It kinda sounds like your preferences (“strong enough so that most of the cup can be hot milk”) don’t align with the kind of results you’d get from a pour-over, so I admit I’m slightly confused as to why you want to be sold on the idea. It’s okay to prefer espresso-based drinks over pour-overs. You don’t have to be into both to enjoy coffee.

I’m a barista, so I’ll have espresso-based drinks at work and pour-over at home. I definitely enjoy both, if in slightly different ways, but I do have a preference for pour-over so I’ll at least try to answer your question of why a coffee-lover wouldn’t necessarily “upgrade” to an espresso machine. These are all just my opinions, and like I say to my clients, I’m not a coffee expert, I just work here.

• Pour-over feels like it has a wider margin of error for dialing in new beans. Even if I don’t nail the pour-over for the first few cups of a new roast, I’ll probably have something that’s at least drinkable. Whereas with espresso, dialing in is a lot more finicky and IMO the results of a less-than-optimal shot are much more unpalatable than less-than-optimal pour-over. I like to switch up my beans at home very regularly, and don’t want to use up 3/4 of a bag dialing in before I get good coffee.

• I find I can better taste the nuances of different beans in a pour-over versus espresso. That might just be because I’m more used to comparing pour-overs, but even working in a café and upping my espresso consumption significantly hasn’t overcome the distinct espresso-yness that I always taste regardless of the bean/roast.

• I enjoy the ritual of it more than I enjoy making espresso. Not that espresso can’t be a ritual, but I love hearing my water boil, setting up my timer and scale, blooming, swirling my water. I love the level of control you get from cup to cup as well, it’s easier to adjust variables compared to espresso while still getting a drinkable cup, which encourages me to experiment a bit more freely.

• I’m a cheap bitch, 10$ or so for a plastic V60 and some filters and you can already make some great coffee, the investment for espresso is a turn-off for sure.

Also, this is just a suggestion, but if you ever get the opportunity to taste an americano and a pour-over made from the same beans side-by-side, do it. You’d be surprised how different they are.

Ask yourself a few questions:

• Do you like rituals?
• Do you have time in your day for a 7-10 minute process to make coffee?
• Do you always want a milk based coffee drink?
• Do you want to taste the more nuanced flavors of coffee or are you drinking it for another reason?

Coffee is super varied in origin, roast, and brew method. Changing one of those can dramatically change whether it’s “woody” or not. In my opinion, it’s like drinking wine. You can drink it just because it’s good and not think any further than that. Or you can get into the flavor differences between varieties, vineyards, years, etc. If you don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, stop now and do not think about it again. 😆

Pluses of pourover as compared to espresso

• More caffeine, if you need that in the morning
• Cheaper gear / more bang for your buck
• Typically much easier to get good results on light roast coffees, especially if you are interested in more delicate flavors.
• Less fussy to dial in a new coffee
• Usually less maintenance
• Doesn’t “blow out your palate”, i.e., straight espresso’s intensity is a downside for some

However

If what you specifically enjoy is coffee strong enough to cut through a lot of milk, most “pourover” methods are simply not going to produce a high enough concentration for that to make sense.^[1] So it sounds like for you there’s no reason to get into pourovers, which is totally fine.

Most hardcore pourover nerds are usually drinking their coffee black and looking for coffees with strong “origin characteristics” / terroir that they want to taste without being masked by milk.

Yes, you can make an americano, which will probably not taste quite the same as a pourover of the same strength due to the extraction dynamics being different. And if what you already have is an espresso machine and no pourover gear, then an americano makes the most sense. (Also faster in a cafe setting than a pourover.)

But re: your buddies, if what they like is black coffee at pourover strength and they have a setup that makes that really well, why would they spend the money and time that espresso takes?

I switched to pour-over about a year ago, from a cheapo auto-drip coffee maker. Not sure if this makes sense, but I feel like I have a closer relationship with my coffee with this method. There’s a bit more of a ritual that incentivizes being more thoughtful in how I brew it.

As I drink it, I think to myself “yes, I made this,” as opposed to just putting grounds in a thing, pressing a button, and there it is. So each cup just feels more satisfying.

That’s what I get out of doing pour-over, but do what works for you. :-)

Espresso is so much goddamn work. I don’t have the time or energy in the morning to “get the perfect pull” and perfectly froth the milk and all that bullshit.

Instead, I turn on my electric kettle, run my burr grinder, put the coffee in the thing and then put water in the thing and presto - perfectly smooth delicious coffee that I can drink black or toss some milk if I want. I even have a stick frother I can use if I really want fancy frothed milk.

Also, best part is that my pour over kit, the french press I use when I’m reall pressed for time, and the stick frother, all cost 1/4 of the cost of a good espresso machine.

If you’re mixing lots of milk with coffee (a latte or just filter coffee with lots of milk) pourover won’t appeal to you.

The draw of pourover, I think, is to make very flavorful coffee that you drink black. Technically, the pourover advantage is complete control over temperature, coffee-water exposure time, and to get really even extraction (you can make sure all the ground get soaked)… but since it uses a paper filter? The resultant cup of coffee is also very clean (unlike, say, French press).

Also, a lot of artistry is made of how you set your grounds in the pourover filter, how you pour the water, and other things that are probably a little meaningless, but fun to play around with.

Similarly, aeropress gives the same control over variables but uses a more standardized micro filter in combination with immersion brewing (or like French press but with a filter and some pressure). The micro filter allows you to use finer grounds which probably means more complete extraction.

Either method will require a hot water source (usually a kettle). Neither method will be particularly expensive for the gear.

The best coffees I’ve ever made have been pour-overs.

I use pour over when I want a clean, paper-filtered cup of coffee that is richer than your typical drip brew. All of the other methods I prefer to use — mostly Flair espresso and moka pot, but occasionally cafetière—are unfiltered. That leaves more body (oils and solubles) which I prefer. But sometimes you want that clean brew from the paper filter.

I think of a pour over as an immersion style of brewing. So in some ways it is similar to the cafetière. But because of the filter method, a French press is going to require larger grind size which results in a slightly different (in your case “woody”) extraction.

I also like that the pour over gives me more room to experiment with grind size and volumes. This is oversimplified but extraction comes down to basically three things: grind size, water volume/contact time, and temperature. The grind size on a cafetière can result in a hollow extraction sometimes where you’re not getting the full range of what the bean has to offer.

Of course, the main downside to a paper filter is the removal of oils, which also affects the flavor. Especially if you prefer an oily style in which the cafetière, espresso and moka excel.