I thought I was going crazy adjusting grind size and having little to no effect. Disclaimer I am a beginner that just bought my first set recently and Hoffman's technique was the first one I went with. Thank you so much for posting this
Exactly, that really works and DOES NOT increase brewing time so dramatically. With light enough roast you can get an amazing cup in 2:15-2:30 just by pouring correctly. Another thing is that flow rate actually does affect the brewing, especially if you lower the kettle to keep it much closer to the coffee bed.
I think we need to reconsider the idea of the 'bloom'. Grinds off-gas continously throughout brewing, more at the beginning, some later on, and it doesn't matter whether they off-gas into water that's merely wetting them, or in which they're immersed. The main thing that matters for under/overextraction is 'wet contact time', the time that grounds are exposed to new water with relatively low concentration of dissolved coffee solids, and the consistency of this throughout one's coffee slurry. There's a simple solution that solves this: regular agitation of the coffee slurry. • My brew ratio is a bit stronger than Hoffman's 16.6. For my preferred coffee strength to fit a large 14 oz mug, I use 28 g coffee / 420 g water (brew ratio 15). • Water (just off boil for light roast/95° C for medium) poured in to near the rim (without consideration of weight), during which I continuously stir with a spoon, avoiding scraping the paper filter. • When the water level falls near the level of the grounds, I immediately pour in more to near the rim, and again slowly agitate the slurry. • After this second pour, I do a Rao swirl to settle the bed and pull grounds from the walls, and before the water falls to the level of the grounds do a third pour (if needed) to top up to my final water weight. • At no time before the final pour do I permit grinds to be unevenly wetted by the level of water falling below that of the grounds. The agitation of the coffee slurry gives my pourovers more of the quality of immersion brews: even exposure of all grounds to similar volumes of incident brew water (with similar concentrations of dissolved coffee solids). • I dial in total brew time (from first water in to last drops out) by grind size, aiming initially for 3½-4 mins, and dialing in from there to adjust flavor balance. Finer grind: slower drawdown, more extraction, more later eluting bitter compounds; or coarser grind: faster drawdown, less extraction, early eluting sweet/acidic compounds with less later eluting bitter compounds. I think that much of received barista 'wisdom' has the quality of superstition, of rain dances; and some is performative, for displays of skill at the cafe. Spirals from a gooseneck kettle are certainly more elegant than hovering over a cone stirring a slurry. But the latter works better for evenly exposing all the grounds to the same amount of water, and I'm not performing for anyone else. The Wired Gourmet offers much the same approach (though with lower ratio than I prefer) in his video V60 Voodoo: Resurrection! ua-cam.com/video/hyHAOkH2tMY/v-deo.html
Letting it draw down completely for the bloom is not an issue, neither is letting it cool down at that point. Also it's not just about contact time with fresh water, you also need all the coffee particles to absorb as much water as they can so they are completely wet to the core. If you let it bloom for nice and long you can grind coarser, that allows you to agitate more without clogging the filter as well. You should try it out, let it bloom for really long, like 1-2 minutes, use coarser grounds and do a really high agitation, 1 to 17 brew. That works really well for very light roasted high grade specialty IMO
This new JH method is my go to now, but I actually use a 13:200, with 40 gram pours. My first pour is 40g with an aggressive swirl to where I can see all the grounds wet. Then follow his recipe making sure I pour as close as I can get. This helped to not choke the brew and allows me to hit those "times" pretty consistently and brew delicious cups of coffee. It's my go to method now.
I did some testing with 200 ml to 12 gr in 40 gr pours. I switched to the Japanese hario filters witch helped a lot with total brew time. I make a dent in the grounds before the bloom for a better water distribution and figured 2/3 tap water and 1/3 mineral water (spa) made quite a tasty cup.
Strange. I use a time more c2 and I feel it just produces a log of fines. I never hit a consistent 3min mark with that recipe, my coffee would almost always be upwards for 4 mins even if I went coarser by 3-4 clicks. Again 12:200 brews, 40g pours with v60 papers. The moment I switched to a cloth filter, i was able to grind finer and still hit the 3 min mark. Im still trying to get a delicious cup out of it though.
Just saw your video today, and I thought I would share my "adjustments" to the Hoffman technique. I love this method and I use it 90% of the time when brewing a single cup. When I open a new bag of coffee, I use the standard method the first time and see where I end up. If my brew time is a little bit long or short, I don't adjust the grind, or the amount of water at each pour. I adjust the aggressiveness of the pour and swirl. If the brew time is too long, I will adjust my swirls and pouring to be more gentle. If the brew time is too short, I will be more aggressive with my pour and swirls. I only swirl for the bloom pour and the final pour, and never in between. This gives me enough control that I do not have to play with the grind very much at all for most coffees. Let me know if you try this and what your results are. Cheers!
@@fokcuk Yes, I will adjust my pour to be higher to increase agitation, but I can also increase the flow speed as well. Remember, the 50g/10s is just a guide and you can adjust this to suit your needs. I sometimes will finish a pour in 7-8 seconds from a higher height. I still find that adjusting the swirl has the greatest effect for me, and the pour is more subtle. Remember that hitting the target times and weights during the brew is NOT as important as the final taste of the coffee. Do whatever works to make you enjoy the taste most.
Most informative. Thank you. I learned a great deal from this class. (The video might be improved by removing the background music or turning it down. I can understand employing background music if you have noisy neighbours who interfere with making your videos.)
Really enjoying your videos! Interesting point about the bloom settling the bed to help create resistance. I’ve noticed the “fluffiness” of some of my medium roast coffee beds during degassing compared to blooming some of my lighter beans, but I never understood the correlation with brew time. Looking forward to the next video!
