V60 Recipe: 10 Proven Methods, Explained

One dripper. A 60° cone, a spiral of ribs, a single hole at the bottom, and, depending on whose hands are pouring, at least ten different correct ways to use it.

That is not a flaw in the V60. It is the whole reason it has stayed the standard for two decades. The dripper does almost nothing on its own, it just gets out of the way and lets the pour decide. Which means the recipe is the technique, and there is more than one good one.

Here are ten, with the exact numbers behind each.

10 Selected V60 Recipes

Every number above is what its named brewer actually publishes. None of these are ours.

Why they differ

Hoffmann's own recipe is the clearest place to see the same person adapt to three different situations rather than owning one fixed answer.

The main version is built around control, two big pours, a stir, a swirl, done.

The iced version keeps the same dose but adds ice to the server before a drop of water touches the coffee, so the cooling never dilutes the cup.

The one-cup version keeps Hoffmann's exact ratio but trades the two-pour structure for four small pulses, proof that halving a recipe is not the same as scaling it.

Kasuya's 4:6 Method takes the opposite approach to variation: instead of several fixed recipes, one recipe with two dials.

The first 40% of water, split into two pours, sets acidity against sweetness. The remaining 60% sets strength. Change nothing about the coffee and you can still change the cup, just by moving where the water lands.

April Coffee Roasters and Matt Winton sit at the technique extremes. April pours fast and hard, five times, letting aggressive agitation do the extracting, the cup runs concentrated and clear.

Winton's five-pour method does the opposite: gentle, unstirred, letting the pour's own turbulence do the agitating instead of a spoon. Same number of pours, nearly opposite philosophies, both winning approaches at a competition level.

Hedrick's flash brew makes its own case against how most iced pour-over gets made. The usual method brews hot water and ice together in the same vessel from the start, which quietly dilutes the ratio down to something like 1:9, thin enough that under-extraction is baked in before the first drop lands.

His fix: brew the full 240g hot, no ice anywhere near it, then flash-chill by stirring 60g of ice in only once brewing is done. A genuinely stronger 1:12 that only meets ice at the very end.

One detail worth taking seriously: he insists on ice made from filtered or distilled water, not straight from the freezer, ice is a real fraction of the final drink, and carries its own flavour into the cup.

Basic Hario needs no scale at all, a Hario original, built to work with a bag of beans and a scoop. Scott Rao's needs a plastic V60 specifically, chosen to hold heat through the brew rather than for the material's own sake. Between them sits most of what a V60 can actually do.

How to pick one

Short on time or gear: Basic Hario. It is the only recipe here that does not assume a scale.

Want a single, repeatable default: Hoffmann's main recipe. It is the most-referenced pour-over method in specialty coffee for a reason, simple structure, forgiving, hard to get badly wrong.

Brewing for one person, one cup, and want it exact: Hoffmann's one-cup version, not the main recipe halved.

Want to taste the same coffee two ways without changing beans: Kasuya's 4:6, move the first two pours, taste the difference, move them back.

Hot day: either Hedrick iced recipe, or Hoffmann's iced version if you would rather keep the same hand you already know.

Chasing a specific, structured, competition-grade cup: Rao, April, or Winton, read the technique notes above before choosing between them, since they ask for genuinely different things from your pour.

Reading the pour

A few things every recipe above assumes.

Grind matters more than the recipe you pick. All ten sit in the medium-fine to medium-coarse range, the same territory our own grind size chart covers in full, with the reasoning behind each step of that range.

A gooseneck kettle is not optional here. Every recipe above depends on hitting a specific pour weight inside a specific number of seconds. A normal kettle's wide spout makes that close to impossible.

Ratio is one dial among several. The full case for why ratio, grind, temperature and time all move together, and what to change first when a cup goes wrong, lives in our brew ratio guide.

Keep learning with us

Ten recipes on a page will get you close. The last part, reading a cup and knowing which of these ten variables actually needs to move, is genuinely easier learnt alongside someone watching you pour.

Our barista courses are built around exactly that: calibration, dialling in, correcting on the spot, not just reading about it. And our specialty coffee beans are worth pouring through more than one of these recipes, the differences are easiest to taste on the same bag.

FAQs

How do I make a V60 recipe?

Pick a dose, then measure water by ratio, 1:15 to 1:17 covers every recipe on this page. Grind medium-fine to medium-coarse, bloom with roughly double the coffee weight in water, then pour the rest in stages. The ten recipes above are ten complete, working versions of exactly this.

What is the best ratio for a V60?

There is not one, the ten recipes above run from 1:12 (Hedrick's flash brew, meant to be iced and diluted) to 1:17 (Hedrick's Easy & Effective). 1:15 to 1:16 is the most common starting point across all of them.

How do I make a 15-gram V60?

Two of the recipes above are built exactly for this: Basic Hario (15g, 250g water, no scale strictly required) and Hoffmann's one-cup recipe (15g, 250g water, four smaller pulses instead of two big pours).

Is V60 stronger than espresso?

No. Espresso is far more concentrated, brewed with roughly a third as much water relative to the coffee. A V60 can taste intense depending on the recipe, but it is measuring something different from espresso's strength, not competing on the same scale.