Is It Necessary to Stir Coffee While Brewing?

Have you been feeling like your morning coffee routine isn’t quite complex enough? Today, we’re here to help as we ponder stirring the pot (literally). Should we do it? When should we do it? Why should we do it? Luckily, the coffee world is a great place for people with a lot of questions. That’s because talented baristas (and ex-baristas) like coffee expert Matt Woodburn-Simmonds, founder of Home Coffee Expert, have spent time pondering the answers — and now he’s here to share some of his top stirring tips with Chowhound.

First things first: Should you stir coffee during the brewing process? Woodburn-Simmonds says the simple answer is yes, especially if you’re making coffee using a pour over, drip, a French press, or even Alton Brown’s go-to device, an AeroPress. You’ll get a better-tasting coffee. “Stirring the grounds, especially near the beginning of brewing, gives a more even distribution of coffee grounds to water,” Woodburn-Simmonds told us, “so you’re more likely to get a more even extraction.” That said, keep the stirring contained to the beginning of the process, and once the coffee is spread evenly, let it settle in the water and leave it alone. This can even be incorporated in the process of blooming your coffee, another method of evening out flavor, this time by degassing the beans.

Ready to learn some new coffee lingo? According to Matt Woodburn-Simmonds, there’s more to a stir’s effectiveness than just spreading out grounds. For one thing, the distribution of water and residue creates a better coffee bed (that little pile of wet grounds that’s left over after brewing coffee). Coffee analysts say that a lot can be gauged from how this coffee bed looks, namely how flat — and therefore evenly saturated with water — it is. Other than getting the grind size right, stirring is one of the best ways to flatten out the mound. The other thing stirring does is help you to avoid channeling. “[Channeling] is when little channels of air allow water to pass through barely touching coffee,” Woodburn-Simmonds told us. This water doesn’t get flavored, per se, by the coffee, making it weaker and less flavorful.

But our friendly coffee expert also explained why you shouldn’t get too voracious with your mixing. “If you stir too much or too often, say, consistently stirring during French press brewing, you can get overextracted coffee that tastes bitter and muddy,” he warned. So keep it chill. Oh, and please, never stir Turkish coffee.