Otaku Brew Guide - How to make a Pour Over Coffee with a Hario V60

Making coffee at home is a rewarding and meditative process to kick start your day. There are so many different ways to brew coffee and learning those techniques is what makes the world of coffee so much fun! In this guide we will teach you how to make a handcrafted pour over coffee with the tried and true Hario V60, so let's get started!

What you’ll need

20 grams of coffee

Hario V60 Dripper

V60 Paper Filter

Gooseneck Kettle

Scale & Timer

Carafe or Mug

Coffee Grinder

Our Recipe for the V60

1. Boil your water to 93C (about 200F)

2. While you’re waiting for your water to heat up, weight out 20g of coffee beans

3. Take a spray bottle and spray a tiny amount of water onto your coffee beans. Then shake the beans around to distribute the water. This technique is also known as RDT (Ross Droplet Technique)*

4. Grind your coffee beans into medium coarse grinds (should look the size of sea salt)

5. Now set up your V60 pour over station:
   • Put your V60 dripper onto your carafe or mug.
   • Take your paper filter and make a fold along the edge with the seams
   • Open up the paper filter and drop it onto your Hario V60 dripper
   • Once your hot water is ready, pour 100g of water onto the paper filter in a circular motion making sure that the entire filter is wet. Discard that used water.*

6. Now that your station is ready, put your entire V60 setup onto your scale and gentle tap the ground coffee into your V60.

7. Use the end of a teaspoon or chopstick and gently draw in a circular motion from the outside of the coffee grounds to the center so that you make the shape of a tiny nest in your coffee bed.

8. Tare your scale and start your timer and let the fun begin!

9. Now it’s time to BLOOM YOUR COFFEE! Pour 40g of water in a circular motion starting at the center of the nest you made and swirl it to the outside making sure all the coffee grounds are wet. Try to do this within 20 seconds.

10. At 40 seconds into the brew, circle pour hot water into the brewer until the scale reaches 150g. 

11. Once you finish pouring, give your V60 a good spin so that you can level all the coffee grounds.

12. At 1:10 start pouring again and pour hot water following that same circular motion that you did earlier until your scale reaches 250g.

13. Finally at 1:40, do your final pour for another 100g of hot water in a circular motion till you see the scale read 350g

14. If all went well, your brew should finish sometime a little below or above the 3 minute mark. Stop the timer and remove your V60 from the carafe or mug.

15. If you did your pour over on a carafe, give the carafe a good spin so that the coffee has a chance to swirl around a little. If you did your pour over in a mug, use a spoon and give your coffee a good swirl to mix up all that goodness inside.

16. Let your coffee cool down just a few minutes so that the flavors balance out a little, then sip and enjoy!

Coffee Otaku Terminology

 RDT (Ross Droplet Technique) - When you spray your coffee beans with a little bit of water before you grind them, the water removes the static that develops when your coffee beans are ground. By doing this, you save yourself a whole lot of trouble as your coffee grounds don’t get stuck on the walls of your grind cup.

Why rinse your paper filter with water before your brew? - When you rinse your paper filter with hot water, it washes away residues of lignin (a polymer that strengthens the cell walls within wood) which is associated with a cardboard taste. Another benefit of rinsing your paper filter is that the hot water will heat up your dripper. Consistency in heat is a key factor in making yourself a delicious brewed coffee. When you don’t heat up your dripper before your brewing process, you dripper ends up sucking away all the heat during the blooming process of your coffee and you won’t be giving your coffee the heat it needs to develop all those fantastic flavors.