Antonio’s Coffee Journey

Gud Coffee Lab Marsellesa: The V60 Recipe That Finally Made It Speak

A small V60 journey through bitterness, temperature, grind size, and the moment when a difficult coffee finally became sweet, fruity, round, and expressive.

There are coffees that immediately tell you where they want to go.

And then there are coffees that make you work a little.

This Marsellesa from Gud Coffee Lab definitely belonged to the second category.

At first, I thought it would be quite straightforward. A washed Mexican coffee, medium roasted, from Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, grown at around 1100 meters. A Marsellesa variety. Something that, in my mind, could probably give me a balanced and accessible V60: maybe some sweetness, a gentle acidity, a soft fruitiness, and a round cup.

But the first brews did not really go that way.

The coffee was not bad. That is important to say. It was never unpleasant in a dramatic way. But it felt as if something inside the cup was blocked. The aromas were there, but hidden. The cup had bitterness, sometimes a woody feeling, and yet it did not feel fully developed either. That is one of the most confusing things when dialing in a coffee: when a brew tastes both bitter and underwhelming at the same time.

The First Direction: A Simple V60 Approach

My first idea was to keep things simple.

I wanted a clean V60 recipe, without too many variables, and without turning the brew into a complicated experiment from the beginning.

So I started with a fairly classic structure: 15 g of coffee, 225 g of water, a ratio of 1:15, a temperature around 90–91 °C, a bloom of 45 g for about 40 seconds, and a single pour up to 225 g.

On paper, it made sense. A 1:15 ratio seemed like a good way to give the coffee enough body without making it too concentrated. The temperature was not too high, but still high enough for a medium roast. The single pour was chosen to keep the extraction simple and avoid over-agitating the bed.

But in the cup, something was missing. The coffee had a little acidity, but it was very discreet. The aromatic side was shy. The cup felt light, but not in a beautiful tea-like way. It was more like a coffee that wanted to open, but could not. And despite this lack of expression, bitterness was still present.

The Brews That Mattered

The Temptation to Push Harder

My first reaction was the most natural one: maybe I needed more extraction.

So I started moving in that direction. I tried going finer. I tried thinking about more structure in the pour. I explored the idea of giving the coffee more contact, more intensity, more extraction.

At one point, I moved toward a finer grind, around the mid-80s on the Kingrinder K6. The idea was simple: if the coffee was not aromatic enough, maybe the water was passing too quickly and not extracting enough from the coffee bed.

But the result was not what I wanted.

The cup became more extracted, yes, but not more elegant. Instead of opening the fruity and sweet side of the coffee, the brew started to become more bitter and woody. The body was there, but the cup did not feel more alive. It felt heavier, more closed, and less pleasant.

This was an important moment in the process, because it showed me that the problem was not only “lack of extraction”. It was more about balance. The coffee did not want to be forced. Grinding finer and pushing extraction did not reveal more beauty. It revealed more bitterness.

Temperature Started to Matter More Than I Expected

The biggest shift came when I started to think more seriously about temperature.

I often think about grind size first. It is probably the variable I change most naturally, especially with the Kingrinder K6, because it gives me a very clear way to move step by step.

But with this Marsellesa, temperature was just as important.

At 90–91 °C, the coffee was not terrible, but the bitterness was too present compared to the aromas. When I tried to push extraction, that bitterness became even more obvious.

So instead of going hotter, I went the other way. I lowered the temperature.

And this was probably the key decision.

At 89 °C, the cup became softer. The bitter and woody edge was reduced. The coffee started to feel rounder, sweeter, and more pleasant. It did not suddenly become a completely different coffee, but it finally began to move in the right direction.

The Cup That Finally Made Sense

This was the first cup where I felt that the coffee finally started to speak.

The acidity was delicate. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just enough to give the cup some life.

The sweetness became more present. The fruitiness was clearer, but still soft. It was not an explosive or extremely bright coffee. It was more rounded, more comfortable, more balanced.

The cup had a good presence in the mouth. It filled the taste well, with a round and pleasant body. It felt sweet, gently fruity, and much more harmonious than the previous attempts.

And most importantly, the bitterness was no longer dominating the conversation. It was still a medium roast coffee. It still had structure. But now the structure was supporting the cup instead of covering the aromas.

What This Coffee Taught Me

Final Thoughts

This coffee reminded me that brewing is not just about applying a recipe.

It is about listening.

At the beginning, I wanted this Marsellesa to behave in a certain way. I expected it to open with a fairly standard V60 recipe. But it did not. It resisted a little. It gave me bitterness when I wanted aroma. It gave me woodiness when I wanted sweetness. It made me doubt whether I was grinding too coarse, too fine, brewing too hot, or pouring the wrong way.

But after several tests, the answer was not to force it.

The answer was to calm the extraction down, lower the temperature, find the right grind, and let the coffee express itself with less aggression.

That is why this cup felt like a small victory.

Not because I found “the perfect recipe”, but because I understood the coffee a little better. And maybe that is the real pleasure of V60. It is not only the final cup. It is the conversation that leads you there.