Welcoming the V60

At the beginning of last year, I shared about my filter coffee setup at home. The then current setup was composed by a family of four: the Clever Dripper, the French Press, the Chemex, and the AeroPress. Every device with its own use. It’s been more than a year and a half, and the family has now welcomed a new member: the V60.

I’ve bought the V60 quite some time ago, and I’ve been wanting to write about it ever since. However, I’ve putting it back and I’m not exactly sure why. I think that when I used it for the first few times, I was not that “impressed” with the quality of coffee that I was getting out of it and because of that I did not want to write about it. It’s very likely that my technique was the problem.

In the meanwhile, that has changed. I watched a few videos here and there, and played a bit with the grind size to make sure the brew was not happening too fast, or too slow. And the V60 is now my favorite way of brewing one or two cups of coffee at a time. It’s cleaner, somewhat sweater. I haven’t touched the Clever Dripper in quite a while!

One other thing that might’ve contributed for this was the gooseneck kettle we bought a few months ago. It definitely allows for a much more controlled pouring of the water than the ginormous kettle we were using before. It’s probably not a crucial element, but it definitely helps, it makes it easier.

The other coffee devices still remain in use, some more, some less. The AeroPress has traveled a few times and has also been used to make coffee at work. The French Press remains dutifully reserved for cold brew, and the Chemex for larger gatherings where I want to make a pour-over for a higher amount of people.

I want to end with a sweet note: we recently purchased some very tasty coffee beans from Sprout, a coffee roaster here in Eindhoven. I was looking at their website and saw quite a lot of unique flavour profiles, so we just went to try some at the roastery.

We tried three different filter coffees, but La Luisa shone - that is an unusual past form - the most. This coffee has gone through a carbonic maceration process, infused with honey and strawberry juice 🍓. It tastes so good, especially as an iced coffee in this hot summer weather!