When it comes to the pour over coffee brewing method, Hario V60 is definitely the one you should try. Hario, the Japanese company launched the V60 coffee dripper in 2005. It takes over the world and becomes synonymous with pour over in a short time. It is used by many Brewers Cup champions and coffee fans at all levers as well. You can find this little cone shape brewer in many coffee shops all over the world.
There are tons of tutorials and discussions about Hario V60, so you can easily find detailed tutorials about getting a cup of great coffee using V60 brewer. This brewing guide will show you the basic and the most popular recipes for making perfect pour over coffee using Hario V60 Coffee Maker.
What Do You Need To Make Coffee With Hario V60?
Essential coffee maker and gears
To make manual drip coffee, these are the essential gears.
- Hario V60 Dripper
- Hario V60 paper filters
- Kettle
- Water between 195-205 °F (90.5°C–96°C)
- Coffee grounds
- Decanter or a mug
Extra gears for optimal coffee flavor
So all the coffee gears mentioned above are the most essential for V60 pour over. But if you want to get the more consistent flavor as you have in the coffee shop, and enhance your pouring skill and experience, it’s strongly recommended to invest a little more. Still much cheaper than a fancy espresso machine.
- Fresh Coffee beans instead of ground coffee – freshness is always the key to a perfect coffee. Grind the beans before brewing.
- Burr coffee grinder – Compared to a blade grinder, a burr grinder gets more even coffee grounds for better extraction. Different brewing methods require different coarseness. It is worth to get a decent grinder. Here are the best manual grinders and electric grinders for your reference.
- High-quality filtered water – if the water doesn’t taste good, your coffee doesn’t taste good
- Digital scale – You’ll need it to control the pouring pace and quantity and get a perfect brew ratio.
- Timer – manage the extraction time
- Thermometer – Water temperature can change coffee’s flavor and cause subtle nuance. The ideal temperature for brewing coffee is 195°F–205°F (90.5°C–96°C) according to SCA’s suggestion [1].
- Gooseneck Kettle – Comparing to an ordinary kettle, a gooseneck kettle is better for controlling the water flow rate with a slimmer spout. It’s easier for beginners to make the perfect pour. We pick the best stovetop and electric pour over kettles for you, check it out here>>
How To Brew Coffee In Hario V60 Step By Step?
Time needed: 3 minutes
Hario V60 coffee maker is very easy to use, it takes only a few steps for the basic brew guide. The total process is around 3 minutes.
- Boil the water
Add fresh filtered water to the kettle and heat the water. If you have a thermometer, make sure the water is between 195-205 °F. Or simply let the water sit for 30 seconds after boiling.
- Weigh and grind the coffee beans
If you need one cup of coffee, scale 15 grams of fresh beans, you’ll get 225 grams of coffee, the coffee to water ratio is 1:15. If you need to brew two cups of coffee, measure 30 grams, but usually don’t make more than 2 cups at once using V60.
Pour the 15 grams of beans into the burr grinder, grind them into medium fineness. What is the best grind size? It’s a little bit bigger than sea salt. That’s the no.15 grind setting on my Baratza Encore burr grinder. - Rinse the paper filter
Fold the edge of the paper filter and make it a cone shape, place it in the V60 brewer. Wet the whole paper filter with hot water to wash away the paper flavor. And you can also warm up the brewer and the decanter. Remember to discard the water from the decanter.
- Add coffee to the filter and level the ground
Add the ground coffee into the filter, shake it slightly to make a flat surface for more even extraction. Put the coffee decanter with the Hario V60 brewer on the scale. Now tare the digital scale.
- Bloom the coffee
Remember to start the timer. Gently pour 30 grams of water to wet all the grounds. You can start from the middle and spiral to the edge. The water for blooming is twice the weight of the grounds. If you make two cups with 30 grams of coffee, pour 60 grams of water instead.
Wait for 30-45 seconds, this process releases the carbon dioxide gas. When the coffee bed stops rising, you’ll know the bloom is done. - The main pour
Begin pouring water continuously from the middle to the edge in a circular movement. You can decide whether to separate the pouring into a few parts with a specific volume of water. Try to control the water flow and finish the pouring within 2 minutes or so.
The V60 has a big drip hole at the bottom, pouring too fast may cause under extraction. - Enjoy!
Stop pouring and take away the brewer from the mug or carafe when it reached 225 grams.
Twirl the cup of coffee a little bit to make it more evenly. Now you can enjoy your freshly brewed coffee.
That’s it. There are many methods for making hand drip coffee using Hario V60, but the basic steps above work just fine for the first attempt. ‘Just do it’ is more important for beginners. Once you have tried a few times, you’ll start to notice the differences between each cup and make an adjustment accordingly. Trust your feeling, and in the end, you will find the right balance for your favorite taste.
Other Hario V60 Pour Over Coffee Brewing methods
In this part, I will show you more brewing methods introduced by the elite baristas, which is quite popular among coffee enthusiasts. Hope you can find some inspiration and learn the experience from them.
4:6 Method Invented by Tetsu Kasuya
The world Brewers Cup 2016 Champion Tetsu Kasuya from Japan introduced the 4:6 method, which is also very popular among the pour-over fans. He divides the pouring into two parts. The first part is 40% water and the second 60%.
What is the 4:6 Method?
Tetsu Kasuya suggests two pours in the first part, 40% of the water. He discovers the first pour determines the acidity, while the second one determines the sweetness. That means if you add more water in the first pour, the coffee becomes more acid. Otherwise, it tastes sweeter.
