How to brew coffee? V60 base recipe

Hario V60 base recipe

My favourite way to make coffee is still one of the simplest ones. A Havio V60.

I love the simplicity. 

My home setup is a Hario v60 dripper with filters and a Baratza Encore ESP grinder. That’s it. Ah and yes I have a goose neck kettle at home. But seriously - any normal kettle will do. 

I learned a trick from a customer - he used a spoon to pour the hot water over the coffee grounds. 

Like with any extraction the water temperature and the grind size are the most important variables. 

This is my V60 base recipe - I run every coffee through this first and then make adjustments later. 

I use water at around 91-93ºC as a good starting point - if your kettle does not let you set the temperature, boil it - wait a minute and then you should be set.

The ratio of 1:15 - coffee to water seems to make good coffees. 

So for every gram of coffee I use 15 gr. of water. For this a good kitchen scale helps a lot.

And an extraction time of around 2:30 to 3:30 yields the best results.

For me around 200ml makes the best portion of coffee. So I start by using 13.3gr of coffee. I grind them medium coarse (we will double check how good our grind-setting was later.)

Then I put a new filter in my v60 dripper. Once my water boils, I flush the filter with hot water and discard whatever came out. I read a lot about this removing any production chemicals or paper flavours in the filter. I follow this - but I did not taste a difference when I forgot this step. 

Then I add my ground coffee and pour about ⅓ of the hot water over it - making sure I wet all coffee grounds. 

Then I start a timer and wait till it hits the 45 sec mark - this is the so-called bloom. You will see that some coffees bubble a little - others don’t. The more bubbles you observe the more trapped gasses are still in the coffee beans. This step helps the rest of the water to find a better way through - so most of the water hits most of the coffee. We love an equal extraction. 

At the 45sec mark, I add the rest of the water - I swing around the rim of the filter once and when the water is all in I swerve the whole filter around, so all coffee grounds on the side of the filter drop down and can participate in the extraction. 

A dried up rest of coffee grounds high on the side of the filter does not help our coffee to shine. 

Our timer should show around 2:30 to 3:30 when the water stops dripping through the filter. 

If the coffee runs faster, grind your coffee finer - and of course, if it runs too slow, the grind-size is too fine. 

I love to drink my coffee in peace and quiet, so I can enjoy my nice brew through the different temperatures. Different flavours are accentuated at different temperatures.  

And I stand my ground - only good coffee will taste good when cold. 

Just as a quick summary:

Equipment: 

• Kitchen scale

• Kettle (gooseneck if possible)

• Timer

• Grinder

• Hario V60 and filters

Recipe:

• Grind 13.3gr of coffee 

• Heat water to ~91ºC

• Rinse filter with hot water 

• Add coffee to filter

• Add about 60gr of water - start timer

• At 45 sec. Mark add the rest of the water (200ml total)

• Swerve the filter so coffee all falls off the walls

• At 2:30 to 3:30 the water should be through the coffee

• ENJOY!!

If you are missing anything, check out our coffee equipment store here