I make a V60 pour-over almost every morning, and somewhere along the way it turned into a little ritual I actually look forward to. From the outside it looks fussy — scale, timer, a kettle with a weird long spout — but every step is there for a reason. So instead of just listing what I do, I want to explain why each part matters. That’s the stuff that actually made my coffee better.
What I use
- A precision scale (0.1g is great, 1g works fine)
- A burr grinder
- A V60 and its paper filters
- A gooseneck kettle
- Filtered water — more on that at the end
- Fresh coffee I actually enjoy
The process
1. Pick the coffee. Sounds obvious, but it’s the biggest lever. I go for something freshly roasted and single origin when I can, because no technique rescues stale beans.
2. Weigh the beans. I put them on the scale and land around 15g for a single cup. The point isn’t the exact number — it’s that I measure it. If you eyeball it, every cup is a slightly different guess, and you can’t fix what you didn’t measure.
3. Pick a ratio. I almost always go between 1:15 and 1:16 (coffee to water). That’s just math: 15g of coffee at 1:15 is 225g of water, at 1:16 it’s 240g. Less water makes it stronger and more intense, more water makes it lighter and cleaner. I bounce between the two depending on the coffee and my mood.
4. Grind while the water heats. Two things happen at once here. Ground coffee starts losing its aromatics the moment it hits the air — all that surface area — so I grind as late as possible. And since the water needs a minute to climb to 94°C anyway, I might as well grind during the wait. Why 94 and not boiling? Boiling water tends to scorch the grounds and pull out bitterness; a touch below gets a clean extraction. Lighter roasts like it hotter, darker roasts a little cooler.
5. Rinse the filter. Paper filter into the V60, then I soak it with hot water before the coffee goes in. This does two things: it rinses away the papery taste (nobody wants cardboard in their cup), and it preheats the V60 and mug so my brew water doesn’t drop 5-10°C the second it touches cold ceramic. Then I dump that rinse water out.
6. Add the coffee and pour in stages. Grounds in, gently leveled. My first pour is really a bloom — just enough water to wet everything (roughly twice the coffee’s weight) and then I wait 30-45 seconds. Fresh coffee is loaded with CO₂ from roasting, and that gas physically pushes water away; the bloom lets it escape so the rest of the water can actually soak in evenly. After that I finish the pour — usually in two goes, sometimes more when I feel like experimenting. Pouring in stages instead of dumping it all at once keeps the contact time under control and the coffee bed level, which is what keeps the extraction even.
7. Use filtered water. This one’s easy to skip and it matters more than people think. Your cup is basically all water, so the water isn’t a background ingredient — it is most of the drink. Tap water usually carries chlorine and random minerals that mute or muddy the flavor. I always brew with filtered water, never straight from the tap, and the cup comes out noticeably cleaner and more consistent (your kettle will thank you too).
Where I mess around
Once the routine is dialed in, the fun is changing one thing at a time — the pour pattern, the grind size, the ratio. Just one per brew, otherwise you can’t tell what actually made the difference. Quick rule of thumb I lean on: if it tastes bitter, I grind coarser or drop the temperature a bit; if it tastes sour or thin, I grind finer or give it a little more time.
My starting point
If you want numbers to copy and then tweak:
- Coffee: 15g
- Water: 225-240g (1:15 to 1:16), filtered, 94°C
- Bloom: ~30g, 30-45s
- Total brew time: somewhere around 2:30-3:00
Start there, taste, adjust. That’s really the whole game.