waiting not handing over their money which is not a desired western model.

So glad to read this--it's something I often think about when I read or listen to some "coffee expert" and causes me to take their advice with a lil sprinkle of salt. If you own or operate a café or make your living in coffee, after all, you have a pragmatic interest in some particular factors that just aren't at all in my home coffee brewing equation. For instance, I don't really care about speed (making coffee is a pleasant activity that I do two or three times a day at the most), repeatability (I like tinkering and rarely do the same thing twice in a row), expertise (I have none and I'm not particularly interested in acquiring any unless it seeps into me incidentally), or consistency (I like variety, hence the tinkering). Coffee for a professional has to be regimented and algorithmic; coffee for me is largely heuristic and intuitive.

(Thanks also for clarifying percolation for me--I always thought it was limited to the process of cycling the brewed coffee back through the grounds. I see now that I was laboring under a misapprehension!)

I'm a Canadian living in Indonesia trying to start a coffee training program. I've had to learn the hard way that pushing a single pour Hoffmann method get's a lot of hollow praise but no one really wants to do it that way (but no one would ever tell you this to your face) I teach the methods to a group, visit their cafes and none of them are doing it, but they're all eager to show me their pulse method. so I teach approaches I label a "Western Method" (Rao/Hoffmann/Perger) and an "Eastern method" (pulse pours, 4:6, Kasuya, Nic Cho) then I've included a hybrid. I'm careful not to claim one is better than another but present their shortcomings and the goals they are trying to accomplish (which I believe are different). Reception is greater and people actually are more eager to try out the "western method" after I've given it more understanding as to why it differs from eastern methods because it's driven by a different goal. IMO at home, you should experiment with all kinds of methods and not just follow trending videos. I have come to appreciate the art and craft that goes into "Eastern" ways where patience and skill combined with a vibrant visual display all contribute to the final product.