Antonio’s Coffee Journey

How I “Understood” the V60

My Path Through This Complex Pour-Over Method

There are coffee methods that seem to belong naturally to the kitchen.

The moka pot, for example, has something almost domestic and instinctive about it. It feels like part of everyday life. You fill the bottom chamber, add the coffee, screw everything together, put it on the stove and wait for that familiar sound. It is not necessarily simple, and it can absolutely be improved with technique, but culturally and emotionally it feels close to us. It feels like something that already belongs to the house.

The V60, at least for me, was different.

At first, it looked simple. Almost too simple. A cone, a paper filter, some ground coffee and hot water poured by hand. When you watch people preparing V60s online, everything seems calm, elegant and effortless. The water falls in perfect circles, the coffee bed rises gently during the bloom, the drawdown finishes at exactly the right moment, and the final cup looks clean, aromatic and almost transparent.

Then you try it yourself.

And suddenly that simple cone becomes a small laboratory.

The grind size is not exactly right. The water flows too fast or too slowly. The cup is woody, bitter, empty, confused, or strangely acidic. You expected clarity and sweetness, but you get something that feels closed and dry. You change one thing, then another, and sometimes the result improves. Other times it gets worse. And you realize that the V60 is not just a recipe.

This article is not meant to be a definitive guide. I do not want to present myself as someone who has mastered the V60. I am still a beginner, still experimenting, still chasing that perfect cup. But after several tests, mistakes, adjustments and small victories, I started to understand something important: the V60 becomes less intimidating when each step starts to make sense.

Not because you memorize a recipe. But because you begin to understand why each gesture matters.

Why I Started Looking at the V60

My interest in the V60 came from a very practical frustration.

At home, my espresso setup was not giving me the kind of results I wanted with coffees roasted lighter than dark or medium-dark. Some coffees felt as if they needed another language, another way of being extracted. Espresso can be beautiful, intense and complex, but it can also be unforgiving, especially when the equipment, the roast profile and the coffee itself do not perfectly meet in the same direction.

Then I went to the Paris Café Festival this year, and I tasted V60 brews that were completely different from what I associated with coffee at home.

They were light, delicate, aromatic, tea-like. They had clarity. They had a kind of transparency that allowed the coffee to express itself differently. It was not the density of espresso, not the comforting strength of moka, not the immersion feeling of an AeroPress. It was something else.

That moment made me curious.

I wanted to understand how a coffee could be so clean and complex at the same time. I wanted to understand how a method that looks so minimal could create a cup with so many layers. And, of course, I was also attracted by the ritual itself: the filter, the kettle, the careful pouring, the bloom, the slow observation of the coffee bed.

The Illusion of Simplicity

The V60 is visually simple.

That is probably one of the reasons it attracts so many people. It does not look like a complicated device. There are no buttons, no pressure gauge, no machine, no electronics. Just a brewer, a filter, coffee, water and your hands.

But that simplicity is deceptive.

At the beginning, I underestimated this.

Like many people, I thought the difficult part would be the recipe. Once I had the right numbers, I imagined the cup would follow. But the V60 taught me that the numbers are only the beginning.

A recipe can tell you “15 grams of coffee, 225 grams of water, 92°C, medium-fine grind, bloom for 35 seconds, then single pour.” But it cannot fully tell you how your hand should move.

Precision and Sensitivity

For me, the V60 sits between two worlds.

On one side, it is a method of precision. You weigh the coffee. You weigh the water. You measure the temperature. You choose a grind setting. You observe the drawdown time. Small changes can matter. One or two degrees can change the direction of the cup. A few clicks on the grinder can transform the flow. A different ratio can make the cup feel either more concentrated or more open.

But on the other side, the V60 is also a method of sensitivity.

This is what I find fascinating.

The V60 is not just about following steps. It is about understanding the purpose behind them. Every gesture has a role. Nothing is completely random. Bloom, pour, swirl, drawdown, grind size — they are all connected.

What Is Actually Happening Inside a V60?

A V60 is a percolation brewer.

This means that water passes through a bed of ground coffee, dissolves soluble compounds, and carries them into the cup. Unlike immersion methods, where coffee and water remain together for a certain amount of time, in a V60 fresh water is constantly entering from above and draining from below.

