V60 Recipe: How to Brew a Hario V60

For one large mug from a Hario V60: 20g of coffee ground medium-fine, 320g of water at about 93°C (200°F), a 40g bloom, then two steady pours, finishing between 2:45 and 3:30. That is a 1:16 ratio, the same baseline as the site’s pourover recipe, set out here with the details that matter on a V60 in particular.

The V60 is the least forgiving of the common cone brewers and the most rewarding. Its single large hole means the brewer does almost nothing to slow the water down. Your grind and your pour decide how fast it flows, so they decide how the cup tastes. Get those two steady and the V60 makes the brightest, most detailed cup of any brewer on this site.

Start with this recipe

For the V60 02, the most common size. The smaller 01 holds this recipe too.

1. Prepare the filter. Fold the paper along its seam, open it into a cone, and seat it in the V60. Rinse it with plenty of hot water. That removes papery flavors and heats the brewer. Throw the rinse water away.
2. Add 20g of coffee, ground medium-fine, like fine sand. Shake the V60 gently so the bed is level.
3. Bloom. Start a timer and pour 40g of water, enough to wet every ground. Swirl the V60 gently so no dry clumps remain. Wait until 0:40.
4. First pour. At 0:40, pour in slow, small circles up to 200g. Aim to get there in about 25 seconds.
5. Second pour. At 1:15, pour up to 320g in the same way, keeping the stream low and centered.
6. Swirl the V60 gently once, to knock grounds off the paper and flatten the bed.
7. Let it drain. It should finish between 2:45 and 3:30.

You get about 9 ounces, because the wet grounds hold on to about twice their weight in water.

Use water at about 93°C (200°F), roughly 30 seconds off the boil, for a medium roast. For a light roast, use water just off the boil. Taste the cup before you change anything, then change one thing at a time.

What makes the V60 different

Three design choices explain how it behaves:

• A 60-degree cone. The name comes from the angle. The cone makes a deep bed of coffee, so water travels through a lot of it before it leaves.
• One large hole. Flat-bottomed brewers such as the Kalita Wave have small holes that hold the water back. The V60 does not, so the flow depends on the grind and on how fast you pour.
• Spiral ribs. The ribs hold the wet paper slightly away from the wall, which lets air escape and keeps the water flowing down through the coffee.

The result is that pour speed is part of the recipe. Pour faster and the water level rises, the bed churns more, and the coffee extracts more. Pour slower and it drains between pours. Neither is wrong, but changing it from brew to brew changes the cup. Pick a speed and repeat it, the same way you repeat the grind and the ratio.

Pourover compares the V60 with the Kalita Wave and the Chemex if you are still deciding which cone to buy.

Pour technique

Every ground should spend about the same time in contact with water. On a V60, that comes down to four habits:

• Pour low and gentle. Keep the kettle spout a few centimeters above the bed, with a thin, steady stream. Roughly 5 to 8 grams per second is a good pace. Watch the scale and you will learn what it looks like.
• Pour in small circles near the center, spiraling out and back, and stop well short of the paper. On a V60, water poured onto the paper runs down the ribs, around the coffee instead of through it. See bypass water.
• Keep the water level steady. A bed that drains dry between pours and then floods again extracts unevenly.
• Swirl rather than stir, after the bloom and at the end. A gentle swirl levels the bed without stirring up the fine particles that clog the paper. Some brewers call the final swirl the “Rao spin”, after the coffee consultant Scott Rao, who popularized it.

A gooseneck kettle makes all of this much easier, because it pours a thin stream that you can aim. An ordinary kettle poured slowly and close to the bed works. So does a small jug with a spout, filled from the kettle.

Fewer pours or more? Pouring in two or three large pours keeps the coffee hotter and the routine simple. Pouring in many small pulses slows the overall brew and gives you more control over the flow. Both make good coffee. Choose one and keep it the same while you dial in.

Dial it in with drawdown time

Drawdown is the time from your first pour until the water has drained through the coffee. On a V60, it is the most useful clue you have, because it tells you whether the grind let the water through too fast or too slowly.

Treat the time as evidence rather than a target. Coffees differ in how many fine particles they make, and some drain more slowly than others. A cup that finishes at 3:45 and tastes excellent is not a problem to fix.

