Well to be honest, this problem has been occurring for quite some time already and it really starts to get very irritating. Of course, I still enjoy my morning filter coffee, but it’s not the same… so where did all of this start?
I remember having my new coffee order about two months ago and I purchased Hario V60 filter papers, because I was short on them. They came in a different package, but they are still original Hario papers. I noticed that brewing my filter coffee was getting very slow and I really didn’t have the chance to brew my coffee in the desired 2:30-3:00 minutes.
My brewing routine haven’t changed much. I also started to grind about 1-2 grams of coffee before adding the brewing dose. This way I was eliminating a bit of the fine ground beans, because most of the time we mainly grind for espresso. Some of the stuck fines would then mix with the coarser ground beans and the grind profile will be far from perfect.
After that, I pre wash my paper, so that I eliminate unpleasant paper taste in my coffee. After filter is washed, it’s time to grind the beans. For single doses I go for about 15 grams of coffee.
As it’s seen from the photos, coffee is coarse enough and it’s close to French press grinding level. After my coffee started brewing slow, I adjusted the size to more coarse, to reduce bitter flavors. It works, but not entirely. Although the coarser grinds and pre grinding some beans, I still need a lot more than 3 minutes to finish my brewing process.
Today, at 3:15 minutes the situation was like this:
There were just some drops coming under the V60 and the filtering process was almost completely stuck. The seconds we’re passing but the water was staying on top of the coffee.
It was going… and going… and going… And at 5:27 it was finally over! What a success!
The coffee really does lose some of the fruitiness and the pleasant flavor and some bitter notes start to appear. I still enjoy it, but not to the extent that is desired. So what does really ruin my filtering routine?
I did some research, both in google and YouTube. It turns out that (almost) everything depends on the papers that you are using, and some slow papers can really ruin the whole experience. But… after all I’m using the same Hario papers all the time. Then, where is the problem?
A video in YouTube, published by James Hoffman shows the different Hario V60 papers and the differences between them.
It turns out that except for Japan, where they have two factories producing V60 papers, Hario has a European factory in the Netherlands. And although the filters look identical, they have very different properties. The two Japanese varieties are more similar, but the European made does brew coffee a lot slower. My filters are from The Netherlands, so this explains why my coffee brews so slow. I wonder if they have different batches, with the properties of the papers varying a bit? Maybe yes…
The solution?
In the online shop where I’m buying my coffee and papers from, there are two varieties of the Hario papers. One of them are these that I bought last time, which are also a bit cheaper, and the other variety are papers made in Japan. Although they are a bit more expensive, the difference is not that much. About $1 for 100 papers means that every paper will be 1 cent more expensive. This is a no brainer! I’m really buying these with my next purchase and I’ll hope that this will solve my problems completely.
At least the setting at home is very warm and nothing can spoil my peaceful morning.
Christmas is getting closer… I feel that my excitement grows with the kids’ one. Stay warm (at least people who currently have winter season in their country!) and have a nice weekend.
See ya!
