How to Brew a V60 The Right Way - And Not Mess It Up

Ah yes, the V60, a classic pour over tool of specialty coffee worldwide. This piece of kit really 'screams' specialty coffee but you'd be surprised how many specialty coffee venues still struggle to get this one right. 

With using filter beans, there's a delicate flavour profile we're trying to release and there's ways of making a pour over with the V60 that can help enhance this. Read on for our top tips of making a pour over the right way, as well as things to avoid. 

1. Our Standard Recipe

Our standard recipe follows a ratio of 15g of coffee to 240g of water, which is a ratio of 1:15 coffee to water. We like to keep our water to around 94 degrees Celsius if we can but as long as it's not fresh off the boil this is okay. 

1. Take your v60 and filter paper and preheat v60 and filter paper by pouring some of the hot water along sides of filter paper in funnel to preheat v60 and brewing vessel beneath. Discard of this water. 

2. Weigh 15g of coffee and grind to medium-coarse consistency. Pour this into the dampened v60 and paper.

3. Pour 50g of hot water on the ground beans and wait 40 seconds for coffee to bloom and some CO2 gas to escape. 

4. Pour an additional 140g of water on to the coffee grounds and wait until only 1cm of water remains above the grounds. 

5. Pour the remaining 100g of water to the coffee bed and allow to drain through. This should mean your brew should take about 2-3 minutes from the first pour in step 3. 

2. Troubleshooting Bitter Tastes

If your coffee is tasting bitter and took over three minutes to brew through, this likely means the coffee is over extracted. Try and coarsen up the grind for the next coffee and repeat the method above. 

3. Trouble Shooting Watery Tastes

If your coffee is tasting too watery and took under two minutes to brew through, this likely means the coffee is under extracted. Try and tighten up the grind (to a small granulation size) for the next coffee and repeat the method above. 

4. Pouring Technique

Pouring seems to differ everywhere you go when it comes to v60s. We keep it simple here and pour in slow gentle circles. When it comes to the first pour we're pouring a little quicker to ensure all the beans are sufficiently wet and making contact with the water to bloom evenly and prevent holes appearing. 

We generally keep it to circles and avoid the walls of the v60. Whatever pouring style you try, you want to avoid causing large holes in the coffee bed, as this leads to water passing straight into the brew vessel leading to poor underextracted tastes. 

5. General Tips

Finally some top tips...

1] As we mentioned above, dampening your filter paper with water before you add the coffee grounds helps the paper stick to the v60 and keeps extraction even. 

2] investigate with the grind size of your coffee to get the perfect non-bitter not-too-watery coffee taste

3] pay attention to the age of your beans, filter beans are roasted at lower temperatures and flavours are more delicate so we recommend only really brewing this way with beans less than two weeks old.

4] Allow your coffee to bloom, and gases to escape for 40 seconds or you'll end up with very frothy and less flavoursome coffee. Natural processed coffee is more fermented any may need a little longer to bloom and degas. 

5] Avoid pouring holes in the coffee bed or you'll end up with a watery underextracted taste overall. 

6] Pay attention to the time taken to brew overall and use this to guide your decision in grind size. 

7] Experiment! Research pouring methods, different ratios and other pour over methods to explore this fun area of specialty coffee!