First, know your recipe! Particularly the amount of your ingredients, coffee and water. Check our starting point recipes for this. If you are using coffee without a recipe, try 15g coffee to 250g brew water. This ratio is 1:16.6. You can scale up or down if you want a different brew size.
The next key variable is grind-size. Much coarser than espresso, and a bit finer than larger format/ batch filter. Some make the comparison to table sugar. If the results are astringent, dry or bitter we may need to go coarser in the grind. If the brew tastes empty, has little to no aftertaste and is lacking sweetness, it is time to go finer.
What you’ll need:
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Hario V60 01 Dripper
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Paper filters
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Server/carafe
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Stirring tool
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Timer
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Grinder
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Scales
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Kettle (we recommend a goose-neck to help control pour rate)
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Coffee beans
Steps:
Use brew water to pre-heat your filter cone and carafe. You can wash your filter paper at the same time, to remove any unwanted flavours. Pop your filter cone on to the carafe and onto the scales. We will be measuring the total brew water, not the resulting yield.
Once you have your 15g of coffee in the cone, settle it gently in the cone and tare your scales.
Start a timer and simultaneously pour your first bit of water into the coffee bed. The first pour is 50g.
Gently agitate/excavate the coffee and water slurry with a spoon to ensure all the coffee is wet.
At 30 sec, add another 50g brew water. Pick up the cone and give it one gentle swirl, to grab any ground coffee stragglers off the side of the paper.
Continue adding 50g of brew water at 30sec intervals until you reach the total brew water amount (250g) at 2min.
Immediately after the final pour, pick up the cone and gently tap it on top of the carafe. This promotes and even draw down through all the coffee and improves the chances of repeatability. The draw down time will vary coffee to coffee, usually between 2:30min and 3:30min.
Tips:
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The water you use is important in filter brews, using filtered tap water is ideal and will help highlight more nuanced flavours in your coffee.
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Lastly, a longer brew does not always indicate that the grind is too fine, as aggressively stirring can choke up the brew and some coffees just draw down slowly. Some of my favourite brews have fallen outside the norm as far as brew time.
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