Tips and Tricks on how to brew coffee better!
Ever since I started coffee, I have gone through so many moments of being super passionate about learning, but also feeling like I just want to enjoy a solid cup of jo. I am currently in a phase where I am digesting as much information as I can until I hit the inevitable burn-out where I just want to drink iced vanilla lattes.
Today I wanted to write about some ideas on how to make your pour-over game stronger. These tips and tricks are meant for anyone making pour-over coffee in any setting. Instead of giving you guys a bunch of different recipes and different brewing methods, we are going to focus on the Hario v60. The v60 is my favorite brewing method and I feel like it gives the greatest sense of clarity, but also body while making coffee. We are going to go over some tips on how to increase extraction or decrease extraction so you can make coffee that is specific to your taste buds, so hopefully your morning ritual becomes a little more exciting.
Heat retention is one of the most important factors in brewing coffee. Using plastic coffee brewers is one of the best ways to retain heat in your coffee bed since plastic absorbs less heat than metal and ceramic. This is why we use a plastic v60.
To continue the idea of heat retention, a cool trick you can do while you are waiting for your kettle to heat up is to take off the lid of the kettle and set your v60 on top. Put your filter in and put the lid of the kettle in the v60 trapping the hot air. It functions as a lid and will trap hot air from escaping and will heat your v60 better. The purpose of this is so when you bloom your coffee, most of your hot water is going to be focused on the coffee rather than the walls of the v60.
Another super important tip is to wet your filter with very hot water. I recommend 150g of hot water to wet your filter. This is what most coffee professionals like Jonathan Gagne, Scott Rao, James Hoffman, Lance Hendricks, and many barista world champions are doing. The chances if these titans in our industry are all doing it, we probably should as well.
This tip may not seem so obvious, but when your kettle says it is a certain temperature wait around 20 secs before you take the kettle off the heating element. This is because the probe that reads the temperature is at the bottom of most kettles so while the number may be the temperature you want to brew at, it is only reading the coffee at the bottom of the kettle. This is also why I sometimes overshoot my temperature slightly since I know even during pouring fresh water on my coffee, my water is going to cool off while in suspension.
Spin your v60 after each pour! This is super important for so many reasons. It helps push fines to the side that cause channeling and mess up extraction. It levels out the coffee bed helping you saturate all grounds properly. Due to centrifugal force, it wets all your grounds and will help your bloom drastically but also your overall brew!
I have been playing around with these ideas this week and it has been so fun seeing the changes in how I brew coffee for myself. If there was something that went over your head what you need to know is this, keep things hot and spin your brewer in a circular motion. I promise this will help your pour-overs taste brighter and sweeter. If you are looking for a solid recipe, hit the brew tab on our website and watch our v60 video. If these tips helped you or you learned something new, comment below and we would love to hear your thoughts and how you are making coffee. Happy brewing everyone!
-Joel Agimudie
