How to brew on a Hario V60: our recipe

The V60 is the most used pour-over cone in the world and also the one most often brewed badly. The reason is simple: there is nowhere to hide in it. The grind, the water and the speed of your pour are all audible in the cup.

Below is the recipe we work to on the bars at Buyuk Turon and Shota Rustaveli. It is not clever, and that is the point - it repeats.

What you need

• A Hario V60 (size 01 or 02) and a paper filter
• 15 g of coffee, ground medium - about the coarseness of sea salt
• 250 g of water at 92-94 °C
• Scales and a timer. Guessing does not work here

The recipe

Put the filter in the cone and rinse it with hot water. That does two jobs: it washes the papery taste out and it warms the cone. Pour the rinse water away.

Add the coffee, zero the scales and start the timer.

0:00 - pour 50 g of water and stir once. This is the bloom: carbon dioxide leaves the coffee and the bed swells. Wait 45 seconds.

0:45 - pour slowly in circles from the centre outwards, up to 150 g.

1:15 - pour the rest, up to 250 g.

The water should have drained through between 2:30 and 3:00. Faster than that, grind finer; slower, grind coarser.

How to tell what went wrong

Sour and hollow means under-extracted: grind finer, or use hotter water.

Bitter and drying means the opposite, over-extracted: grind coarser.

Change one thing at a time and write it down. Change two and you will never know which one helped.

A word about Tashkent water

The water here is hard, and on filter coffee you taste it immediately - everything goes muted and flat. Even a simple jug filter changes the picture. If your coffee is fine but dull, the problem is usually the water rather than the grind.