I just want to share my experience with JH ultimate V60 recipe (3 years ago video I believe). Normally I use 10 g of coffee which is single cup size with 167 ml water (the same ratio with the original recipe). I've got sweet & balance cup most of the time with 3~3.5 minutes brew time. Temperature is 40 second after boiling & I use medium dark & dark roast (which is kind of too hot in theory), medium fine grind size (two clicks toward the fine from centre of the scale of my grinder). However, I make few adjustments lately to produce even more delicious cup: Instead of 45' bloom time, now I let it go till 60'. Secondly, I EXCAVATE (instead of swirling) right after the bloom pour (2x ratio). Swirling like you said seems not optimal. But, here is another factor to consider: I rest my beans for 2 weeks after roast date before using it. We believe it is the best time period for the beans to release the gases, etc. I don't know if it has effect, but I have barely seen any problem with JH's original recipe for single cup, even for dark beans. In fact, I always return to it after testing other recipes (currently am comparing it with the new 1-2-1 Lance Hedrik). Interested to try 3x bloom ratio which you inspire 😊 That's my 2 cents.
I would recommend checking out the Kubomi method, it gives me a very thorough bloom each time. Similar to what Lance Hedrick mentioned in his videos, creating a divet this way also compresses the coffee bed minimally, making full saturation of the grounds even easier. I also like how it's meditative, but it could be a bit fussy for some :)
the slow pour with the larger volume of water in the blook in a definite game changer. I also realise that with beans that aren't fresh, you're going to have to go fine, pour in water a bit quicker and swirl faster. The hario switch actually works a lot better for not fresh grinds
I am going to try this as I had similar issues with the Hoffman 1 cup. Question for you, for the high & dry grounds, why not knock them back down into the brew during the second pour? Simply by pouring over them. You must be loosing up to 1 gram, if not more, of grounds in the brew.
Thank you! I have just got my first V60 and went straight to James Hoffman's one cup technique. I was sure I had the grind size okay. I had exactly the problem you describe - no way was there enough water to swirl the bed before blooming. Using a normal kettle so maybe a tad too fast a pour if anything. Have just (accidentally) followed your technique by pouring to over 90 ml before bloom. Worked noticeably better. Thanks for confirming this or I might have gone off down a dead end.
Issue is probably that you're using the ceramic version. Ceramic adds another level of complexity in the pour-over that you're probably not considering
i think one tip for you during the bloom-swirl is to make deeper crevices and somehow pour faster (?), ill edit this comment if im wrong, but i had a hard time as well at first trying to bloomswirl, but somehow it comes second nature right now, with 50 gr water and same amount of coffee
I also struggled with the bloom phase but managed to solve it by grind it finer. However when I am at that grind setting, I will have to lower my temperature, otherwise the bitter comes out.
Could that be that european roasting profiles are a bit different from US? I spent 3 months in LA and tried a bunch of different roasters from all around US, including local micro roaster. For me, american roasters tend to develop more than I would like from even ethiopian beans. So, I ended up importing from the Barn and it tasted a lot more like the ones I am used to. I am brazillian but I lived a long time in europe.
The struggle is that most follow the SCA guidelines of 1:18. They are clear that is for large batch brewers of 1 liter. For smaller batches, moving that ratio closer to 1:14 and adjusting the grind accordingly will probably have better results.
I have a vario W and I grind it to an O-7 setting after calibration. The during the first 50 gram bloom with a total of 45 seconds, most of the water goes below the top of the grind at the end of the 45. But I also have zero problem with settling the coffee bed. I do a circular pattern at the edges first, once I make my first circle, I do a zig zag motion across the top in one direction, then go 90 degrees in the other. This basically settles it within 2-3 passes. Once it's settled by 45-55 grams (it doesn't have to be exact), I do a 5-10 second shake during that initial 45 second bloom. From there, I just add water for 5 seconds, wait 10 seconds, and keep adding in roughly 50 gram increments all the way to 250 grams. It's pretty consistent for me with Medium roasts to get a really nice full bodied coffee. However, by the time I get the last 50 grams of water in, the v60 is basically right at the edge of the top of the filter so I have to wait a 30 to a minute to come down. I'm not sure why or how your coffee is so quick, but from first to last drop, it's roughly 5:45 to 6:04 minutes for the last drop to make it through, and I have, what I believe to be, a pretty coarse grind. I have plenty of chunky grounds too. Maybe my extra agitation from zig zagging makes the bed super settled, maybe not. Also, if you to try something new, I definitely recommend the Hario Switch. 17 grams of light/medium roast (grind setting 4 or 5 on the vario), bloom with a little water and stir w/ spoon, keep about 20-40ml of 212°F water inside the cup, fill the v60 with 240 grams total of water. steep 3 minutes, then hit the switch. You'll be given with an interesting even fuller bodied cup.
im sorry i might have missed it, but "backing off the grind a whole bunch" isn't clear to me. Is the change going finer? or the increased 2x bloom time? Or both?
Thanks for this! Had the same issue with the bloom on JH's 1-cup V60 technique - I tend towards his non-1-cup technique and have better luck with the water volume there. I noticed you seem to be using a ceramic brewer - not sure how it would necessarily make a difference, but could the variable of material (not using plastic, as JH does) cause any of the issues you're having with his technique?
Enjoyed the video, I plan on making my first pour over today. Would you mind telling me what grind setting you used on your Vario? I have the same grinder. Thanks for your help.
My 15-16g brews usually totalled to around 2min to 2min 30sec, which is kinda the norm in Asian brew recipes. I find it odd that western brew recipes usually tend to go upwards of 3min, which I usually find the results to be over extracted, and most of the profiles of the coffee would be muddled as well. Different taste preferences? Hmm...
I have been wondering about this too. Following western recipes hardly seem to work for me (ie: JH and Onyx). I found that around 2 mins generally works best for the beans from my local roasters (Malaysia). Could you recommend me a recipe? Thanks.
I had so many conflicts around whether to bloom with a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio. So for example, 15 gms * 3 = 45 GM's of water.. which is in your case.. 15 * 5 = 75 gms. I think it also depends upon which roast you are using... right ? Essentially, you would want to bloom a light roast to an extent which can release a lot of trapped CO2... but this would be different for medium dark or dark roasts.. Pls advise. 🙂
I was having the exact same issue, I ended up at espresso grind just to try and get the 3 minutes, but I just knew it was wrong. I followed Lance Hedrick's recipe, which is 2x 30g blooms with aggressive swirling - I will try your recipe tomorrow! Thanks.
