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Permalink Reply by Keaton Ritchie on February 2, 2011 at 8:25am

This is probably sacrilege to a lot of people who excitedly went out and bought v60s and buono kettles and practiced their clockwise or counterclockwise slow pour... but I stir my v60s brews after each pour of water (usually a pre wet and an additional 3 stages for my 10oz yield). Even saturation, a little bit of extra turbulence to speed extraction. It's a pretty gentle stir because i don't want to cool the brew down a lot more than the exposure to air already does, but I get much more consistently even beds. I'll bloom as much as 30 seconds (covering the cone) if the coffee is really really fresh- i mean 3 days or less off roast- but other wise I just pour twice the weight of the coffee dose in water and give a quick stir to make sure the wet is even, then wait 15 seconds before the next pour.

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Permalink Reply by Benza Lance on February 2, 2011 at 11:26am

A. What type of kettle are you using?
B. That grind seems like it should be ok
C. Try this out:
i. 100g water preinfusion. Shoot for 45 seconds.
ii. Slowly pour the remainder of your water. Starting in the middle, using tight concentric circles, sloqly going outward. Shoot to finish pouring by 120 seconds. 
iii. Keep the flow of water about 1cm away from the wall, at the 'biggest circle' of your pour. 

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Permalink Reply by James Fraley on February 2, 2011 at 11:29am

I'm using a Hario Buono. I kinda suck with it.

Benza Lance said:

A. What type of kettle are you using?
B. That grind seems like it should be ok
C. Try this out:
i. 100g water preinfusion. Shoot for 45 seconds.
ii. Slowly pour the remainder of your water. Starting in the middle, using tight concentric circles, sloqly going outward. Shoot to finish pouring by 120 seconds. 
iii. Keep the flow of water about 1cm away from the wall, at the 'biggest circle' of your pour. 

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Permalink Reply by Prima Coffee on February 2, 2011 at 12:57pm

Hi James.  You have some decent starting parameters, but those will of course be different for different coffees, and will change according to fine size, as well as the processing of the coffee.  I'm assuming you are using washed coffees, as Intelligentisa does not currently offer natural processed beans.  A few tips for you:

 

Along with the dip, draw a moat/circular line around the dip, inside of the edge of the V60.  This will help as the first stream of water wants to overflow to the edges, it will hopefully slow down because of the "moat" effect and help provide a more even pre-infusion.  As for your pre-infusion, I would recommend 10-15% of your total water used.  So if you are using 350g/ml of water, perhaps 35-50g/ml for pre-infusion.

 

The other problem I notice from your description of the constant bubbling as well as the consistent run over is that your grind may be too fine.  And if the grind is as fine as I suspect, I would argue that a 2:45-2:50 brew time is too long for that batch size and grind, and you may be experiencing over-extraction.  Now, if you do coarsen it up a tad, this should fix your issues of bubbling and water running over the sides, because there will be more space for the water to move through the fines.  Also, you would probably see a better bloom, because there will be room for the CO2 to escape.  And if you coarsen it up, depending on the velocity of your pour rate, 2:45 will generally be a very good brewing time.

 

Remember that generally, washed coffees are more dense, and therefore would require a slightly finer grind than natural processed coffees, which are less dense and therefore water passes through the fines more slowly.  I do like to grind a bit finer than most people, but if you do this, you must pour with more velocity to agitate the grinds, and you want your brew time to be shorter because more surface area is being hit with the water (24g shot of espresso is between 20-30 seconds!)

 

One more word of advice; experiment with spout distance.  Pouring from a bit higher will push the water down into the coffee, and of course closer distance will be more gentle and appropriate when you are in the main step of your brewing.

 

Good luck; would love to hear if that helped!

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Permalink Reply by Benza Lance on February 2, 2011 at 1:32pm

Hood pouring kettle, bad heat retention kettle. With that being said, i use on as well. It does take some trial and error to get the hang of it. 

James Fraley said:

I'm using a Hario Buono. I kinda suck with it.

Benza Lance said:

A. What type of kettle are you using?
B. That grind seems like it should be ok
C. Try this out:
i. 100g water preinfusion. Shoot for 45 seconds.
ii. Slowly pour the remainder of your water. Starting in the middle, using tight concentric circles, sloqly going outward. Shoot to finish pouring by 120 seconds. 
iii. Keep the flow of water about 1cm away from the wall, at the 'biggest circle' of your pour. 

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Permalink Reply by Benza Lance on February 2, 2011 at 1:32pm

Good, not 'hood'

Benza Lance said:

Hood pouring kettle, bad heat retention kettle. With that being said, i use on as well. It does take some trial and error to get the hang of it. 

James Fraley said:

I'm using a Hario Buono. I kinda suck with it.

Benza Lance said:

A. What type of kettle are you using?
B. That grind seems like it should be ok
C. Try this out:
i. 100g water preinfusion. Shoot for 45 seconds.
ii. Slowly pour the remainder of your water. Starting in the middle, using tight concentric circles, sloqly going outward. Shoot to finish pouring by 120 seconds. 
iii. Keep the flow of water about 1cm away from the wall, at the 'biggest circle' of your pour. 

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Permalink Reply by Jared Rutledge on February 2, 2011 at 3:03pm

stir the hell out of it. we get four minute brew times on ours and no one ever complains about their coffee being cold.

 

also it's pretty hard to overextract coffee without using pressure.

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Permalink Reply by James Fraley on February 2, 2011 at 3:28pm

By brew time do you mean start to finish? Or do you try and pour for four minutes and then allow it to drain fully?

stir the hell out of it. we get four minute brew times on ours and no one ever complains about their coffee being cold.

 

also it's pretty hard to overextract coffee without using pressure.

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Permalink Reply by Jared Rutledge on February 2, 2011 at 4:52pm

i stop pouring water generally about 3:30, give it a final stir, then it's drained by 4:00.

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Permalink Reply by Keaton Ritchie on February 3, 2011 at 9:44am

Agreed:  a much bigger problem for most people with manual pourovers isn't overextraction purely so much as uneven extraction with overextracted tastes in the cup alongside underextracted ones. 

What do you use as a water source Jared? How's your temperature throughout extraction? That's what we're really struggling with- especially since it's been -20C outside most of this week and the drip bar gets a good blast of cold air whenever someone comes or goes. 

Jared Rutledge said:

stir the hell out of it. we get four minute brew times on ours and no one ever complains about their coffee being cold.

 

also it's pretty hard to overextract coffee without using pressure.

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Permalink Reply by Jared Rutledge on February 3, 2011 at 10:16am

we use zojirushi 5 litre towers, just off the boil. i top the v60's off a lot throughout the brew, which (from what i've seen) should mitigate as much heat loss as possible.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Aldrich on February 3, 2011 at 2:39pm

my recipe lately has been 21g/340g. i started doing minute blooms w/ between 30 and 45 grams of water and noticed a HUGE improvement in the evenness of extraction. stir after one minute, then much like jared does, pour water up until between 3 and 3:10. draining finishes by 3:45. the biggest trick to this is keeping the height of the water in the v60 very low through out the brew.

 

one trick i found with controlling buono is getting the elbow up above the wrist level, so you are moving from the shoulder rather the wrist. it helps IMMENSELY in being able to get the flow rate and direction of the pour exactly where you want it.

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