- Beans: “Organic Breakfast Coffee” light roast (Ethiopia)
- Roaster: Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
- Roast date: 10/12/2023
- 32g coffee / 500g water (1:15.6)
- JX: 2 rotations (20 on the grind chart / 60 total clicks)
- Water at 99°C
- Recipe: The Ultimate V60 Technique (steps below)
I picked up a size 2 plastic V60 dripper last week, and tried it out this morning. Until today, I had only used my (ceramic) size 1 dripper to brew a single cup at a time. I don’t have a fancy insulated carafe, so I brewed into a 16oz Hydro-Flask tumbler with a closable press-in lid. This worked well — the lid can be closed to keep the coffee hot, and when open, the coffee pours easily and without dripping. Also, the plastic V60 doesn’t need a lot of preheating, so there was no need for the Fernco hack that I use to preheat my ceramic V60. I just put the filter into the dripper and ran some water from the insta-hot tap through both.
My hand grinder only has capacity for about 20g of beans, so I had to grind twice. I did this by putting the grinder on the scale, zeroing the scale, grinding 20 grams, zeroing again, and grinding 12 more grams. I poured the beans directly into the grinder, but I think going forward, it will work better to pre-weigh the 30g all at once into a separate container. If I end up brewing this amount regularly, it might make sense to invest in a higher-capacity (electric?) grinder.
Here are the steps I used:
- Heat water; grind coffee; pre-rinse filter and pre-heat dripper
- Add coffee grounds to V60 and create a well or indentation in the middle
- Start timer and add 60g water (the recipe specifies to add 2x the coffee weight, but this seemed close enough)
- Swirl until evenly mixed and bloom for 45 seconds
- At 0:45, add water up to 300g total (60% total weight), finishing at 1:15
- At 1:15, pour the remaining 200g slightly more slowly, finishing at 1:45
- Stir 1x clockwise and 1x anticlockwise with a spoon (to knock grounds off the sides)
- Allow V60 to drain a little bit
- Swirl gently
- Wait for drawdown, which should hopefully finish by 3:30
The first thing I noticed was that, compared with my one-cup method, this method mantained a much higher water level in the V60 throughout the brew. With these beans at this grind setting, the drawdown finished at around 3:10. I then put the cap on the Hydro-Flask, preheated my ceramic mug, and poured myself a cup. If I were to compare, I think it turned out a little bit better than with the 1-cup method. It was definitely on the strong side, which makes me wonder if the extra water in the V60 is leading to better extraction of the beans. I think I’ll cut it back to 30 grams of beans next time. I’m also curious whether my experiences with this method will eventually lead to any modifications to my 1-cup method. I’ll see how things go after I’ve done this a few more times.