FYI, Scott Rao is an advocate of gently stirring, or what he calls, "excavating," during the bloom phase. His way of explaining is that if you see bubbles, that means there are grounds below that are NOT bubbling. By stirring during the bloom, you allow all of the grounds in the coffee bed to off-gas and get wet in as short a time as possible.
I've been using the excavation method to agitate my bloom with this method for a while now and i've only ever had less than ideal brew times when I switch from espresso to v60 and I haven't ran the all the fines out from the old grind setting. Works great, tastes great.
I've had the same issue with coffee roasted in Singapore as well, no idea if it's to do with the extremely high humidity that messes with things (I think it swells/off-gasses in bloom phase less? idk), as I store my beans at room temp, but have struggled to get a decent bloom at 50g water too. Will try again tomorrow with your recommendation! Interestingly, I just attained a new bag of Square Mile coffee, so I'm probably also gonna give Hoffmann's exact instructions another go with his own beans lol
I had to make coarser grinding to barely make the times... when I come back and see yours I can notice it's way more finner. I wonder what I'm doing wrong, as my pouring sticks to recipe, as close as possible to V60 but the drawdown lasts way longer, up to 4 minutes total.
I’m having the faster drawdown issue with the wilfa uniform grinder. I’ve dropped it way lower than before and only managed to get to 2:30 drawdown. I watched this video and thought that’ll be it. Then I sipped the coffee I had made and it’s not bitter after a rest. Still sweet. More body than I usually have. So I will continue to make the mistake in this video to learn the taste now just before trying this. Coffee is wild.🤪
I'm really glad I found this video, I just started doing pour over coffee and am using Hoffman's single cup recipe. I'd definitely been finding that the 50g bloom was a bit funky, just like in your demo it would bloom up but not collapse and just didn't feel like it was enough water. I tried adding a bit more water a few times, but didn't feel confident in going "off script" so never got a good system down. I'll have to give this a try the next time I brew!
50g is plenty of water for a 15g to 22g dose of coffee. One try pouring more aggressively in the center before spiraling out. Second would be to wait at least two weeks from roast date before brewing. Having very fresh coffee will impact how much you can extract.
Man, I just had to let you know, the 75g-25g bloom bit was the breakthrough to my technique. I finally got more than a 3 minute drawdown which I thought impossible for me because I use a fast paper filter. I thought I was just not grinding fine enough, then I hit a wall of so much bitterness and still not hitting 3 minutes of drawdown.
It’s so consistent too, I avoided hoffman’s technique for years because I just can’t bloom like he does, always getting this really acidic and hollow brew that’s tea-like almost with medium roast.
I make amazing 2 cup pourovers, but terrible single cups. But it is improving. Basically, don't pour directly on the paper. The water will channel through it where the paper makes direct contact with the dripper. Learned it by watching a video by the real sprometheus. And it surprises me how James Hoffman or Lance Hedrick do not understand this yet. No fault to them, becaus these discussions are in the cutting edge right now. And in about a year everyone will have this down and we'll just be making small improvements, which is great.
Where do either Hoffman or Hedricks pour on the paper? I’ve even seen Hedricks use a term for that while explaining it causes water to miss the grounds
I do think techniques should be adjusted with different coffee. You were using relatively fresh coffee that might have needed to degas more. Naturally you would need a longer bloom phase to counter that. I am curious to see if the same techniques are applicable to different coffee.
Strange. I use a time more c2 and I feel it just produces a log of fines. I never hit a consistent 3min mark with that recipe, my coffee would almost always be upwards for 4 mins even if I went coarser by 3-4 clicks. Again 12:200 brews, 40g pours with v60 papers. The moment I switched to a cloth filter, i was able to grind finer and still hit the 3 min mark. Im still trying to get a delicious cup out of it though.
I've always wanted to try pour-over but am put off by how much coffee you need. I use 10g in my cafetière and find it plenty strong so it seems wasteful and expensive to use 50% more coffee for one cup.
It heavily depends on the coffee how your bloom behaves. With cheaper or older coffee I need a lot more water to get it going well. Supermarket coffee is almost immobile in this respect
I have a very much different experience, my water draw down is much slower where I feel that the initial bloom has too much water. My water also tops out the single brew Haario v60, even using the filter setting in my Wilfa Svart grinder, which is quite coarse compared to yours. I use lightly roasted coffee beans (white), but the water at my place is also quite bad, and it might be the issue, even though I always filter it using a Britta. But my end time always end at past 3 minutes, with the last few amount taking it to like 3:17 time before the bed is dry.
It depends on a coffe lot, i had one coffe and it was consistent 3 mins. now i use another sort of coffe and it tends to finish closer to 4-4.5 mins whatever i do
You're pouring quite gently compared to how I brew, and I suspect a lot of the difference you've observed in results is due to better agitation of the grinds. With the bed being flatter from the start from the longer first pour, and not moving around much after that, your stream is better and more evenly agitating fines. I use a similar technique with a 50g bloom, but pour a lot more aggressively at about 8g/s. I get a 3 minute ddt, similar to your method because the extra agitation provides more fines redistribution and slightly more paper resistance. Maybe I'll try pouring slower and see if I need a longer bloom.
Hi! I have maybe different struggle - James mentioned that we should grind beans (light roasted) finely to extract all of the goodness from them, but I can't get a brew time of 3 minutes, it is taking me to brew time of around 4 minutes and the coffee doesn't taste as if it was overextracted, but it still bothers me. I haven't tried it with different beans yet, but did anyone have similar problem?
@@atticustay1 For that particular coffee the brew time wasn't working, but right now it's a good base for brewing and coffee tastes good. Thanks for answering.
