Hey all

Ever since I've been brewing coffee with the pour-over method I've been thinking about the pretty big change in temperature that my brewing goes through and I was wondering if anyone has come up with ways to control this factor?
Since my brew time is usually around 2.5-3 minutes and I only brew a single cup(a bit under 300ml for me) at a time, the temperature falls quite quickly in my kettle during this time. I haven't tried to measure the change in temp but i imagine that the well over half the water i pour is a good bit under 90C, probably closer to 80C.
I'm sure there is something to be said for not brewing with an EXACT temperature to ensure a more varied brew but wouldn't the extraction that happens at the 80C mark be very underextracted?

I could of course put the kettle back on the stove in between pouring if i use the pulse method but that seems like a very inaccurate way to try and stop the loss of temperature. For this reason, I figured that a simple way to help limit the loss of temperature would be some kind of insulating sleeve around the kettle but from googling I haven't been able to find any examples. Maybe this is a terrible idea or not necessary for reasons i haven't thought of but i would like to hear if anyone here has experimented with something like this or another solution that aims to do the same?

Trying to get things a bit more accurate i just measured the change in temp with a full kettle(280ml) over 2.5min. It's not completely accurate since i didn't pour any water out but it's better than guessing i suppose.
The water went from 94C to 79C during the 2.5min. I assume that during the brewing the temp will fall even lower due to the reduction in water volume in the kettle.

Temperature drop is a good thing. Roasted coffee has about 1200 chemical compounds. Some taste heavenly, some taste like turpentine. The goal of coffee brewing as I see it, is to extract all the goodies and leave the yuckies behind. This is why we don't just boil coffee grounds for 20 minutes.

The good news is that the tasty bits extract sooner and at lower temperatures than the nasty bits. It takes higher temperature and more time to release the more distasteful distillates. So the fact that the water is cooling slightly over time helps keep some of them in the brew bed and out of your cup.

They have leather wrapped pouring kettles and IIRC Todd Carmichael actually once glued the base on his electric pouring kettle for competition so that it would remain heating during the pour, but for me I heat a kettle on the stove and return it to the burner periodically and don't worry too much about it.

I know brew coat:
https://brewcoat.com/shop/
They posted some temperature study. Take into account it's their marketing study.
https://brewcoat.com/what-is-it/

The brew coat looks pretty interesting, too bad it doesn't work for the Kalita Wave kettle.

Almico about the temp drop. As i said in my post i agree that a temp range is a good thing for brewing but i'm questioning whether the range is too large.
If staying at the rather high temp of above 90C for the full duration of the brew resulted in over-extracted coffee then the bigger french presses and siphon brewers and even bigger batches of pour over should make terrible coffee as they don't get nearly the same temp range as my 280ml pour over. Moving from a brewing temp of 94 to something like 86 might be good for most coffees but i doubt that going from 94 to well below 80 is ideal, at least not for most coffees.

Of course, it isn't a deal breaker by any means. My pour over still tastes fine and it's not like a slightly suboptimal temp range ruins coffee. I'm just wondering if this is a chance to go from good to great with my pour over. And even if it isn't, it would be nice to have more options when it comes to brewing temp.

Consider roast levels.

When I was roasting very light (just coasting into 1c) I kept my brewing water hot by returning the kettle to heat between pours. I also stirred vigorously.

pre-heating the kettle does wonders in heat retention