by Darren Oliver
Everyone desires a well-brewed V60. For many of us, this is our first contact with specialty coffee! It’s a simple, quick and inexpensive method. However, it can still cause minor problems. Here are common mistakes and problems when brewing a V60, as well as their solutions.
Inadequate Grind Level
The right grinding level is the key to good coffee and also an issue that seems to cause a lot of problems for beginners. Why does the grinding level matter? In a nutshell, the finer the coffee is ground, the more surface area is subjected to the extraction process, so extraction occurs faster.
Too slow extraction caused by too fine a grind results in unpleasant bitterness and flat taste, while too fast extraction (caused by too coarse a grind level) results in unpleasant acidity. The key is to find the grind level, and thus the ideal extraction, that will give you a balanced, full and tasty cup of coffee – just the way you love it!
To make matters more difficult, each bean requires a slightly different grind (this depends on a number of factors, such as the degree of roasting, bean density, moisture content and more). When brewing coffee in a V60, we want a brewing time of around 3 minutes. To achieve this, it’s best you start with a medium grind, the thickness of which should be somewhat like sand. If the coffee is too acidic, grind it a little finer, and if it’s too bitter, grind it a little coarser.
Once you have a good understanding of the basics of extraction, you can proceed with your own experiments. You can try brewing your coffee so that the water leaks through it for 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Also, it’s a good idea to vary the amount and speed of pouring water into the coffee. Remember, however, that a thorough understanding of the basics of the brewing process is necessary for experimentation.
If you want a simple, reliable brewing method, try the one developed by James Hoffmann. If you want to take it a step further, try the “4:6 Method” developed by Tetsu Kasuya. Then, you’re only limited by your imagination!
Using Boiling Water To Brew the Coffee
Everyone loves a cup of hot coffee, although we need to find the golden mean. The temperature of the water you use will be very important for the taste of your brew.
Many of us simply wait for the kettle to boil and immediately pour water over the ground coffee beans. However, the temperature of the coffee is not unaffected by the extraction we talked about in the earlier section. The higher the temperature, the faster the extraction takes place, and therefore the easier it is for bitterness and an unpleasant burnt taste to develop – which, after all, none of us wants! So what should be done?
The best option would be to get a professional coffee thermometer. This will make it easy for you to control the water temperature and keep it between 195°F (for brewing lighter roasted coffees) and 205°F (for darker roasted coffees). However, if you’re just starting out in the world of coffee, don’t worry about a thing! A good way to get the temperature just right is to wait a few minutes after the water has brewed in the kettle before you start brewing.
Not Paying Attention to Ratios
Imagine the following situation: you wake up in the morning, pour 2 teaspoons of coffee into your drip, pour water, wait for it to drip into your mug, take a sip and… it’s the best coffee of your life. Now here’s the bad news: you’ll never drink coffee this good again in your life. Why? Because you don’t know the brew ratios needed to prepare it!
Brew ratios are one of the most basic, yet crucial issues when it comes to brewing coffee. They are nothing more than the amount of coffee used in relation to the amount of water used – basic proportions. They are responsible for the flavor, body and mouthfeel of your brew. Even a small change in the ratio can drastically change the character of a particular coffee.
Using fewer beans will make the brew milder, while reducing the amount of water will significantly increase its intensity. When it comes to the V60 drip, the golden ratio is considered to be 6 grams of coffee per 100 grams of water (importantly, 100 ml of boiling water does not equal 100 grams of boiling water). Try starting with it and modifying it according to your preferences.
To play with proportions you need only one inexpensive piece of equipment: it is worth getting a precise and fast kitchen scale (there are even some that have a built-in timer, very useful in the process of brewing coffee). This way you will be able to measure the exact amount of coffee and water used every time. Recall the situation from the beginning of the previous paragraph. By paying a little attention to the right brew ratios, you will drink perfect coffee every day – because you will know exactly how to prepare it.
Using the “Wrong” Type of Coffee Beans
This is not necessarily a mistake! The best coffee is the one that tastes best to you. However, there is a reason why we see a certain regularity when it comes to pour over coffees – most coffee pros use light-roasted beans to brew their coffee in a drip. There are very practical reasons for this!
As the coffee roasting process progresses, its molecules become more and more soluble in water. As we already know, longer brewing times can very likely cause over-extraction, thus resulting in our brew being bitter and unpleasant tasting. The darker the roast, the faster the extraction occurs, so the temporal “fork” of ideal extraction becomes shorter. On the other hand, brewing coffees using the pour-over method usually takes a little longer, so ideal extraction is easier to achieve with light-roasted coffees, characterized by lower solubility.
In addition, taste plays an important role, of course, but this is a completely individual matter. Light roasted coffees are characterized by fruity, floral and crisp flavor notes, which are further enhanced by the use of pour-over brewing methods.
Fans of pour-over coffees tend to go for lighter-tasting brews, so the choice of light-roasted beans becomes almost an obvious one. This doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t brew medium or even dark roasted coffees with chocolate, nutty, smoky flavor notes in your V60 – you just need to properly adjust other parameters in such a way that the brew tastes good to you! Have fun and experiment, that’s what coffee is all about after all!
Happy Accidents…
We hope that this article will help you take your brewing process to a new level by implementing some of the simple solutions mentioned above. However, we want you not to let yourself be constrained by rigid canons of coffee brewing: James Hoffmann, former World Barista Champion deliberately uses boiling water for brewing V60 – don’t be afraid to break the rules! Maybe you’ll discover what painter Bob Ross called “happy accidents”….