Hey, coffee lovers, how are you? The weekend is here and it is time to enjoy our coffee in the best possible way… at home with the family.
You may know that I brew coffee mainly using my espresso brewer, the AeroPress and Hario V60 filter and I really try to improve my brewing techniques all the time. V60, although relatively simple to use, still has some variations and different approaches to brew our favorite drink with.
From about two months, or a bit more, I am using the 4:6 brewing method, which is developed my the Japanese barista and later famous coffee roaster Tetsu Kasuya. And since then, I saw a great impact on the flavor of the coffee I brew, of course to better!
The first and most important step is to use good quality beans, and if you can find some Specialty Coffee beans it would be even better. I have once tried to make filter coffee with Costa beans and it was awful… 🤷🏻
Today I am using beans that originate from Honduras and are roasted in lithuania by Crooked Nose and Coffee Stories specialty roastery. I usually brew 20g doses, but today I am brewing single dose with 13 grams of coffee beans. It is good to have a scale that weighs with 0.1 grams precision.
Coffee to water ratio is 1:15 which means that I’m gonna need 200 grams (or, actually 196) of hot water. The double 20 grams dose will need exactly 300 grams of water. When we start to heat the water, itnis time to grind the beans. Fresh ground beans are always way tastier than the pre-ground coffee. I am using this manual grinder, which is one of the best deals on the market. It costs about $50-60 and works excellent!
It is also very good that I manage to grind 20 grams of coffee for less than half a minute. For comparison, the electric grinder would need about 10-15 seconds to grind the same amount of beans at the same size setting.
And here becomes the fun with the 4:6 brewing method!
These proportions show that you should divide your different pours into proportion of 40% to 60%. Now we are using 200 grams of wayer, which means that the first portion would be 80 grams, and the second - 120. These numbers would be 120 and 180 for a 2 cup dose.
The first portion defines the flavor of the coffee. You split these 40% by two so you have 40ml+40ml for the general case. Mr. Tetsu says that if you want sweeter coffee, then the first pour has to be less yhan the second, 30ml to 50ml for instance. If you want a bit more bright and sour coffee, then you make uour first pour bigger.
Note that lighter roasted coffee can be brrwed with 91-92 degree water, while darker roasts has to be brewed with cooler water, about 86-88 degrees.
For my coffee I use water at 91 degrees centigrade and tend to pour a little bit shorter first pour. This way I try to boost the sweet flavor of the coffee.
So, you make your first pour and then wait 45 seconds. Then you make your second pour and wait another 45 seconds. Third pour starts at 1:30 minutes after you started brewing the coffee.
Another note: The grind setting of this method should be medium coarse to coarse. I basicly pushed back two or three clicks my grinder, so now I grind at 22-23 size, rather than 19-20 before I started using this method.
Now comes the second portion of the water. You can pour it all at once at 1:30c but if you want stronger and more concentrated flavor, then you may divide it by three relatively similar pours of about 40 ml (or 60ml for the 2 cup brew).
I tend to divide this water by two and pour it at 1:30 and 2:15-2:20 minutes. Ideally your brewing time would be 3:30, bit it depends greatly on the beans variety and the grind setting. You can play a little bit with the grinder settings to achieve better results. If your coffee is brewed for 3:00, then you can grind a bit finer. If it finishes before 4:00 you sill be alright too, I never had issues with over extracted coffee.
After brewing is done, you can enjoy wour tasty cup of coffee!
When I started brewing coffee by the 4:6 method, I noticed a great difference in the flavor. My coffee became better extracted and more flavorful. This may be due to the improved control ove the whole process and better detail. I never ever brewed my coffee differently after I found this and tried it about three months ago.
The V60 is simple, cheap and fun to use tool. It looks like you cannot experiment with it that much, but really… you can improvise in so many aspects and try various amount of different brew recipes on it. Fun… isn’t it?
Wish you a beautiful weekend! Have a nice day and see you really soon!
Take care! Bye! ☕️
