How to Make Better Pour-Over Coffee: A V60 Recipe

Weigh the coffee and weigh the water. Almost every inconsistent pour-over traces back to guessing at one or both, and digital scales fix more problems than any amount of new equipment. Everything below assumes you are weighing.

Start at 60 grams per litre

The working ratio across most of specialty coffee is 60 g of coffee per litre of water. For a single mug that means 15 g of coffee to 250 g of water. For a larger V60 or a two-mug brew, 25 g to 415 g. Water weighs what it says, so brew straight onto the scales and read the running total.

Push to 65 g per litre for a heavier cup or drop to 55 g for a lighter one — but only once the rest of your method is stable.

Grind medium, like table salt

Rub a little between your fingers. It should feel like table salt: distinctly gritty, not powdery. Caster sugar is too fine and will stall the drawdown. Coarse sea salt is too big and the water will run straight through.

Dial numbers mean nothing between machines, so use texture as your reference. A burr grinder matters more here than almost any other piece of kit: blade grinders make dust and boulders at the same time, and you extract both at once.

Water at 92-96C

Just off the boil. With a thermometer or a variable kettle, aim for 92-96C. Without one, boil, take the lid off and wait 30 to 45 seconds. Fully boiling water pulls harsh, drying flavours out of lighter roasts; water below about 90C leaves the cup flat and sour.

The bloom, and why it matters

Pour twice the weight of the coffee in water and stop. For a 15 g dose, that is 30 g of water. Wet all the grounds, give the brewer a small swirl so no dry pockets remain, and wait 30 to 45 seconds.

Roasting creates carbon dioxide, and the beans hold onto it for weeks afterwards. When hot water hits fresh coffee, that gas escapes, and while it is escaping it physically pushes water away from the grounds. Brew straight through it and parts of the bed barely get wet, which is where thin, uneven, faintly sour cups come from. The bloom lets the gas out first.

A very fresh roast blooms hard: the bed domes up, bubbles visibly and can nearly double in height. Coffee four or five weeks past roasting barely moves. That is the practical use of the roast date on the bag. Within a fortnight of roasting, give it the full 45 seconds; older than a month, 30 seconds is plenty. Every bag we send out carries its roast date, and there is more on how we roast if you want it.

Pour in stages and keep the bed flat

After the bloom, add the rest in two or three stages rather than one long pour. For a 250 g brew: go to 150 g, let the level drop most of the way, then go to 250 g. Pour in slow circles from the centre out, stopping short of the paper. Water that hits the filter runs down the side without passing through coffee.

Keep the bed flat. Grounds stranded up the walls of the cone are not brewing, and the water is taking the easy route down the middle. A gentle swirl at the end of the final pour, or a light tap on the counter, levels it again. When draining finishes, the surface should look like a flat disc, not a crater or a mound.

Total brew time: 2:30 to 3:30

Timed from the first drop of the bloom to the last drip, a 250 g V60 should finish between two and a half and three and a half minutes. Larger brews run longer.

Well under 2:30 means the water is not spending enough time with the coffee: grind too coarse, pour too fast, or the bed channelled. Well over 3:30 means the opposite: grind too fine, too many fines clogging the paper, or too much stirring.

Diagnose by taste, not by looks

Time and colour are proxies. The cup is the evidence.

• Sour, thin, salty, finishes quickly and leaves nothing behind. Under-extracted. Grind finer, extend the brew, or raise the water temperature. Fix one at a time.
• Bitter, drying, harsh, hollow and astringent at the back of the mouth. Over-extracted. Grind coarser, pour a little faster, shorten the brew.

Sourness is not the same as acidity. Acidity tastes like fruit and makes the cup lively. Sourness makes your jaw tighten, like biting an unripe apple. If you cannot tell which problem you have, brew the same coffee twice, once two grind settings finer, and taste them side by side. The comparison makes it obvious in a way a single cup never does.

What to brew

A fully washed Colombia is the most forgiving place to learn, because the flavours are clean and mistakes are easy to taste. Our AMACA Women Producers lot from El Tambo, Cauca takes this recipe without complaint. Once your technique is steady, the Ethiopia Damo G1 Natural, when it is in rotation, rewards a slightly coarser grind and a slower hand. Both are on the coffee beans page.

Three of our seven sites roast on the premises: Kensington and Monument in London, and Gurney in Penang. The four UK satellite shops are supplied from the London roasteries. Whichever bag you end up with, it carries a roast date. Use it.