The single-pour V60, and why I stopped fussing
For most of a year I brewed the V60 the careful way: a bloom, then four or five small pours, each one circled in from the edge, each one timed. The coffee was good. But I never looked forward to it on a weekday, and a method you skip on a weekday is not really your method.
So I tried the opposite. Bloom, then one continuous pour straight up to the final weight, then leave it. The first time I did this I expected a thin, sour cup. It wasn’t. It was maybe five percent less sweet than the fussy version, and I could not reliably pick it out in a blind taste the following week.
- Coffee
- 18 g, medium
- Water
- 300 g, 94 °C
- Ratio
- 1:16.6
- Grind
- medium, table-salt
- Bloom
- 50 g, 40 s
- Total time
- 2:30–3:00
The pour
Wet the grounds with about 50 g and wait forty seconds — this is the one step I won’t cut, because a dry bloom gives a flat cup every time. Then pour in slow circles up to 300 g without stopping, keeping the water level below the top of the cone. Done. The bed should drain by three minutes.
What drifts, and how to catch it
If the whole thing runs through in under two minutes, the grind is too coarse and the cup tastes thin and sour; go one notch finer. If it stalls past three and a half, too fine, and it will be bitter and drying. I only change one thing at a time, which is the whole trick of the grind entry.
The best method is the one you’ll actually use before you’ve woken up properly.