Most V60 advice online is either a competition routine with six pours and a timer, or so vague it is useless. This is the middle: one recipe, repeatable on a Tuesday morning, and the one-step diagnosis for when it goes wrong.
The numbers
15 g coffee to 250 g water. That is a 1:16.6 ratio. Write it on your grinder if you need to. Scaling up: 22 g to 365 g for a large mug, 30 g to 500 g for two.
Water at 94-96C. Boiling is too hot and scorches a light roast. If you do not have a variable kettle, boil and wait forty seconds.
Grind medium-fine — like table salt, finer than you would use for a French press, coarser than espresso.
Why yours tastes sour
This is the single most common problem and most people fix it backwards.
Sour, sharp, thin, empty finish means under-extracted. You did not pull enough out of the coffee. Grind finer, or pour more slowly so the water sits with the grounds longer. Counterintuitively, sour does not mean the coffee is too strong — it means you did not extract enough.
Bitter, drying, harsh, lingering means over-extracted. Grind coarser or pour faster.
Change one thing at a time, and change the grind before anything else. Grind size moves the cup more than any other variable, and chasing water temperature while your grind is wrong will teach you nothing.
The thing nobody mentions about UAE tap water
Most of what comes out of a tap here is desalinated and very low in minerals, or it is hard from a building tank. Neither is good for filter coffee. Coffee needs some mineral content to extract properly — brew with pure RO water and the cup tastes flat and hollow no matter how good your technique is. Bottled local water in the 70-150 ppm range is a reliable fix and costs almost nothing.
Ingredients
- 15 g coffee, ground medium-fine
- 250 g water at 94-96C
- 1 V60 paper filter, size 02
- A scale with a timer
Method
-
Rinse the filter
Fold the seam, sit it in the dripper and pour hot water through it. This kills the paper taste and warms the cone. Throw the rinse water away. -
Dose and level
Add 15 g of coffee and tap the dripper flat so the bed is even. An uneven bed channels water and ruins the extraction before you start. -
Bloom at 45 g
Start the timer and pour 45 g of water over all the grounds. It will swell and bubble — that is CO2 leaving. Wait until 0:45. -
Pour to 150 g
Pour in slow concentric circles from the centre outward, stopping short of the paper. Aim to reach 150 g by about 1:15. -
Pour to 250 g
Pour the remaining water the same way, finishing around 1:45. Let it draw down. You want the cup finished between 2:45 and 3:15. -
Taste and adjust
Too fast and sour? Grind finer. Too slow and bitter? Grind coarser. One change at a time.
What you need from CurioBox
Questions people ask
There is no universal number — every grinder is different. Aim for the texture of table salt and let the brew time tell you: 2:45 to 3:15 total means you are close.
You can, but it is genuinely hard. A normal kettle dumps water, which digs holes in the bed and channels. A gooseneck is the single most worthwhile piece of pour-over gear after the dripper itself.
Both are the same cone and both work. Ours cost less per brew. Hario's are slightly thinner and drain a touch faster, which some people prefer for lighter roasts.
A filter roast, not an espresso roast. Light and bright coffees show the most in a V60 — Guji Hambela is a forgiving start, Rwanda Nyampinga if you like it clean and tea-like.
