Cut open · side view
Brew with
1× is real time, so you can brew along with it. 2× or 4× shows the whole brew quickly.
Seed to Swan
Brew filter coffee with a Hario V60 one step at a time: how much water, when, where and how fast to pour, and what happens inside the cone while you do.
1× is real time, so you can brew along with it. 2× or 4× shows the whole brew quickly.
Everything behind the animation: what happens in the cone, how to read the bloom and the pour, how to taste and correct a brew, and how water, beans, paper, dripper and kettle change the cup.
A V60 is a 60° cone with spiral ribs and one big hole. Water is poured onto the coffee, passes through it, and drips through the paper into the server. Here it is cut open during a pour.
The first small pour wets all the coffee and lets the gas out. Watch it every time: it tells you about the grind and the beans long before you taste the cup.
Where the stream lands and how hard it hits decides how evenly the coffee is extracted.
Anything that moves the coffee in the water raises extraction. A little makes the cup sweeter and fuller. Too much digs channels and washes the finest particles down into the paper, where they clog it and slow the drawdown.
Your main stirring. Faster and lower = more. Pulse pours (stop, start) stir, then let the bed settle again: even and repeatable.
Lift the dripper and turn it in a small circle. In the bloom it mixes away dry clumps; at the end it leaves the bed flat so the water drains evenly. Keep it gentle.
A spoon, once one way and once the other, knocks grounds off the paper. Never leave the coffee spinning: a lasting whirlpool piles the grounds into a dome.
Too little: slow brews that taste empty, so you are pushed to grind coarser. Too much: channels and astringency. Most recipes aim for a little, spread evenly.
All on the beginner recipe, one change at a time. Press “Watch it” to see the whole brew go wrong on the big stage, with the numbers.
Taste first, then change one thing at a time. Grind is the main tool for extraction; the ratio sets the strength. The clock is a clue, your tongue decides.
The lab and the “Extraction ≈” numbers come from a simple model of the brew built for this page. They show which way each change pushes the cup, not lab-exact values. To measure real strength you need a refractometer.
Finer grounds have more surface: they extract faster and slow the water down. Coarser: faster flow, less extraction. A good burr grinder matters more than any recipe, because uneven grounds (dust plus boulders) give a cup that is bitter and sour at once.
| Grinder | V60 starting point | Coarse V60 (4:6, 5-pour, osmotic) |
|---|---|---|
| Comandante C40 | 20–25 clicks (Hoffmann recipe ~21) | 23–32 clicks (4:6 ~23, Winton/osmotic ~30) |
| Timemore C3 | 20–30 clicks | upper end of the range |
| Kinu M47 | about 4.0–5.0 turns | Winton used 3.6 on his Kinu |
| Hario hand grinder | medium | about 12 clicks (Winton, “quite coarse”) |
Starting points from the recipe pages; every grinder, and every coffee, needs its own setting. Change 1–2 clicks at a time.
The ratio is coffee to water by weight. 1:15 is strong, 1:17 light; 60 g per litre (1:16.7) is a good middle. Pick a dose and get a pour plan in the beginner style (1 cup) or Hoffmann’s 2-cup style, then brew it on the stage: one cup goes in a V60 01, two cups in a V60 02.
Your own recipe with all the numbers: beans, coffee and water, temperature, grind, dripper, how long it took and how it tasted. Save it, open it next time, and try it on the stage.
Hotter water extracts more and drains a little faster. Light roasts are dense and hard to extract: brew them hot. Dark roasts dissolve easily and turn bitter fast: brew them cooler.
Start with the beginner recipe until it tastes good every time. Then explore: each of these pours differently and makes a different cup from the same beans.
Water is most of the drink and it does the extracting, so bad water means bad coffee, whatever the technique. You want water that tastes clean and is fairly soft.
| SCA target | Value | Acceptable | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total dissolved solids | 150 mg/L | 75–250 mg/L | Some minerals are needed to pull flavour out; many pour-over brewers go softer (30–80 mg/L). |
| Calcium hardness | 68 mg/L | 17–85 mg/L | Too hard: flat taste and scale in the kettle. |
| Alkalinity | 40 mg/L | around 40 | Buffers acidity: high alkalinity mutes the bright flavours, very low leaves it sharp. |
| pH | 7.0 | 6.5–7.5 | Neutral water. |
| Sodium | 10 mg/L | around 10 | Salty water tastes salty in the cup. |
| Chlorine | 0 | 0 | Chlorine taste ruins coffee: filter it out. |
Specialty filter coffee is arabica: sweeter, more acidity and aroma. Robusta is more bitter and full of caffeine; it is rarely used for V60. The trees themselves: the Coffee Tree studio.
