One V60 recipe, then stop changing five things at once

Most bad V60s at home come from the same mistake: changing the grind, the dose, the temperature, and the pour all in the same week. You never learn which one moved the cup. Our fix is boring on purpose — one fixed recipe, brewed the same way every time, with exactly one variable you're allowed to touch: grind size.

Here it is. 15g of coffee, 250g of water, 94°C, medium-fine grind, finished by around 3:00. That's the whole house recommendation. Everything below is how to run it and how to read the result.

The numbers, and why they're these numbers

15g in, 250g out is a 1:16.7 ratio — squarely in the 1:15 to 1:17 range most of the specialty world brews filter at. Weaker than 1:17 and the cup thins out; stronger than 1:15 and a V60 starts fighting you on drawdown.

94°C suits the light-to-medium filter roasts we pull off the Giesen W6A. No kettle readout? Boil the water and wait 30 seconds. For darker roasts, drop toward 90°C.

Grind: medium-fine, around the texture of coarse table salt. This is the one number we can't write down for you, because every grinder is different — which is exactly why it's the one variable you're allowed to adjust.

The pour schedule

Rinse the paper with hot water and dump the rinse water. Add the coffee, level the bed, tare the scale.

0:00 — pour 45g of water, enough to wet all the grounds, and give the brewer a gentle swirl. This is the bloom: fresh coffee releases CO2 here, and if you skip it the gas pushes water away from the grounds.

0:45 — pour steadily in small circles up to 150g total.

1:30 — pour again up to 250g total, gently down the middle. You're topping up, not stirring.

One light swirl to flatten the bed, then let it drain. Target a flat bed and a total time around 2:30–3:15. Outside that window, adjust the grind — not the recipe.

Sour cup or bitter cup: one dial

Sour, thin, or sharp at the finish means under-extraction: the water left before it pulled enough out of the coffee. Grind finer. If the brew drained well under 2:30, that's your confirmation.

Bitter, drying, or ashy means over-extraction: the water stayed too long or worked too hard. Grind coarser. A drawdown crawling past 3:30 usually goes with it.

Change one click at a time and brew again the next morning. Two or three cups in, you'll land on the setting for that bag — then leave it alone until the next coffee.

What to brew it with

Start with Timor Leste Full Washed, our Tier I filter. Nutty, cocoa powder, low acidity — it forgives a slightly-off grind, which is what you want while you're still finding the setting. It's the first filter we hand to espresso drinkers.

Once the recipe feels automatic, move to Malabar Wine, the Tier II lot from Arjasari in West Java. The extended wine fermentation gives it molasses depth, spice, and a juicy pineapple edge — a cup where you can actually taste what one grind click does.

Same 15g, same 250g, same 94°C for both. The recipe stays still. The coffee is what changes.