Some thoughts on the V60

I use the V60 a lot day to day. I use it at home to make a cup for myself, and at work, I’ll make about 150 spread over three days of the week. Most of the time, nary an eyebrow is raised; when I prepare a cup for a coffee person, however, I get a lot of questions at best, or suspicious glances at worst. I love answering the questions, and that’s what this post is about – the shades of gray of the V60.

In the realm of pourover, there are two schools: circular pour, and center pour. My technique is of the latter. I really like my V60 technique. I don’t like it because a refractometer tells me it’s ok to like it (it usually does, by the way), nor because it’s theoretically sound (I think it is, anyway). I like my V60 technique because I really, really, really love the cup of coffee it produces.

Now, there is more than one way to skin a cat. When dealing with coffee, there are few absolutes, only a handful of tried-and-true black-and-white. Hypothesizing and conjecture throw darts onto a gradient and rarely hit a solid black line. Consequently, it’s OK to have different techniques for one brew device.

I make this point because my hackles raise when I get the phrase “high and dry” lobbed at me.

Sometime last year, Scott Rao published a book, “Everything but Espresso”, with some fairly absolutist claims on coffee preparation. While I respect Scott and consider him a friend, I disagree with some of his theories on pourover. I don’t have his book handy, but Scott told me once while I was at work: “I believe it’s a myth that coffee drips through at all points of the filter.” While I don’t think that coffee filters out evenly through all points of the filter, I believe that the ridges of a V60 provide channels that encourage cohesion and adhesion. To what extent – i.e., how much coffee flows down the ribs – I don’t know, but it can be observed in a clear glass V60. All I know is that what I’m making tastes good to me, my roaster, my boss, and our customers.

So, the high and dry thing… I remember a conversation I had with a customer pretty clearly, one of the times “high and dry” was lobbed at me…

“What about the high and dry grinds?”

“Oh, so you’ve been reading Scott Rao? That’s great.” (don’t take this with a sarcastic tone!)

“Who? What? Uhh… Umm, no. I’ve got this friend, he’s into coffee. He told me high and dry grounds are bad.”

“Well, I don’t think they are. See these ridges? They allow coffee to exit the filter at all points. That’s why I’m pouring right down the center. As for those grounds that are left on the side – sure, they aren’t in contact with the water as long as the bottom of the filter is, but take a look, when I stop pouring… that liquid continues to extract. As it gets lower and lower in the filter, it increases in concentration, so it becomes less solvent. I think it balances out.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, judge for yourself. This coffee is going to taste great. Not only is it going to taste good now, it’s going to taste awesome as it cools. I think that’s the hallmark of a great extraction, it should taste amazing cold.”

He was sold.

So, in my mind, the concern of uneven extraction along the vertical axis is unfounded; as the coffee continues to extract, it increases concentration and is less and less effective as a solvent as it works its way down through the bottom of the filter.

Scott also brought up to me that he thought the center pour provided inadequate agitation. Just like observing the drip-through in a glass V60, if you have ever prepared a sample roast or a terribly stale coffee, you can see for yourself… in these situations, the thin veil of foam parts and you can see a churning under the surface; this is agitation, though it’s usually covered. I’ve overheard several times from other baristas that the darker regions of the coffee crust indicate underextraction, and that you have to “paint” the coffee with the stream. I think this is nonsense. I don’t see how the foam or crust is any indication what is happening below, it’s like the bubbles floating on top of a bubblebath.

With regards to this crust, I think there is an unintended but nevertheless beneficial consequence of the center pour: fines suspension. When you aren’t “painting” the crust with the stream, you are allowing the fines to remain suspended over the slurry, rather than forcing them into solution. I think this contributes to the crystalline cleanliness of the cups I enjoy.

I didn’t want to write this post to line-by-line refute Scott Rao’s claims; that would be a contradiction of my “shades of gray” stance. I just wanted to bring up a few thoughts on why I think tastes good tastes the way it does.

Now, I just can’t leave it at that: “my V60 tastes better than yours.” What I’ve held off saying until now is: “my V60 tastes great with the coffees I prepare in them.” So now we are back to the ways of skinning a cat. The coffees I most often use are from Four Barrel, where I work. I speak for myself, and not for my employer, in that I think our coffees are super balanced, nicely developed, and very clean. My V60 technique works well with these coffees, and I have tried other methods.

The center pour necessitates quite a fine grind compared to the concentric pour. What I’m going to describe is pure conjecture, but it relates very strongly to my experience with taste. A fine grind and quick extraction tastes different from a coarse grind and a long extraction, even at the same extraction level. In this sense, the refractometer/Mojo only gives us a simplified account of the extraction (this is for another post, so I’ll keep it brief here). The solubles in coffee are not uniformly soluble, that is, they do not all extract at the same rate. It’s my guess that a fine grind/quick extraction emphasizes compounds that have a lower molecular mass (acids, aromatic compounds). A slower extraction with a corresponding coarse grind, conversely, will emphasize the body and sweetness components which are of greater molecular mass: sugars, browning products, oligosaccharides, etc.

So, based on my taste experience, I think the center pour works well with Four Barrel’s coffees: they are inherently very sweet and balanced, and with a slight sacrifice of body, the resulting cup is powerfully aromatic with a tightly integrated and articulated acidity. Not only that, the coffee maintains its balance and structure symmetrically throughout the cup, even when it is hours cold and icy cold. I prefer the center pour over the concentric pour for Four Barrel’s coffees because, while the concentric pour has yielded tasty hot cups, as they cool, they fall apart: rather than (figuratively) straight lines following a parallel course, there is intersection, disjunction, incongruity.

On the other hand, I have prepared other coffees that have exhibited inverse behavior. Numerous times I’ve prepared coffees of lesser development and found the center-pour cups to be hollow and disjointed. With a longer extraction, however, these coffees have really shined with a high inherent acidity matched with the integrated sweetness of an extended extraction.

The point is, the Hario V60 is another tool for the barista to use in interpreting coffee. It doesn’t dictate one singular approach, but offers, in consideration of its mechanical properties, a range of possibilities. Different coffees from different roasters will taste different under different brewing conditions, so it’s important to be open to different methods – it makes a big… difference.

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