How To Make Good Filter Coffee At Home

The third wave concept and the third wave point of view of this blog have been mentioned in the previous post. So we can say that I care about what's going on behind the coffee I make or drink. If we are not roasting our own coffee at home for now, all we can do is to find fresh coffee beans waiting to be ground in its package and to brew them with a qualified method before they lose their freshness.

Especially after the boutique roasters spread all around the world, it is hard to choose coffee among many different roasting levels of several regions if you are in the beginner level. Gaining experience is the best way to overcome this difficulty. Keeping in mind what has been written and explained to us, we have to jump into the field, improve our tasting talents and enlarge our sampling space. If it is to find our own coffee and brewing type what we aim -even if our tastes will probably change in time- the experiences gained by others should only be a kind of instrument in our own quest. In other words, we will brew and drink. We will try to taste as many different types of beans as possible with several brewing styles in different places and share opinions to the interested people around us, by which we also learn new things.

In order to improve our knowledge in the right way, it is beneficial to decide on a certain and transparent way of making coffee. Actually it is usual to see people making coffee from Starbucks or similar chain coffee shops' beans with dripper coffee machines at home or offices. What do these machines do? They pour water over ground coffee with a predefined amount and temperature. The output is continuously filtered through a paper filter and filled in a bowl which is continuously kept warm with a heater. (It should be known very well how bad coffee can become when waited in a continuously heated bowl or served from coffee shops like that.) 

Emerged in various periods, pour over brewing methods are based on manually pouring water over the coffee and letting it filtered with gravity. I think it is not wrong to accept Hario V60 as the most famous and approved among several methods. We can say that V60 is more than meets the eye with its 60 degree slope, specially designed filter, large hole providing a control over the time coffee spent with water depending on pouring speed and the spiral ways maximising the air flow. I will go in detail about V60 in this post. You will have chance to see nuances between V60 and similar pour over methods as well as other techniques than pour over in future posts. 

How to Make Coffee with V60?

Like many other pour over methods, V60 is also based on rinsing, pre-infusion and one or two phases of water pouring depending on the amount of coffee to be brewed. Rinsing is necessary to prevent papery taste and pre-heat the equipment whereas pre-infusion is a must for even saturation of the ground pieces of coffee. Usually the coffee is stirred with minimal back and forth movements for this stage to happen more homogeneously (there are baristas who are not stirring though). The temperature of the water poured over, coffee/water ratio, the level of grinding, pouring style/speed and the waiting times between the mentioned phases are all parameters which affect almost everything about a coffee made by V60.

There are different coffee/water ratios given in recipes of famous baristas such as 12gr/200gr or 26gr/340gr. My own experience tells me that these ratios should be tuned for different coffee types. However, for the first time tasting of a coffee, it is important to act with a reference ratio which is also suitable to our taste. There are different ideas around the temperature of the coffee too; but 90-95 degree Celsius is a generally accepted interval. If you want your coffee to be warmer, you can keep the coffee mug, V60 and service pot warmer instead of increasing the temperature. The pouring over is usually achieved in V60 as follows: 40-60 grams for pre-infusion, 1/4-1/2 of the whole water for the first phase and the rest for the last phase. For the infusion my own experience is that coffee gets better as less extract pour down during the pre-infusion. There should be a waiting time of 30 seconds between pre-infusion and the first phase for the ground coffee particles to be evenly saturated. It is also mentioned in many recipes that the brewing time should not exceed 3 minutes in total. The water should be poured in a tiny and controlled way as spirals from center to the outer border of the water level by avoiding to touch only to the paper. Although the spiral movements should ideally end exactly at the paper border in order to include all the coffee into the brew, before mastering the method it is good to be away from the borders not to let coffee-less water to go to the service pot. The grinding level for V60 is also a discussion subject; but fine-medium is a generally accepted one (finer than the machine brew). To give a figure we can say that it is between 15-20 scale in a 40 scales of grinder settings. Visually, sand can be an example to the ground coffee for V60. 

I will now try to give two video examples for the V60 brewing method. As I have mentioned before, the recipes and styles are different; but they are very precise in general principles: Rinsing the filter, pre-infusion, centric spirals to the outside border which certainly do not touch to the paper, not too long brewing time... (You can use Coffee Intelligenstia's application for i-PAD and smart phone.) 

Which Equipment, Where to Buy? 

As a more general issue than V60, the most important device to make a good coffee at home is the grinder. Coffee is a substance which means something when it is fresh. As its freshness is lost, th nuances we are trying to reach is getting lost too. So buying beans and grinding them just before brewing is essential to get the expected results. We can buy hand mills as well as electronic ones. The critical point for grinders is the grinding type. We should stay away from blade type grinders - we can burn the coffee or we may not reach a homogeneous pattern in the ground. Ceramic grinders are better than metal ones. The most used ones between baristas are burr types. Although it is not always easy to reach a homogeneous pattern with hand mills, the result with their burr types are very satisfactory. Considering the time and effort spent to grind the coffee in these hand mills, they seem to be a practical and mobile solution only for 20-30 grams of coffee. The ultimate solution to the grinder issue is the conical and disc type, high quality and expensive grinders which can succeed an efficient and homogeneous result.

