Items required:
Kettle (gooseneck gives more control!)
V60 Dripper
Scoop
V60 Filters (white, preferable)
Fresh-roasted whole bean coffee
Glass Server (Olivewood, Glass Range)
You can also make into a mason jar, or any vessel large enough to hold your coffee!
Optional: Scale
1. Water
Start your kettle—preferably with filtered water. If you have a stovetop kettle, light the flame and bring it to a boil. If you have an electric, temperature-set kettle, set it for 203°F / 95°C.
2. Coffee Dose
Keeping the amount of coffee you brew with consistent enables you to make tweaks elsewhere to affect the resulting cup (like the grind setting). You can do this by using the same measuring tool (like a scoop) daily!
When you order a V60, you receive a coffee scoop along with it. Our glass & wood dripper comes with a black scoop, our white ceramic dripper comes with a white scoop, and we also sell wood scoops on their own.
To take it next level, try out a scale! We offer our favorite in black and white.
Wood Scoop: 1 level + 1/2 scoop
Plastic Scoop: 1 overflowing scoop
Tablespoon: ~3 scoops
Scale: 20 grams
3. Grind
The #1 recommendation we make to friends looking to improve their home coffee set-up is to invest in a quality burr grinder!
If you happen to have the Baratza Encore, the grinder we recommend most and have available on our site, start out on grind setting 16.
Otherwise, you're going for a medium grind, slightly on the finer side. Definitely not as coarse as french press, but not too fine. Too coarse, and the coffee will taste diluted. Too fine, and it will taste over-extracted and bitter.
4. Pre-Wet
Once your water boils, place a filter in the V60 and pre-wet it. This makes the filter more soluble by opening up the water through-channels, which leads to a more even extraction of coffee. It also pre-heats the vessel you're making coffee into, so that your coffee will stay hotter longer.
On the same token, we usually pre-heat our mugs, too!
Just make sure to discard the water from your server before continuing to make coffee.
4. a. (If You Have a Scale) Weigh Ground Coffee
If you're using a scale, put the empty server and dripper with filter onto the scale and press Tare to zero out. Add the coffee to ensure you have 20 grams, and tare out again. Whatever your number on the scale, you'll wind up adding 15x that number in water weight.
5. Bloom
After your boiled water has had at least 30 seconds to cool off (boiling water on coffee will make it bitter!), pour just enough water over your fresh coffee grounds to wet them all, and then pause for 30 seconds.
Watch the coffee bloom! You're waking up and releasing CO2 that has been contained inside the coffee from the time it was growing, as a cherry on a coffee tree. This gas is where a lot of the flavor from your cup comes.
If you're using one of our scales, start your timer right before you begin pouring water. You can also use a timer on your phone.
6. Pour
Thirty seconds after you stopped pouring, begin slowly pouring into the coffee, starting in the middle. There are different approaches to this stage of the pour. We've advocated for pouring in a circular motion, from the center to the outside. We've also played with keeping the pour contained to the center, making the coffee rise up without breaking the top layer crema of coffee.
For this recipe, we want a 15-to-1 water-to-coffee ratio. This means we want 300 mL of water, or 10oz.
If you're using our wood-handled server, you can keep pouring until your coffee hits the "300" mark on the side of the server, then remove the dripper and place on an empty mug or in the sink.
If you're using our glass range server, you want to pour until the coffee reaches about 1 pencil-width above the lowest indentation (or where the bottom of the handle intersects the body of the server), then remove the dripper and place on an empty mug or in the sink.
And, of course, if you're using the scale, you can pour exactly 300 mL into the server, and wait for it to drip through!
If you're using something else, guesstimate what 10oz of coffee looks like and mark or note it somehow. If the coffee's a little too diluted, use less water next time. If it's just tasting muddy and not clear, try using a little more water next time.
6. Taste (& Enjoy)
After letting the coffee drip out, give it a swirl to mix the bloomed coffee with the later extraction, and pour yourself a cup!
While enjoying the coffee, take note of the taste and feel. You have so much control over how the coffee tastes in the way that it's brewed! If you want a clearer, more tea-like cup, try using cooler water, more water (e.g. a 17-to-1 water-to-coffee ratio) or a coarser grind setting. If you want more body, grind finer, use hotter water, less coffee, or less water.
Enjoy!