Change one thing per brew. Keep the coffee, the dose, the water, and the pour schedule the same, and move the grind one step. Write down the drawdown time and one word about the taste. Three brews in, you will know which direction the coffee wants. Change the grind and the pour at the same time and you cannot tell which one helped. Calibrating the grind covers how far one step should move the cup, and coffee extraction explains why sour and bitter sit at opposite ends.

Water temperature

The V60 rewards hot water. A thin stream poured through the air loses heat on the way down, and a small bed of coffee cools quickly. So:

• Light roasts: just off the boil.
• Medium roasts: about 93°C (200°F), roughly 30 seconds off the boil.
• Dark roasts: about 90°C (194°F), a minute or so off the boil.

If a light roast tastes sour even after a finer grind, hotter water is the next change to try. The water temperature guide explains why, and light vs dark roast covers which roasts suit the V60 best.

Which V60 to buy

The V60 comes in three sizes and several materials. Size matters more.

Plastic is the cheapest and nearly unbreakable. It is also thin and light, so it takes very little heat from the brew, which is why many experienced brewers prefer it. Ceramic looks and feels lovely but is heavy. Preheat it thoroughly or it will cool the first pours. Glass and metal versions brew much the same way; choose by looks and budget, and preheat them well.

Filters. Use V60 papers in the matching size. Fold the seam before you open the filter, so it sits flat against the ribs. Different V60 papers, even from Hario itself, drain at noticeably different speeds, so stay with one kind while you dial in. If you change filters and the drawdown time jumps, adjust the grind rather than assuming the coffee changed. Rinse brown, unbleached papers especially well.

Two well-known V60 recipes

Once the baseline is reliable, these two published recipes are worth trying. Each one controls the brew in a different way.

James Hoffmann’s “ultimate” V60

Published by the coffee writer and 2007 World Barista Champion James Hoffmann. It uses 30g of coffee to 500g of water, about 1:16.7, ground medium-fine, with water as hot as possible for lighter roasts. It makes two mugs.

1. Bloom with 60g of water, swirl, and wait up to 0:45.
2. Pour to 300g by 1:15.
3. Pour to 500g by 1:45.
4. Stir once clockwise and once anticlockwise with a spoon, gently, to knock grounds off the paper.
5. Let it drain a little, then give the V60 a gentle swirl to flatten the bed.
6. Aim to finish around 3:30.

For one cup, halve everything: 15g of coffee, a 30g bloom, 150g by 1:15, and 250g by 1:45. A smaller bed drains faster, so you may need to grind a little finer.

Tetsu Kasuya’s 4:6 method

Tetsu Kasuya won the 2016 World Brewers Cup with this method. It uses 20g of coffee to 300g of water, 1:15, ground coarse, much coarser than the baseline above, with water at about 92°C. The water is split into two parts, and each part has a job:

• The first 40%, 120g, sets the balance. Pour it in two pours. A smaller first pour makes the cup sweeter; a larger first pour makes it brighter.
• The last 60%, 180g, sets the strength. Pour it in one pour for a lighter cup, two for a medium one, or three for a stronger one.

The most common version uses five equal pours of 60g. Start each pour when the last one has nearly drained, roughly every 45 seconds, and lift the V60 off the cup at 3:30 even if water remains. The coarse grind stops the many pours from over-extracting the coffee.

Its structure is the real lesson: each variable controls one thing. That makes it one of the easiest recipes to adjust deliberately.

Brewing more or less

Hold the ratio and multiply. Above about 40g of coffee, the bed gets deep enough to slow the drawdown, so grind a step coarser.

The brew ratio calculator works out any amount in between.

Fix the cup

The Brew Compass turns any of these into one change for your next cup. For problems that are not specific to the V60, see fix sour, bitter, or weak coffee.

More ways to use a V60

Iced coffee. The V60 is the classic brewer for coffee brewed hot straight onto ice. Put a third of the water in the server as ice, grind a step finer, and pour the rest hot. See how to make iced coffee.

If the pouring wears thin. The Hario Switch is a V60 with a valve in the base: the coffee steeps first, then drains when you open it, which takes most of the technique out. The Kalita Wave holds the water back for you. And a drip machine does the pouring itself. Liking the V60’s cup but not its routine is a good reason to choose one of those.