My favorite coffee method: v60

If you already know me, you know that for several years I have been learning about the great world of specialty coffee. Thanks to a friend who became a barista, I began to learn about the stages of the grain, preparation methods and tasting. Of course, I’m not a professional, it’s a hobby, but one of my favorites.

Over time, I have been trying and sometimes acquiring different methods of coffee preparation, the ones I currently have at home are the French Press, the Italian Mocha and the v60 method.

A method (of coffee preparation) is the way in which the extraction of the grind is carried out. You can have a grain that was grown at certain meters above sea level, at a certain humidity, the way the grain was processed, the time it has been stored and the type of water you use, the taste will vary if you prepare the drink using a different method each time.

Thus, you have methods that can give you a more acidic or fruitier flavor, with more body or a different texture. Even these can be classified by type: infusion extraction, percolating, vacuum filtering or my favorite (and usually easy to use) drip.

Within the drip methods, we have Chemex, Kalita and v60.

v60-method

It was created by the company Hario in 2004 and gets its name from the conical (or V) shape with an angle of 60 degrees, having a kind of “curved grooves” on the inside that allow CO2 to be released when perform the preparation.

Today I am using Bloom brand coffee, grown in Villa Rica washed process (I could elaborate on the processes in another post) and medium roasted, with a 1:15 ratio.

The ratio explains the ratio of coffee to water. I usually use 20g of coffee, which means I will pour 300ml of water (20 x 15). I achieved the exact weight thanks to a scale that I bought in a place where they sold things for the laboratory.

For this, I use filtered, ionized water (I stopped using boiled tap water a long time ago to test how much the flavor varies) and pour from a gooseneck kettle.

I grind the 20g of coffee using the Chestnut C2 grinder from the brand Timemore getting a fairly even medium grind.

I can use a paper filter or a reusable cloth filter from the friends of Flowin Filters which is placed inside the v60, I pour a little water that is over 95 degrees (the kettle has a temperature gauge) so that the taste of the filter does not remain. I pour out the water from the decanter Hario (which is the container where I serve the coffee).

I then place the 20g of ground coffee in the v60 and start pouring the water, which should be more or less between 85 and 92 degrees Celsius.

There are times when, leaning on the handle of a spoon, I make a small hole on top of the coffee bed to start pouring the water there first and make sure that all the grounds get wet.

This can even depend on how fine the grind is, if you make it too small, it will be more difficult for the water to reach “every corner”, if you make it too large, all the coffee will get wet very quickly and will come out watery.

I pour slowly, forming circles in an anti-clockwise direction until I reach twice the number of grams of coffee (in this case, 40ml), this stage is called bloom.

After 30 or 45 seconds, I start the preparation itself, here I usually try different forms of pouring: sometimes I reach 200ml of water, wait 30 seconds and pour until you reach 300ml of water (100ml more); other times I try to add 60ml by 60ml with time intervals of 45 seconds between each pour.

Finally, when I see that the coffee begins to extract by drops, I know that I should raise the v60 to avoid over-extraction and the taste turning bitter.

In summary, this is my setup to date (December 2021):

• 20g of medium ground coffee
• 300ml of filtered water at 90 degrees Celsius (on average)
• Ratio 1:15
• 45 seconds of bloom or pre-infusion
• Method v60

There are many more details to explain but the post would be too long. Now that summer is here in Peru, a cold v60 is a super good option, or on the other hand, preparing a coldbrew at home and combining it with orange juice is one of my favorites too.

If you want to know how you can prepare an orange coldbrew at home without the need for sophisticated equipment, comment on this post

v60 is my favorite method because of the versatility it offers to experiment with different flavors and coffee beans. The body and acidity that the coffee acquires is very good to taste. For this Christmas I would like to give myself a Kalita

If you are just entering the world of specialty coffee, perhaps you should know that it is best to drink it without sugar, coffee in itself is a fruit and with good preparation, grain, grinding and so on, you can have an impeccable flavor and rich (you get used to it if the change seems too abrupt).

The best way to enjoy it is to go to a specialty coffee shop where they take care of these details. In Lima (and various parts of Peru) the scene has grown quite a bit in recent years, today there are coffee shops like Kaldis, The Coffee Road, Origen, D’Wasi in Cusco and many others.

I hope you are encouraged to try some coffee method the next time you go to a specialty coffee shop 😄