The fruit is removed before drying: clean, bright, clear flavours. The classic choice to taste the origin in a V60.
Dried inside the whole cherry: fruity, sweet, heavier. Often extracts easily: a slightly coarser grind can help.
Dried with some of the sticky fruit left on: between washed and natural, sweet and rounded.
Fermented without air: intense, funky, winey. Gentle recipes (like the gentle drip, 1:16–1:17) keep them clean.
Dense, bright and floral, hardest to extract: water at 95–100 °C, finer grind, a bit more agitation.
Sweet and balanced, forgiving: 90–95 °C, the beginner recipe as written.
Dissolves fast and turns bitter: 80–90 °C, coarser, gentler pours, shorter brew. The osmotic flow suits it.
Rest beans about 7–10 days after roasting, then use them within 4–6 weeks. Buy whole beans, keep them airtight, cool and dark, and grind just before brewing: ground coffee loses aroma within hours.
What happens in the roaster, the two cracks, and how light, medium and dark roasts are made and taste: see the Bean Roasting studio.
Washed, natural, honey and experimental processes, fermentation, drying, grading and defects: see the Green Coffee studio.
The paper is part of the recipe. It must be the right size for the dripper (01 papers in an 01). A slower paper keeps the water in contact with the coffee longer, so the same grind extracts more.
| Paper | Flow | Cup | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hario, white | medium | clean, balanced | The cheap, everywhere benchmark. All Hario papers now come from one factory in Japan, box or bag. Won blind tests for light roasts. |
| Hario, brown (unbleached) | medium | papery if not rinsed | Rinse thoroughly with hot water. |
| Cafec Abaca / T-90 | fast | clean, bright | Fast and consistent: good for gentle, many-pour styles. |
| Cafec roast papers | per roast | — | T-92 light, T-90 medium-dark, T-83 dark; the number is the suggested brew temperature in °C. |
| Sibarist FAST | very fast | very clean, lighter body | Needs a finer grind to extract enough; great with a high-end grinder. |
| Kinto Slow Coffee Style | very slow | fuller, more extracted | Thick, with cotton. With a cheap grinder it gave the best cup in Hoffmann’s test. |
| Metal mesh | fast | heavy body, oils, some sediment | Lets oils through (including the ones that raise cholesterol). Reusable. |
| Cloth | medium | round, between paper and metal | Reusable but needs careful washing and storage. |
Modern white papers add almost no taste: in a blind test Hoffmann could not tell rinsed from unrinsed. Rinsing still warms the dripper and server and seats the paper against the ribs, so it is a good habit. Brown papers: always rinse.
The V60 (Hario, 2004) is a 60° cone. Its spiral ribs leave an air gap so the paper doesn’t stick to the wall and gas can escape. Its single big hole adds almost no resistance, so the flow is up to your grind, paper and pouring: very flexible, and less forgiving than drippers with small holes.
| Size | Cups | Coffee | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 1–2 | about 8–16 g | One cup; Hoffmann recommends the plastic 01 for his 1-cup recipe. |
| 02 | 1–4 | about 15–30 g | The home standard; best between 200 and 500 g of water. |
| 03 | up to 6 | larger batches | For more than ~500 g, brew two batches instead: quality drops above that. |
| Material | Heat | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plastic | barely takes heat | Cheap, unbreakable, needs little preheating (hot tap water is enough). Hoffmann’s pick. |
| Ceramic | soaks up a lot of heat | Lovely and stable, but must be preheated with boiling water or the bloom cools down. |
| Glass | takes heat, loses it fast | Neutral and pretty; preheat well. |
| Metal / copper | conducts heat fast | Durable; Matt Winton won the 2021 World Brewers Cup with the metal V60. Copper looks great and holds heat. |
About 30 % of a coffee bean can dissolve. A good cup takes about 18–22 % of the coffee’s weight into the water. Acids and fruit come out first, then sweetness, then the bitter and drying compounds. Too little: sour, thin. Too much: bitter, dry.
How concentrated the cup is (TDS): the SCA “golden cup” is 1.15–1.35 %. Strength is mostly the ratio: more coffee per gram of water = stronger.
Freshly roasted coffee is full of CO₂. When hot water hits it, the gas rushes out and pushes the water away. A short bloom lets it escape so the main pours can soak in evenly.
A V60 is percolation: fresh water keeps passing through the bed, which extracts efficiently. The longer the water stays in contact (finer grind, slower paper, more coffee, cooler water), the more it extracts. The grounds keep about twice their weight in water: 250 g in gives about 215 g out.