I love this method but find it works best at the finest end of medium with very light roasts, and closer to a 4min brew time imo. You also don't appear to be agitating the grounds very well, but it's hard to tell, pour closer to the v60 and follow the 10sec pour, you also seem to favor the inside with your pours, I try to circle outside with most of the pour and go down the middle directly for about 10 to 15g each pour. If you make a crater in the middle, make sure you don't compact the coffee. Lance Hedrick does an excellent job showing how to do this with a chopstick like tool, be very careful with that. You also need a good strong swirl at the beginning with really light roasts, don't focus so hard on keeping the bed flat during that, your swirl with the 50g dose needed to be a bit more aggressive. Your final swirl could be a bit bigger as well, Scott Rao shows that, and says it doesn't matter if you swirl once or twice, but it's not a baby swirl. Anyways, I have NO clue if this will help 😂 but works for me. There are some coffees I found didn't do great with this, I prefer something that is super light and high quality, and prefer longer drawdowns. Moved to the April recently though, it seems to work better with all kinds of coffee, but it's completely different Also if your coffee is really fresh, try resting it after grinding for 15 to 30 minutes, Patrick from April says that it doesn't decrease intensity and does what blooming does, although blooming is overrated It's all about wetting the grounds Just a note I'm using a 1zpresso zp6, produces very few fines, idk about the vario or fellow without ssp mp's, never used em
@@DavidLikesCoffee do you have any suggestions for larger brew quantities? Say 18 to 300 or 22 to 400 which JH mentioned you can do but it’s the same structure with the batches. Since you did 50 + 25 for the 20 to 250, I wonder if that could be scaled. Is the 25g a constant regardless the dose?
I've been doing 24g to 400 pretty consistently using an 02 v60 with good results. The pours are a little different ( 75, 75, 125, 125) but I still adjust the first pour if needed to make sure the slurry is fully saturated and can be swirled easily.
Have you tried wet WDT instead of switching ratios? It seems to help me when using “fast” papers by moving more fines towards the paper. Would be interesting to see a comparison.
@@DavidLikesCoffee interesting, how about different filters? I’ve observed a difference between filters (even just depending on which hario filter) of up to 2 minutes for complete drip… now testing cafec abaca filters and seem to get good results (have to grind very fine though).
Your coffee was very fresh which is very the bloom was so gassy. With that much off gas your going to have issues extracting all the flavors from the coffee.
I personally feel that there seems to be a trend lately for excess faffing recipes where the v60 is concerned? Maybe for light roasts its needed, but since thats not my style I'll stick with my Tetsu Kasuya 4:6 Brewing Method
That’s kind of the nice thing about the V60, you can keep it simple and get great cups. But, it’s also sensitive enough to different inputs that you can really dial in a recipe for a specific coffee if you want to. Or just descend into madness 😅😅
First and foremost the 01 and the 02 are quite literally the same apart from the 02 being a taller cone. Same angle, same size opening on the bottom, and even the same grooves. Hoffman explains this in the one cup v60 pt2
Don't mean to be a dick but you didn't clearly say what you amended - so this whole thing/title feels a bit clickbaity. Need clearer communication. You mention grinding coarser, slowing pour rate, bigger bloom....multiple variables without clearly defining what actually fixed it. Or was it all of them and not one thing at all? Just trying to help you become a better youtube vlogger mate.
Wow, what a disappointment. I was excited on seeing the video title, hoping to get the tips I needed for a better cup of coffee from Jame's methods. Instead I get loud twanging music drowning out anything you say. I loathe UA-camrs who do this. You do NOT NEED MUSIC IN YOUR INSTRUCTION VIDEOS. ESPECIALLY when it drowns out your instructions.
Hoffmans recipe is straight garbage. This recipe gets at least close to the perfection that the v60 is capable of. But personally, I find that you need a custom v58 in order to make anything that resembles a decent cup.
![[HARIO] V60 Five-Pour Recipe - Matt Winton (World Brewers Cup Champion)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YIC-2nFQ7vM/mqdefault.jpg)
![[HARIO] V60 Five-Pour Recipe - Matt Winton (World Brewers Cup Champion)](/img/tr.png)
This video improved my brew in much less time than the big coffee channels. Great stuff!
I thought I was going crazy adjusting grind size and having little to no effect. Disclaimer I am a beginner that just bought my first set recently and Hoffman's technique was the first one I went with. Thank you so much for posting this
Thank you for this! Making sure I poured enough water so that the bed would collapse when swirling did the trick for me. Huge difference in taste!
ANother solution thatw orked for me is flowrate for the first 50g. Try pouring more aggressive. And immediately swirl.
Second this, and aggressive swirl
Exactly, that really works and DOES NOT increase brewing time so dramatically. With light enough roast you can get an amazing cup in 2:15-2:30 just by pouring correctly. Another thing is that flow rate actually does affect the brewing, especially if you lower the kettle to keep it much closer to the coffee bed.
I have fast filter so this is harder to do, but good to know.
@@karu6111 Which is faster than Sibarist?
Just found this after dozens of cups full of coffe flavored water. Omg it tastes perfect, so rich and complex. You are a lifesaver!!
I think we need to reconsider the idea of the 'bloom'. Grinds off-gas continously throughout brewing, more at the beginning, some later on, and it doesn't matter whether they off-gas into water that's merely wetting them, or in which they're immersed. The main thing that matters for under/overextraction is 'wet contact time', the time that grounds are exposed to new water with relatively low concentration of dissolved coffee solids, and the consistency of this throughout one's coffee slurry. There's a simple solution that solves this: regular agitation of the coffee slurry.
• My brew ratio is a bit stronger than Hoffman's 16.6. For my preferred coffee strength to fit a large 14 oz mug, I use 28 g coffee / 420 g water (brew ratio 15).
• Water (just off boil for light roast/95° C for medium) poured in to near the rim (without consideration of weight), during which I continuously stir with a spoon, avoiding scraping the paper filter.
• When the water level falls near the level of the grounds, I immediately pour in more to near the rim, and again slowly agitate the slurry.
• After this second pour, I do a Rao swirl to settle the bed and pull grounds from the walls, and before the water falls to the level of the grounds do a third pour (if needed) to top up to my final water weight.