There are V01, V02 and V03 sizes for V60. With V01 you can at most produce 250-300 milliliters of coffee. V03 can just be in plastic because of its huge size. Thus, V02 is the most used size. With V02 you can easily produce coffee for 4-5 people (150ml/cup). However if you will brew coffee mostly for a single cup you had better have a V01 next to V02. There are ceramic, glass, metal and plastic types of V60. If there is not a danger of dropping, it is unnecessary to get the plastic one.

For the scale, the solution is to use a coffee specific or a nutritional scale whose sensitivity is 0.1-1gr. (To use an external timer or an internal one is your choice.) It is also possible to pour water by or from a volume wise scaled tank. 

It is essential to achieve a controlled, slow, continuous and thin form for the water pouring. In order to do that, the dripping pot should have a thin neck (wood neck style) and it should not let the water spread irregularly underneath the neck. It is better to have a neck connected from the below part of the pot. 

It is possible to find Hario branded scale and kettle but you can also use many nutritional scales which have timer and a sensitivity of at least 1 gram and buy Bonavita as a wood neck kettle (you can get one with a temperature control on it.) Some scaled cups with a tiny enough neck can work for beginners. It is compulsory to use the original V60 filter whose transparency is optimized. There are two colours: the synthetic white and natural beige. Although the beige one is more smelly, it is not a problem too after rinsing. I have seen before that even they come with the Hario package, some filters can be not as good as the well known original ones. You can easily see and feel these different filters, be careful about that. The pot that we use to put our V60 on, should be mechanically suitable and let the coffee to be served if it is made for more than one cup. If you are making a single cup you can surely brew your coffee into your mug. 

You can easily order V60, its filters, wood neck kettle, scale, service pot and Hario's hand mills (slim and a glass one) from e-bay. From USA and UK, amazon is an option too. Besides, you can use any 3rd wave coffee shops for various parts. For the electric grinder, Baratza's Virtuoso is an optimum solution and you can use the same order options above.

Where to Buy Coffee? Which Kind of Coffee?

I will publish a more detailed post about beans and the places to buy beans; but I'd like to mention some types and places shortly here. If you are new at brewing, it is not too bad to start with chain coffee shops like Starbucks. More than that, I see it beneficial to know what is right and wrong compared to what. If your habits of drinking coffee is based on such coffee shops it may be a better start than diving straightly into lightly roasted strongly aromatic and acidic tasty coffee beans. As you will brew with V60 the beans that you are accustomed to, you will start to better analyze and probably give up them. It is beneficial to buy light-medium roasted single origin coffee beans for filter coffee. Except the high quality professional blends, the beans which can improve our experience will be single origin beans. If you will go to Starbucks for beans for filter coffee, you can try medium roasted Kenia or Colombia Narino or Veranda Blend. There is no need to get dark roasted mainstream espresso optimized coffee beans from that company. 

The first answer to the question "Where can we find more qualified coffee beans which let us pass the initial steps and move forward?" can be Kronotrop for İstanbul, Turkey, which changes a lot of things in my mind about coffee. There is no need to give any specific origin, you should try all. Although there is a lot of progress in İstanbul lately about 3rd wave coffee, my city Ankara does not have a fully 3rd wave coffee shop yet both in beans quality and all brewing techniques qualification. Internationally speaking, London is my first city which hit me with great roasters and baristas. Especially Monmouth is like a coffee temple with many amazing light-medium roasted beans for filter coffee. Bonanza in Berlin, Screaming Beans in Amsterdam and Coffee Collective in Copenhagen are other prominent 3rd wave centers in Europe. Besides, in any small European cities it is possible to find a boutique roastery which present surprising tastes and local heroes. (Such as Büchler's Beste Bohne in Bremen which I visited in one of my last trips.) As the main source of 3rd wave, United States has 3 big names: Intelligenstia Coffee, Stumptown Coffee and Counter Culture Coffee. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco are some of the cities where you can find a shop or a roastery of these brands.

Kopi Luwak, Jamaican Blue Mountain and similar expensive coffee beans are also good ones to taste. If you want to minimize the cost and expand the device variety, you had better to keep in touch with a friend circle of coffee enthusiasts. This way you can both reach at the maximally fresh beans and improve yourself by sharing ideas. 

The first thing you need to be careful about when you buy beans from a new place to you is the standardisation in roasting and packaging. In fact, if you try to find a reference place for beans to yourself, finding the same tasting notes in each package is the most important criteria. Before brewing, it is possible to observe the colour-wise homogeneity, the consistency in the size of different beans and the smell which may pass to the beans from environmental or packaging reasons.

Close the package of the beans tightly after taking your coffee. Do not use a common pot to store your coffee, the flavors can mix. If there is not a tightening part in your package, you can take them from any finished packages.

It is important to evaluate the coffee we drink with tasting notes such as acidity, body, balance and aroma. The first instant feeling when we drink, the smell we get after we take the sip, the long time aftertaste staying in our mouth and nose... These are all among the things we should care about to investigate to evaluate our coffee.

I hope things I explained above will help you to find the coffee you love to drink. In my following posts you will find information about similar techniques and different beans.