My Morning Routine To A Delicious Cup of Coffee
A Quick Blurb
Coffee is one of the few things that will get me out of bed in the morning. Nothing is better than a delicious cup of coffee to wake your mind up. Everyone has their style or routine for how they make coffee in the morning. It is a sacred formula, repeated each day, and then to be sipped.
For my morning routine, I keep it simple. I do like to make coffee with my Moka Pot for lattes or cortados. Make sweet rich coffee with my French Press. Or make a single cup of coffee with my Aeropress with either the Fellow Prismo or Joespresso attachments.
However, for my daily user, I like to use Hario V60 Pour Over Coffee Starter Set. It consistently makes great coffee for me and my lovely future wife every day. The following are steps of how I brew my perfect cup of coffee each day.
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The Hardware and Software of the Recipe
Hardware:
- SHARDOR coffee grinder
- Hario V60 Pour Over Coffee Starter Set
- Corsi gooseneck kettle
- 1 Size 2 Paper Filters
- Kitchen Scale
- A tablespoon
- Two coffee cups (I like small ones for tasting)
Software:
- 35 grams of freshly ground coffee
- You can use any coffee bean like Aldi single-origin coffee beans, Trader Joe’s coffee beans, or from Atlas Coffee!
- 560 grams of filtered water
Step 1. Grinding the Coffee
I like to grind my coffee on the finer side. For reference, a touch finer than what the grind size would be for filter drip coffee. Coarse like sand but at the same time a wee bit powdery. I like finer ground coffee as I think it helps with extraction. This also helps those who are new to making pour-over coffee. Making pour-over coffee is an art, and takes time to perfect this routine. If you are interested in the technique, I would check out James Hoffman’s video on making a V60 pour-over.
Step 2. Preparation
While my coffee is grinding, I go upstairs with my V60 pour-over kit, V60 paper, and coffee cups to heat up the water. I found it helps with time management to heat up the water and prepare the coffee brew setup while the coffee grinder is doing its job. I only use filtered water to get the cleanest cup of coffee possible. You can use a Brita filter or any kind of filter system you have. However, please don’t use plastic bottles. We have enough plastic in the ocean, fish, and in us.
I fill the water kettle to the very top and hit boil and hold, 212°F. I boil my water rather than using the suggested 205-208°F temperature. The reason being is … yup, heat retention. As soon as you go to pour the water into the V60, the water temperature will drop by a few degrees. The hotter the water, the better the extraction!
Step 3. The Heat Up
Once the water kettle hits the magic 212°F number, we brew. First, I fold the V60 paper at the seam and put it in the V60 brew chamber. The V60 paper does not fit in the brew chamber if you don’t make the fold!
Next, wet the filter with boiling hot water. This does four things.
- Heats up the V60 chamber to help with heat retention
- Heats up the V60 container, which also helps heat retention
- Use the excess water to warm your coffee cups
- Gets rid of any paper taste there is from the filter. Although, I am not 100% sure this is true
Making coffee is all about heat retention. You want everything as hot as possible. That way when you go to brew and drink coffee, everything is at the optimal drinking temperature!
Step 4. The Brew and Ratio
My preferred coffee ratio is 16:1. Which is 16 grams of water to 1 gram of coffee. I like my coffee strong, but I also think this is a good ratio to taste the unique characteristics of a single-origin coffee. For my daily routine, I have 35 grams of coffee resulting in 560 grams of water. You can change the ratio as you feel. If we have long days, I use more coffee grounds to have more damn coffee! If you want stronger coffee, increase the amount of coffee. For more information, check my other blog on coffee called “Coffee the Almighty”.
Once again, pour-overs are complicated and hard. However, once you repeat your methodology, it is like clockwork. The total brew time for me usually takes around 8 minutes from start to finish. This varies depending on how busy I am. The unique characteristic of my technique is I pour 100 grams of water per minute. The 100 grams per minute method helps control the speed of the brew and shows you in real-time if there is channeling. I also think a slower brew helps with the extraction process. Finally, below are my steps to my definition of a great cup of coffee.
- Place your V60 onto the scale and hit the tare function (this clears out the weight to zero)
- Pour your coffee ground into the wet filter (remember we wet the filter to heat up the V60) and hit the tare function
- We are using a 16:1 ratio. We have 35 grams of coffee, so we multiply 35 by 16 to get the final target of 560 grams of coffee. If you use a different ratio, take out your trusty phone calculator and multiply the amount of coffee by the ratio you desire. For example, if you have 35 grams of coffee and want an 18:1 ratio, multiply 35 by 18 to get your final target weight of 630 grams of coffee.
- In a circular motion, starting from the middle to the edge, pour 70 grams of water and wait 1 minute. This is called the bloom; lets out CO2 so that the water can extract more from the coffee grounds. The water amount of the bloom is twice the amount of coffee. You have 45 grams of coffee, use 90 grams of water!
- After a minute has passed, pour 130 grams of water or until you get to 200 grams. Take your spoon, and stir. Give it a good stir. Declumping the coffee grounds and scraping off any coffee grounds on the side of the V60. This ensures the coffee grounds are completely mixed with the water.
- After each minute has passed, pour in 100 grams or until you hit your target weight.
- After you hit your target weight, we enter the drawdown period. This period is where we have the target weight but are waiting for the coffee to stop dripping. This is the worse part as you have to wait.
- After the drawdown period, pour and enjoy!
Additional Tips and Guidance
- Stir only once or twice. I think it is great to stir, and this helps ensure all of the coffee grounds are in contact with the water. However, stir too much and you will clog and slow down the draining process.
- If you are using darker roasted beans, use a coarser grind size and lower the water temperature to 208°F. Helps bring out the unique characteristics of a dark roast coffee.
- If you don’t have a gooseneck kettle, you can still use this technique. When you go to pour, use your spoon to disperse the water equally. Does not have to be perfect, but this will help make sure your ground bed is even and there is little to no water channeling!