• At no time before the final pour do I permit grinds to be unevenly wetted by the level of water falling below that of the grounds. The agitation of the coffee slurry gives my pourovers more of the quality of immersion brews: even exposure of all grounds to similar volumes of incident brew water (with similar concentrations of dissolved coffee solids).
• I dial in total brew time (from first water in to last drops out) by grind size, aiming initially for 3½-4 mins, and dialing in from there to adjust flavor balance. Finer grind: slower drawdown, more extraction, more later eluting bitter compounds; or coarser grind: faster drawdown, less extraction, early eluting sweet/acidic compounds with less later eluting bitter compounds.
I think that much of received barista 'wisdom' has the quality of superstition, of rain dances; and some is performative, for displays of skill at the cafe. Spirals from a gooseneck kettle are certainly more elegant than hovering over a cone stirring a slurry. But the latter works better for evenly exposing all the grounds to the same amount of water, and I'm not performing for anyone else. The Wired Gourmet offers much the same approach (though with lower ratio than I prefer) in his video V60 Voodoo: Resurrection! ua-cam.com/video/hyHAOkH2tMY/v-deo.html
Letting it draw down completely for the bloom is not an issue, neither is letting it cool down at that point. Also it's not just about contact time with fresh water, you also need all the coffee particles to absorb as much water as they can so they are completely wet to the core. If you let it bloom for nice and long you can grind coarser, that allows you to agitate more without clogging the filter as well. You should try it out, let it bloom for really long, like 1-2 minutes, use coarser grounds and do a really high agitation, 1 to 17 brew. That works really well for very light roasted high grade specialty IMO
Interesting. It sounds like your preference is for an immersion brew coffee, or a hybrid method, like that of the Clever Dripper / Hario Switch.
This new JH method is my go to now, but I actually use a 13:200, with 40 gram pours. My first pour is 40g with an aggressive swirl to where I can see all the grounds wet. Then follow his recipe making sure I pour as close as I can get. This helped to not choke the brew and allows me to hit those "times" pretty consistently and brew delicious cups of coffee. It's my go to method now.
I like the idea of scaling the recipe down a bit. I’m more sensitive to caffeine nowadays and tend to prefer smaller brews in general.
Can you tell us your equipment and settings?
I did some testing with 200 ml to 12 gr in 40 gr pours.
I switched to the Japanese hario filters witch helped a lot with total brew time.
I make a dent in the grounds before the bloom for a better water distribution and figured 2/3 tap water and 1/3 mineral water (spa) made quite a tasty cup.
Strange. I use a time more c2 and I feel it just produces a log of fines. I never hit a consistent 3min mark with that recipe, my coffee would almost always be upwards for 4 mins even if I went coarser by 3-4 clicks.
Again 12:200 brews, 40g pours with v60 papers.
The moment I switched to a cloth filter, i was able to grind finer and still hit the 3 min mark.
Im still trying to get a delicious cup out of it though.
Just saw your video today, and I thought I would share my "adjustments" to the Hoffman technique. I love this method and I use it 90% of the time when brewing a single cup. When I open a new bag of coffee, I use the standard method the first time and see where I end up. If my brew time is a little bit long or short, I don't adjust the grind, or the amount of water at each pour. I adjust the aggressiveness of the pour and swirl. If the brew time is too long, I will adjust my swirls and pouring to be more gentle. If the brew time is too short, I will be more aggressive with my pour and swirls. I only swirl for the bloom pour and the final pour, and never in between. This gives me enough control that I do not have to play with the grind very much at all for most coffees. Let me know if you try this and what your results are. Cheers!
How do you adjust the pour aggressiveness without impacting the flow speed (to fit 50g in 10s)? Pouring from higher?
@@fokcuk Yes, I will adjust my pour to be higher to increase agitation, but I can also increase the flow speed as well. Remember, the 50g/10s is just a guide and you can adjust this to suit your needs. I sometimes will finish a pour in 7-8 seconds from a higher height. I still find that adjusting the swirl has the greatest effect for me, and the pour is more subtle. Remember that hitting the target times and weights during the brew is NOT as important as the final taste of the coffee. Do whatever works to make you enjoy the taste most.
Most informative. Thank you. I learned a great deal from this class.
(The video might be improved by removing the background music or turning it down. I can understand employing background music if you have noisy neighbours who interfere with making your videos.)
Really enjoying your videos! Interesting point about the bloom settling the bed to help create resistance. I’ve noticed the “fluffiness” of some of my medium roast coffee beds during degassing compared to blooming some of my lighter beans, but I never understood the correlation with brew time. Looking forward to the next video!
Thank you!
These adjustments worked fantastically for me, thank you! Really enjoying your content. Keep up the good work :)
I just want to share my experience with JH ultimate V60 recipe (3 years ago video I believe). Normally I use 10 g of coffee which is single cup size with 167 ml water (the same ratio with the original recipe). I've got sweet & balance cup most of the time with 3~3.5 minutes brew time. Temperature is 40 second after boiling & I use medium dark & dark roast (which is kind of too hot in theory), medium fine grind size (two clicks toward the fine from centre of the scale of my grinder). However, I make few adjustments lately to produce even more delicious cup:
Instead of 45' bloom time, now I let it go till 60'. Secondly, I EXCAVATE (instead of swirling) right after the bloom pour (2x ratio). Swirling like you said seems not optimal. But, here is another factor to consider: I rest my beans for 2 weeks after roast date before using it. We believe it is the best time period for the beans to release the gases, etc. I don't know if it has effect, but I have barely seen any problem with JH's original recipe for single cup, even for dark beans. In fact, I always return to it after testing other recipes (currently am comparing it with the new 1-2-1 Lance Hedrik). Interested to try 3x bloom ratio which you inspire 😊 That's my 2 cents.