This makes the extraction efficient, but also delicate.

The water does not simply “touch” the coffee. It moves through it. And because water always follows the path of least resistance, the structure of the coffee bed becomes extremely important.

If the bed is uneven, if some parts are compacted and others are loose, if some areas remain dry during the bloom, the water will not extract everything equally. Some parts may be over-extracted, giving bitterness or dryness. Other parts may be under-extracted, giving acidity, emptiness or vegetal notes. The final cup can become confused because it contains several different extractions at the same time.

And that unevenness is what makes the cup difficult to read.

The Bloom: More Than Just Gas

When I started making V60s, one of the questions I naturally asked myself was:

If the goal is to put hot water through ground coffee, why do we need a bloom? Why wait? Why separate the first small pour from the rest of the brew?

At first, the bloom looked like one of those steps people do because everyone else does it. But the more I tested, the more I understood that the bloom is not just decorative.

For me, the bloom is now one of the most important steps of the V60.

During the bloom, you pour a small amount of water over the ground coffee, usually around two to three times the weight of the coffee dose. If you use 15 grams of coffee, this can be around 35 to 45 grams of water. Then you wait, often around 30 to 45 seconds.

This is why I like doing a small swirl during the bloom.

Not a violent swirl. Not something that destroys the structure of the bed. Just a gentle movement to help the water reach all the grounds and make the pre-infusion more uniform. In my own experience, this small gesture can make a real difference. It helps avoid dry pockets and gives me the feeling that the coffee is starting the extraction in a more even way.

For me, the bloom is fundamental. Not because it is sacred. But because it gives the brew a better beginning.

Bloom + Single Pour: My Favorite Structure

After trying different approaches, the structure I currently prefer is:

For me, it is the best balance between control and simplicity.

Multi-pour recipes can be very interesting. They allow you to modulate extraction, add agitation in stages, and influence the body and intensity of the cup. But they also add variables. Every new pour is another opportunity to change the bed, move fines, increase agitation, slow the drawdown, or introduce inconsistency.

With a bloom + single pour structure, I feel that the method remains more readable.

This does not mean it is always the best method for every coffee. Nothing in coffee is universal. But for where I am now in my learning path, bloom + single pour gives me the clearest relationship between what I do and what I taste.

The Role of Agitation

Agitation is one of the most important and difficult things to understand in V60.

It can come from many places: the force of the pour, the height of the kettle, the speed of the water, circular movements, pulse pours, stirring, swirling, even the water level inside the cone.

A little agitation is necessary.

This is why the V60 requires sensitivity.

You are not just adding water. You are deciding how much energy to give to the coffee bed. For a long time, I thought of pouring mostly as a way to reach the target weight. Now I see it differently. Pouring is part of the extraction.

The Swirl: Useful, But Not Magic

The swirl is another gesture that I started to understand little by little.

During the bloom, I find it very useful. A gentle swirl can help the water reach the whole coffee bed and make the pre-infusion more uniform. For me, this has become an important part of my V60 routine.

After the main pour, I am also starting to use a very light final swirl.

The goal is not to agitate aggressively. It is simply to help flatten the bed and make the final drainage more uniform. A flat bed is not a guarantee of a perfect cup, but it can be a good sign that the extraction was orderly.

But I do think that, when used gently, the swirl can help bring more uniformity to the brew.

Grind Size: The Variable That Frustrated Me the Most

If there is one variable that frustrated me at the beginning, it is grind size.

Before making V60, I knew grind size was important. Of course I knew it. Everyone says it. Every recipe mentions it. But knowing that something is important and feeling its importance in the cup are two different things.

With the V60, grind size can completely change the personality of the brew.

Too coarse, and the water can pass too quickly. The cup may become thin, acidic, empty or underdeveloped. Too fine, and the brew can become slow, bitter, woody, dry or clogged. But the difficult part is that the answer is not always as simple as “finer means more extraction” and “coarser means less extraction.”

Sometimes going too fine creates unevenness. Sometimes more agitation with a fine grind makes the cup worse. Sometimes a slightly coarser grind combined with better bloom and better swirl gives a cleaner and sweeter cup.

What I learned is that grind size is not just a number. It is the way you control the resistance of the bed, the speed of the flow, the surface area of extraction and the risk of unevenness.