The final 60% of water adjusts the strength of the coffee. For example, if you pour the same volume for each time, you’ll get the basic strength; if you divide the last 60% into 4 pours, you’ll get stronger coffee; if you separate the final 60% into 2 pours, you’ll get lower strength in flavor.
How to brew coffee using the 4:6 method?
According to the coffee to water ratio of 1:15, that means if you use 15 grams of coffee grounds, you’ll get 225 grams of coffee. He suggests making the coarseness similar for the French Press.
So the first part will be 90 grams. If you want a cup of coffee with balanced sweetness and acidity, you should pour 45 grams for the first pour, wait until the water is fully drained, pour 45 grams again.
In the second part, to get a basic strength, you should have 3 pours. Each pour should be 45 grams.
Not sure if you can taste the difference and distinguish the subtle nuance, but in this way, we can get a cup of tasty coffee most of the time. And the process is quite easy.
Here is the full video on YouTube introducing the 4:6 method” by Tetsu Kasuya.
The Ultimate V60 Technique by James Hoffmann
James Hoffmann shared lots of exciting discoveries on his YouTube Channels. He also introduced his V60 brewing technique called ‘The Ultimate V60 Technique’. It’s a little bit complicated compared with the 4:6 method mentioned above.
Brewing instructions
- Bring your filtered water to a boil.
- Grind 30 g of coffee in slightly finer than the medium grind size (You’ll get 500 grams coffee)
- Rinse the paper filter with boiled water to remove the paper taste and preheat the brewer.
- Add coffee grounds to V60 brewer and create a little well in the middle of the grounds’ surface to evenly saturate all the grounds in blooming. Press start on your timer.
- Add 60 g of water (two grams of water per gram of coffee). Try to get all the coffee wet. As soon as you poured the water, grab the cup with the V60 dripper, start to swirl in a circular motion. In this way, water and coffee will be evenly mixed. He suggests swirling instead of stirring using a spoon, but that might need some skills and practice. Don’t spill out the hot coffee, and be careful in this move.
- Bloom for up to 45 seconds.
- Start to pour the water continuously, add 60% of the total volume in the next 30 seconds. That means 300g out of 500 grams of coffee. Control the flow rate, not too aggressive and not too slow. And the dripper will be almost full. Fill up the V60 is good for heat retention.
- In the final 30 seconds, keep pouring slowly to keep the cone topped up till you reach the 500g coffee.
- Once you hit the total brew weight, use the spoon to stir it clockwise and counterclockwise. Stir it very gently just to knock off the grounds from the wall of the filter paper.
- Let it drain a little and give it one final swirl to make the flat coffee bed in the end to get more even extraction.
- Let the coffee drawdown. The water temperature affects the drawdown speed. It usually drips faster for the higher temperature.
- Enjoy!
Here is the full video of James Hoffmann’s ‘The Ultimate V60 Technique’.
Final Words
Besides the coffee making techniques mentioned above, you can find many other methods, and no one method works for all people’s tastes.
Do some experiments yourself until you find the best taste and balance for you, and it’s fun to do that once you are on the coffee journey. That’s why we recommended the scale, timer, thermometer at the beginning of this guide. So you can have the data and statistics recorded, it’s always good to take notes for your experiments so you can find your receipt for your perfect coffee.
But no matter which brew guide you follow, using Hario V60 brewer is relatively easy to enjoy great coffee at home. You need more patience and skills than the automatic drip coffee maker, however, you’ll have fun and higher quality coffee once you mastered it.
Besides Hario V60, there are many other pour over coffee makers such as Kalita Wave, Chemex. Also, there are many other manual brewing methods for home barista, for example, the French Press, Aeropress, and Siphon. You can enjoy a good coffee at home easily. Get the gears and start making your coffee today!
FAQ
Yes, most of the brew guides suggest you rinse the paper filters before adding coffee. First, it can get rid of any paper flavor and residue, since all the brewed coffee will go through the filter into your coffee cup. Second, wetting the filter can seal the filter to the wall of the dripper. Last but not least, this process can preheat the Hario dripper and the vessel.
I don’t suggest you skip the blooming since it will affect the coffee flavor. The coffee roasting process produces carbon dioxide gas as well, when the hot water hits the coffee grounds, the CO2 will bubbles out. You’d better let the gas escape for 30 to 45 seconds. That’s why you see the coffee bed swells when you first pour the water. Usually it’s good to add 2 times of the coffee weight for the blooming.
For a single-serve, usually I use 15 grams of coffee. The brew ratio will be 1: 15. In another word, use 15 grams of coffee to brew 225 grams of coffee. That’s a good starting point. You can adjust to 1:16 to 1:18 base on your preference.
Not really, if you follow the Ultimate V60 Technique mentioned above, an ordinary kettle will work. However, Gooseneck kettle has a slim spout for better control of the pouring flow. It’s easy for beginners. While a normal electric kettle has a wider spout, you may accidentally pour too much water at once.
References:
[1] “Coffee Preparation Temperature: To achieve the Golden Cup Standard, water temperature, at the point of contact with coffee, is recommended to fall between 200°F ± 5° (93.0°C ± 3°).” – Brewing Best Practices on SCA.coffee
[2] A Coffee Brewing Theory “4:6 method” Invented by Tetsu Kasuya_ World Brewers Cup 2016 Champion – https://youtu.be/wmCW8xSWGZY
[3] The Ultimate V60 Technique – https://youtu.be/AI4ynXzkSQo