I would recommend checking out the Kubomi method, it gives me a very thorough bloom each time. Similar to what Lance Hedrick mentioned in his videos, creating a divet this way also compresses the coffee bed minimally, making full saturation of the grounds even easier. I also like how it's meditative, but it could be a bit fussy for some :)
the slow pour with the larger volume of water in the blook in a definite game changer. I also realise that with beans that aren't fresh, you're going to have to go fine, pour in water a bit quicker and swirl faster. The hario switch actually works a lot better for not fresh grinds
I am going to try this as I had similar issues with the Hoffman 1 cup.
Question for you, for the high & dry grounds, why not knock them back down into the brew during the second pour? Simply by pouring over them. You must be loosing up to 1 gram, if not more, of grounds in the brew.
Thank you! I have just got my first V60 and went straight to James Hoffman's one cup technique. I was sure I had the grind size okay. I had exactly the problem you describe - no way was there enough water to swirl the bed before blooming. Using a normal kettle so maybe a tad too fast a pour if anything. Have just (accidentally) followed your technique by pouring to over 90 ml before bloom. Worked noticeably better. Thanks for confirming this or I might have gone off down a dead end.
Issue is probably that you're using the ceramic version. Ceramic adds another level of complexity in the pour-over that you're probably not considering
If you mean the bloom, I had the same with a plastic v60
i think one tip for you during the bloom-swirl is to make deeper crevices and somehow pour faster (?), ill edit this comment if im wrong, but i had a hard time as well at first trying to bloomswirl, but somehow it comes second nature right now, with 50 gr water and same amount of coffee
Great video a good improvement thank you.
Switched to the Clever dripper. Constant consistent and good
I also struggled with the bloom phase but managed to solve it by grind it finer. However when I am at that grind setting, I will have to lower my temperature, otherwise the bitter comes out.
Could that be that european roasting profiles are a bit different from US? I spent 3 months in LA and tried a bunch of different roasters from all around US, including local micro roaster. For me, american roasters tend to develop more than I would like from even ethiopian beans. So, I ended up importing from the Barn and it tasted a lot more like the ones I am used to. I am brazillian but I lived a long time in europe.
The struggle is that most follow the SCA guidelines of 1:18. They are clear that is for large batch brewers of 1 liter. For smaller batches, moving that ratio closer to 1:14 and adjusting the grind accordingly will probably have better results.
What setting did you grind on the Fellow Ode?
I have a vario W and I grind it to an O-7 setting after calibration.
The during the first 50 gram bloom with a total of 45 seconds, most of the water goes below the top of the grind at the end of the 45. But I also have zero problem with settling the coffee bed. I do a circular pattern at the edges first, once I make my first circle, I do a zig zag motion across the top in one direction, then go 90 degrees in the other. This basically settles it within 2-3 passes. Once it's settled by 45-55 grams (it doesn't have to be exact), I do a 5-10 second shake during that initial 45 second bloom.
From there, I just add water for 5 seconds, wait 10 seconds, and keep adding in roughly 50 gram increments all the way to 250 grams. It's pretty consistent for me with Medium roasts to get a really nice full bodied coffee.
However, by the time I get the last 50 grams of water in, the v60 is basically right at the edge of the top of the filter so I have to wait a 30 to a minute to come down. I'm not sure why or how your coffee is so quick, but from first to last drop, it's roughly 5:45 to 6:04 minutes for the last drop to make it through, and I have, what I believe to be, a pretty coarse grind. I have plenty of chunky grounds too. Maybe my extra agitation from zig zagging makes the bed super settled, maybe not.
Also, if you to try something new, I definitely recommend the Hario Switch.
17 grams of light/medium roast (grind setting 4 or 5 on the vario), bloom with a little water and stir w/ spoon, keep about 20-40ml of 212°F water inside the cup, fill the v60 with 240 grams total of water. steep 3 minutes, then hit the switch.
You'll be given with an interesting even fuller bodied cup.
What’s a little water ? Like 40 ml bloom?
im sorry i might have missed it, but "backing off the grind a whole bunch" isn't clear to me. Is the change going finer? or the increased 2x bloom time? Or both?
Thanks for this! Had the same issue with the bloom on JH's 1-cup V60 technique - I tend towards his non-1-cup technique and have better luck with the water volume there. I noticed you seem to be using a ceramic brewer - not sure how it would necessarily make a difference, but could the variable of material (not using plastic, as JH does) cause any of the issues you're having with his technique?
Thanks for the idea, I experienced the same issue yesterday with JH recipe
thank you, i had exactly the same issue, i ll try your fix
Good video, does seem like you are swirling more aggressively than the Hoffman video, and more frequently, I wonder what effect that has
Enjoyed the video, I plan on making my first pour over today. Would you mind telling me what grind setting you used on your Vario? I have the same grinder. Thanks for your help.
My 15-16g brews usually totalled to around 2min to 2min 30sec, which is kinda the norm in Asian brew recipes.
I find it odd that western brew recipes usually tend to go upwards of 3min, which I usually find the results to be over extracted, and most of the profiles of the coffee would be muddled as well. Different taste preferences? Hmm...
I have been wondering about this too. Following western recipes hardly seem to work for me (ie: JH and Onyx). I found that around 2 mins generally works best for the beans from my local roasters (Malaysia). Could you recommend me a recipe? Thanks.
Where in asia specifically. Lots of countries in Asia have a tendency towards lighter body.
I had so many conflicts around whether to bloom with a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio. So for example, 15 gms * 3 = 45 GM's of water.. which is in your case.. 15 * 5 = 75 gms. I think it also depends upon which roast you are using... right ? Essentially, you would want to bloom a light roast to an extent which can release a lot of trapped CO2... but this would be different for medium dark or dark roasts..
Pls advise. 🙂
I was having the exact same issue, I ended up at espresso grind just to try and get the 3 minutes, but I just knew it was wrong. I followed Lance Hedrick's recipe, which is 2x 30g blooms with aggressive swirling - I will try your recipe tomorrow! Thanks.
there is water passing through the bloom into the cup. since that is "coffee" before blooming, do you throw it away?
Too many people use too fine grinds for the v60 resulting in dry and at times muted coffees. Do not be afraid to go coarser.