My Main Mistakes With the V60

Looking back, my mistakes were probably necessary.

The cups that disappointed me taught me more than the cups that simply tasted good.

One of my first recurring problems was bitterness. Not a pleasant bitterness, not the kind that gives structure. I mean woody, dry, closed bitterness. A bitterness that covered the aromas and made the coffee feel lifeless.

Another problem was the lack of sweetness. I was often looking for a cup where the acidity, aromatics and sweetness were balanced, but sometimes the sweetness simply disappeared. The coffee had acidity, yes, but not enough roundness to make it enjoyable.

I also had cups with confused aromas. These were perhaps the most difficult to understand. The coffee was not completely bad, but nothing was clear. No clean fruit, no clear florals, no sweetness, no real structure. Just a blurry cup.

At first, I tried to solve these problems by changing numbers.

And these things absolutely matter. But over time, I started to understand that technique also matters. The way I poured, the way I bloomed, the way I swirled, the way I controlled agitation — all of this changed the cup.

Recently, I had one of those moments that completely changed how I saw the coffee from one day to the next. A small change in temperature, a slight adjustment in grind size, and a more intentional use of small swirls finally gave me the cup I had been waiting for. That is when the V60 started to feel less random. Not solved. But readable.

Drawdown Is a Clue, Not a Rule

When you start with V60, it is easy to become obsessed with time.

Two minutes. Two and a half minutes. Three minutes. Three and a half minutes.

The drawdown time is useful, but I no longer see it as a law. I see it as a clue.

If the brew finishes very quickly and the cup tastes thin, sharp or empty, maybe the extraction was too low. If the brew takes a long time and the cup is bitter, dry or astringent, maybe the grind was too fine, the agitation too strong, or the bed partially clogged.

The drawdown helps me understand what happened, but the taste tells me whether it worked.

Temperature and Ratio: Finding My Zone

At this stage of my V60 journey, I like working with water between 91°C and 94°C.

For medium roasted coffee, this range gives me enough extraction potential without feeling too aggressive. Again, this is not universal. Some coffees may need more heat, others less. But for me, it is a range that makes sense.

For ratio, I tend to prefer something between 1:14 and 1:16, with 1:15 being my favorite.

I like cups that are clean and aromatic, but I do not want them to feel too diluted. A 1:15 ratio gives me a good balance between clarity and presence. It keeps the cup expressive, but still satisfying.

Some people love very light, delicate brews. Others prefer more concentration. For me, the ideal V60 has a tea-like clarity, but it must still have enough intensity to carry the sweetness and aromatics. I do not want a cup that is just “clean.” I want a cup that speaks.

Starting point

A Basic V60 Recipe for a Medium Roast

What Kind of Cup Am I Looking For?

The cup I am chasing is clean, aromatic and tea-like.

I want acidity, but not acidity that dominates everything. I want acidity that integrates with sweetness, structure and aroma. I want the coffee to feel alive, but not sharp. Delicate, but not empty. Complex, but not confused.

Depending on the coffee, I love fruity, sweet, acidulous and floral notes. These are the kinds of aromas that made me fall in love with the V60 in the first place.

What I want to avoid is the opposite: woody bitterness, harsh acidity, astringency, emptiness, or a cup where all the aromas feel blurred together.

Of course, I am still learning. And maybe that is exactly why the V60 is so interesting to me. It does not give you all the answers immediately. It asks you to observe, adjust, repeat and taste again.

The V60 Is Not Just a Recipe

If there is one thing I have learned so far, it is this:

It is a way of thinking about coffee extraction.

This is why I feel that the V60 becomes simpler when you understand the logic behind the steps.

At the beginning, it can feel like a ritual full of rules. But little by little, each rule becomes a reason. Each movement becomes a choice. Each mistake becomes information. And maybe that is the most beautiful part of learning pour-over coffee. You are not only learning how to make a better cup. You are learning how to read what happened.

Let’s discuss

What helped you understand the V60?

I am still learning, and I would love this blog to become a place where other people can share their own experiences too. So I would really like to know:

Share your experience in the comments. I think the most interesting part of coffee is not only finding the “perfect” recipe, but understanding the path that brings each of us closer to it.