V60 Brew Guide

Home brewing can be daunting for the beginner but with just a few easy steps you can create filter coffee just as good as a pro barista, here’s Twin Pines’ Martyn Nash’s V60 brewing guide.

The specialty coffee scene in Brighton has been going from strength to strength in the past few years with new cafes and roasters popping up on the regular. This has led to a real upsurge in consumer interest and knowledge – coffee is no longer just ‘coffee’. Quality and flavour are what it’s all about.

When brewing a V60, there are three important things to keep in mind: weight, time and  temperature. At Twin Pines we generally stick to a 16 gram dry dose of coffee and a 240g yield which will be brewed at 90 degrees, taking 2 – 3 minutes for the full extraction. These numbers are by no means to be taken as gospel. Coffee is all about ratios and the most important thing to keep in mind at this stage is that a V60 will nearly always be 1 part coffee to 15 parts water. Different origins and varietals of bean will require different approaches and brewing techniques.

Stage 1: Weigh out 16g coffee, grind it accordingly – somewhere in between espresso and cafetiere (it should feel like fine sand).

Stage 2: Fill your pouring kettle with hot water (90 degrees) and pre-wet your paper filter so it adheres to the cone-drip. This will ensure an even extraction and alleviate the risk of a papery aftertaste.

Stage 3: Place the ground coffee on the wet filter and give it a little shake to flatten out the surface. Put it on your scales, zero them and start a timer. Start pouring immediately.

Stage 4: Pour 50g water on the dry coffee and wait for 30 seconds. This is called the “bloom” and releases all the natural oils in the coffee.

Stage 5: Pour the remaining 190g of water and wait for the brew to finish. You can either do this pour in stages or continuously – just experiment until you get the results you want.

Stage 6: Let your coffee cool down slightly, sip it and enjoy it.

Words by Martyn Nash of Twin Pines – twinpinescoffee.com