FYI, Scott Rao is an advocate of gently stirring, or what he calls, "excavating," during the bloom phase. His way of explaining is that if you see bubbles, that means there are grounds below that are NOT bubbling. By stirring during the bloom, you allow all of the grounds in the coffee bed to off-gas and get wet in as short a time as possible.
A hot spoon is probably better for stirring than a cold spoon?
I've been using the excavation method to agitate my bloom with this method for a while now and i've only ever had less than ideal brew times when I switch from espresso to v60 and I haven't ran the all the fines out from the old grind setting. Works great, tastes great.
I've had the same issue with coffee roasted in Singapore as well, no idea if it's to do with the extremely high humidity that messes with things (I think it swells/off-gasses in bloom phase less? idk), as I store my beans at room temp, but have struggled to get a decent bloom at 50g water too. Will try again tomorrow with your recommendation!
Interestingly, I just attained a new bag of Square Mile coffee, so I'm probably also gonna give Hoffmann's exact instructions another go with his own beans lol
Having the same problem with coffee roasted in taiwan. Any news in the results?
I had to make coarser grinding to barely make the times... when I come back and see yours I can notice it's way more finner.
I wonder what I'm doing wrong, as my pouring sticks to recipe, as close as possible to V60 but the drawdown lasts way longer, up to 4 minutes total.
I’m having the faster drawdown issue with the wilfa uniform grinder. I’ve dropped it way lower than before and only managed to get to 2:30 drawdown. I watched this video and thought that’ll be it. Then I sipped the coffee I had made and it’s not bitter after a rest. Still sweet. More body than I usually have. So I will continue to make the mistake in this video to learn the taste now just before trying this.
Coffee is wild.🤪
I use the Baratza Encore grinder. Any experience with choosing grind setting on this grinder?
So you use a variation (he don’t swirl) of Tetsu Kasuya 4:6 method with a bigger first poor for 2:12 more acids
I'm really glad I found this video, I just started doing pour over coffee and am using Hoffman's single cup recipe. I'd definitely been finding that the 50g bloom was a bit funky, just like in your demo it would bloom up but not collapse and just didn't feel like it was enough water. I tried adding a bit more water a few times, but didn't feel confident in going "off script" so never got a good system down. I'll have to give this a try the next time I brew!
50g is plenty of water for a 15g to 22g dose of coffee. One try pouring more aggressively in the center before spiraling out. Second would be to wait at least two weeks from roast date before brewing. Having very fresh coffee will impact how much you can extract.
@@JT-zy2ftwow thanks I was thinking the same too adding too much water just felt not right 😂, will try yours
Interested to give this a try! Where did you land on grind settings for your v1 Ode?
I also had this question!
Great vid! What's the music?
Man, I just had to let you know, the 75g-25g bloom bit was the breakthrough to my technique. I finally got more than a 3 minute drawdown which I thought impossible for me because I use a fast paper filter.
I thought I was just not grinding fine enough, then I hit a wall of so much bitterness and still not hitting 3 minutes of drawdown.
It’s so consistent too, I avoided hoffman’s technique for years because I just can’t bloom like he does, always getting this really acidic and hollow brew that’s tea-like almost with medium roast.
Will give this a try, thanks. Had OK cups with the recipe but i generally find he targets sweet cups, which is maybe not the profile I look for
If you add the water really fast during the bloom you can achieve the same effect with 50 grams
It doesn't help with the drowndown time tho
Helpful video, thanks. Music a bit distracting.
I must try your version, 🤞
I make amazing 2 cup pourovers, but terrible single cups. But it is improving. Basically, don't pour directly on the paper. The water will channel through it where the paper makes direct contact with the dripper. Learned it by watching a video by the real sprometheus. And it surprises me how James Hoffman or Lance Hedrick do not understand this yet. No fault to them, becaus these discussions are in the cutting edge right now. And in about a year everyone will have this down and we'll just be making small improvements, which is great.
Where do either Hoffman or Hedricks pour on the paper? I’ve even seen Hedricks use a term for that while explaining it causes water to miss the grounds
I do think techniques should be adjusted with different coffee. You were using relatively fresh coffee that might have needed to degas more. Naturally you would need a longer bloom phase to counter that. I am curious to see if the same techniques are applicable to different coffee.
Strange. I use a time more c2 and I feel it just produces a log of fines. I never hit a consistent 3min mark with that recipe, my coffee would almost always be upwards for 4 mins even if I went coarser by 3-4 clicks.
Again 12:200 brews, 40g pours with v60 papers.
The moment I switched to a cloth filter, i was able to grind finer and still hit the 3 min mark.
Im still trying to get a delicious cup out of it though.
Mine I can’t get bellow 4min lol
It might be the coffee that I am using or some other variable, idk
I've always wanted to try pour-over but am put off by how much coffee you need. I use 10g in my cafetière and find it plenty strong so it seems wasteful and expensive to use 50% more coffee for one cup.
It heavily depends on the coffee how your bloom behaves. With cheaper or older coffee I need a lot more water to get it going well. Supermarket coffee is almost immobile in this respect
Lower the water temp and you’ll taste a big difference
I have a very much different experience, my water draw down is much slower where I feel that the initial bloom has too much water. My water also tops out the single brew Haario v60, even using the filter setting in my Wilfa Svart grinder, which is quite coarse compared to yours. I use lightly roasted coffee beans (white), but the water at my place is also quite bad, and it might be the issue, even though I always filter it using a Britta. But my end time always end at past 3 minutes, with the last few amount taking it to like 3:17 time before the bed is dry.
It depends on a coffe lot, i had one coffe and it was consistent 3 mins. now i use another sort of coffe and it tends to finish closer to 4-4.5 mins whatever i do
You're pouring quite gently compared to how I brew, and I suspect a lot of the difference you've observed in results is due to better agitation of the grinds. With the bed being flatter from the start from the longer first pour, and not moving around much after that, your stream is better and more evenly agitating fines.
I use a similar technique with a 50g bloom, but pour a lot more aggressively at about 8g/s.
