How To Brew - Pour Over (V60)
Brew me: Pour Over
The pour over method of brewing creates a really fresh tasting coffee, if you like a lighter roast and enhancing fruity flavours then you’ll like a Hario V60 or similar brewer. Here’s a simple ‘how to’ guide, it’s uncomplicated and will only take about 3 minutes.
1. Gather your gear
You’ll need:
- Coffee
- Hario V60 brewer
- Correct size filter paper for your brewer
- 250ml Cup, mug or a coffee serving jug
- Kettle with water
- Scales
- Spoon or scoop
- Timer
2. Heat water
Heat your water until it reaches between 91-96C. You can use a swan neck kettle on the hob like this one or use a normal kettle, just flick it off before it reaches the boil and let it settle. You can get swan neck kettles with thermometers integrated to be more precise, they also help better control the flow of water when pouring.
3. Rinse filter and warm cup
Insert the filter paper into the brewer and place the V60 on top of your cup. Rinse through with a small amount of hot water to rinse the brewer and warm the cup, then discard the water.
4. Set scales and measure
Stand the cup on the scales with the V60 and filter on top and reset scales so they read zero. You can use kitchen scales or coffee specific ones that have a timer too. Whatever it is, digital is best.
Measure out 15g of ground coffee straight into the filter paper, if you have bought coffee from us, the coffee may already be ground to the correct size for V60. If you are grinding at home then we recommend a medium to fine grind. If your grounds are too coarse you will under extract your coffee, you will not extract enough flavour out of your ground coffee. If your grounds are too fine you will over extract, this is when you have extracted too much flavour from your coffee, it will become overpowering and unpleasant.
5. Time to pour - the bloom phase
Tare your scales again, start your timer and pour hot water from the kettle into the middle of the coffee in the filter circling slowly outwards without pouring on the paper until the scales read 40g. Leave the coffee for 45 seconds to ‘bloom’, this is where carbon dioxide quickly bubbles up and leaves the coffee. It’s important to do this to prevent a sour taste that comes with CO2 content. CO2 also repels water which interrupts the brewing process, so its best gone!
6. Pour some more
Working on a ratio of 1:16 where 1 is a part of coffee to 16 parts water, we need to now pour over another 200ml of water onto our coffee. Again start in the middle and pour slowly, circling the kettle until the scales reach 240ml.
We are brewing with a Hario V60 size 02, it’s slightly larger than the 01 when pouring with the smaller V60 you might need to wait for some water to filter through before adding more, or pour more slowly.
7. Wait!
Now you just have to wait. Coffee ground to the correct size should take 2 minutes 30 seconds to totally filter through the coffee, If your grind is too fine it will take longer, if it is too coarse it will filter through in a shorter time, this is a great way to tell (as well as by tasting) if you need to adjust your grind either way.
8. Enjoy!
Remove the V60, dispose of the filter and enjoy!
Remember experimentation is fun! Try slightly different ratio’s of coffee to water, try different grinds and different coffee’s and let your tastebuds be your guide using this article as a good beginning reference.
Happy brewing!