I get a 3 minute ddt, similar to your method because the extra agitation provides more fines redistribution and slightly more paper resistance.
Maybe I'll try pouring slower and see if I need a longer bloom.
And?
Lovely video. Thank you.
Hi! I have maybe different struggle - James mentioned that we should grind beans (light roasted) finely to extract all of the goodness from them, but I can't get a brew time of 3 minutes, it is taking me to brew time of around 4 minutes and the coffee doesn't taste as if it was overextracted, but it still bothers me. I haven't tried it with different beans yet, but did anyone have similar problem?
Does the coffee taste good?
@@atticustay1 For that particular coffee the brew time wasn't working, but right now it's a good base for brewing and coffee tastes good. Thanks for answering.
What grind setting do you recommend for the fellow?
Between 4.1 - 6.1 on the Gen 2
I love this method but find it works best at the finest end of medium with very light roasts, and closer to a 4min brew time imo. You also don't appear to be agitating the grounds very well, but it's hard to tell, pour closer to the v60 and follow the 10sec pour, you also seem to favor the inside with your pours, I try to circle outside with most of the pour and go down the middle directly for about 10 to 15g each pour.
If you make a crater in the middle, make sure you don't compact the coffee. Lance Hedrick does an excellent job showing how to do this with a chopstick like tool, be very careful with that. You also need a good strong swirl at the beginning with really light roasts, don't focus so hard on keeping the bed flat during that, your swirl with the 50g dose needed to be a bit more aggressive. Your final swirl could be a bit bigger as well, Scott Rao shows that, and says it doesn't matter if you swirl once or twice, but it's not a baby swirl.
Anyways, I have NO clue if this will help 😂 but works for me. There are some coffees I found didn't do great with this, I prefer something that is super light and high quality, and prefer longer drawdowns. Moved to the April recently though, it seems to work better with all kinds of coffee, but it's completely different
Also if your coffee is really fresh, try resting it after grinding for 15 to 30 minutes, Patrick from April says that it doesn't decrease intensity and does what blooming does, although blooming is overrated It's all about wetting the grounds
Just a note I'm using a 1zpresso zp6, produces very few fines, idk about the vario or fellow without ssp mp's, never used em
i need to try but i have the same issue
Are your times the same or similar to JH’s pulses?
They are about the same, but as JH suggests I don't worry about it too much unless they are way off
@@DavidLikesCoffee do you have any suggestions for larger brew quantities? Say 18 to 300 or 22 to 400 which JH mentioned you can do but it’s the same structure with the batches.
Since you did 50 + 25 for the 20 to 250, I wonder if that could be scaled. Is the 25g a constant regardless the dose?
I've been doing 24g to 400 pretty consistently using an 02 v60 with good results. The pours are a little different ( 75, 75, 125, 125) but I still adjust the first pour if needed to make sure the slurry is fully saturated and can be swirled easily.
@@DavidLikesCoffee sounds good, I’ll give that a whirl and see how it comes out!
lmao this is exactly the changes i had to make i thought i was a bumbis
Have you tried wet WDT instead of switching ratios? It seems to help me when using “fast” papers by moving more fines towards the paper. Would be interesting to see a comparison.
I’ve tried wet Wdt a few times but it didn’t seem to help much in this situation. I know lots of people get great results with it, though.
@@DavidLikesCoffee interesting, how about different filters? I’ve observed a difference between filters (even just depending on which hario filter) of up to 2 minutes for complete drip… now testing cafec abaca filters and seem to get good results (have to grind very fine though).
I tend to stick to the tabbed Hario filters since I can find them consistently. But the Cafec Abaca filters are on my list to try at some point
Your coffee was very fresh which is very the bloom was so gassy. With that much off gas your going to have issues extracting all the flavors from the coffee.
Hoffmann
I personally feel that there seems to be a trend lately for excess faffing recipes where the v60 is concerned? Maybe for light roasts its needed, but since thats not my style I'll stick with my Tetsu Kasuya 4:6 Brewing Method
That’s kind of the nice thing about the V60, you can keep it simple and get great cups. But, it’s also sensitive enough to different inputs that you can really dial in a recipe for a specific coffee if you want to. Or just descend into madness 😅😅
Icelandic coffee matt d'avella
Hoffmann*
This is what discourages me from trying pour over. So many variables…
How dare you question King Hothman!
pfff.. the music volume makes this video unwatchable for me in the first 2 chapters (very tiring at least). 3rd one is a bit better, but still
first and foremost he uses 01 brewer and you use 02
First and foremost the 01 and the 02 are quite literally the same apart from the 02 being a taller cone. Same angle, same size opening on the bottom, and even the same grooves. Hoffman explains this in the one cup v60 pt2
Late comment, but this comment prompted me to try an 01 brewer/filters.. My coffee has never been better.
Music NOT loud enough!!!
is this the new way coffee kids are tryna get big on UA-cam ? can't beat him, so they build on top of him?
James Hoffman looks like a 44 year old lesbian. I never follow his methods
Don't mean to be a dick but you didn't clearly say what you amended - so this whole thing/title feels a bit clickbaity. Need clearer communication. You mention grinding coarser, slowing pour rate, bigger bloom....multiple variables without clearly defining what actually fixed it. Or was it all of them and not one thing at all? Just trying to help you become a better youtube vlogger mate.
Sorry, but I have a hard time watching your video with music playing!
Wow, what a disappointment. I was excited on seeing the video title, hoping to get the tips I needed for a better cup of coffee from Jame's methods. Instead I get loud twanging music drowning out anything you say. I loathe UA-camrs who do this. You do NOT NEED MUSIC IN YOUR INSTRUCTION VIDEOS. ESPECIALLY when it drowns out your instructions.
Hoffmans recipe is straight garbage. This recipe gets at least close to the perfection that the v60 is capable of. But personally, I find that you need a custom v58 in order to make anything that resembles a decent cup.
just found your comment what is a v58?
Drop the music. Makes it unwatchable. Absolutely no need.