If you're a beginner and want a coffee veteran who's been in the scene for a long time to recommend a practical, easy-to-use pour-over dripper, then Front Street believes the dripper they'd recommend to you is most likely a product launched over 20 years ago—the V60.Even though new drippers keep coming out every year, to this day, no dripper has been able to shakeV60's position in the pour-over world. If we were to explain why the V60 is so popular, Front Street believes it can absolutely be described as "possessing a myriad of virtues in one," because it's both practical and affordable!The company that invented the V60 is a Japanese company founded in Tokyo in 1921. Its main production was glassware, so the company took a name meaning "King of Glass"—Hario.In its early days, Hario produced heat-resistant glass instruments and equipment for scientific research institutions, until the 1940s, when coffee began to gain popularity in Japan. Hario seized the opportunity and started designing and making coffee-related equipment. And the siphon brewer was the first coffee device they produced.Because for a long period at the time, "slow immersion extraction" was the mainstream of the coffee market. No matter the device, most were developed around the idea of letting coffee steep longer and producing a fuller-bodied taste. Drippers from brands like Kono,Kalita, and others were outstanding representatives of this. So Hario began to have a creative idea—to make a pour-over dripper different from the conventional, with a faster flow rate and a completely different experience.With this idea in mind, Hario began designing the dripper. After several revisions, a dripper named the V60 was officially released in 2004.It could be said that the arrival of this dripper happened to catch the tailwind of the times. At that time, mainstream coffee roasting was, under the influence of theThird Wave, shifting from dark to light. People's pursuit of coffee flavor was no longer just the full-bodied sweetness of dark roasts, but also the delicate acidity and aroma that can showcase a region's character.Yet most drippers at the time had extraction effects focused on producing a full-bodied taste and balanced flavor profile, unable to express well the flavor layers of light-roasted coffee, which left a large gap in the market for drippers suited to light roasts. The V60 happened to be launched during this period and successfully filled this gap, so it caused a tremendous response as soon as it was released and became widely popular.The Advantages of the V60 DripperThe success of the V60 is mainly due to its multiple revolutionary designs for the time, such as the larger spout and the long, numerousdrainage ribs, and these designs, combined with the dripper's conical body, together built a classic for the ages.The V60's cone angle:The reason the V60 is called the V60 is that its main body is a conical structure—from the side it looks like a big "V," and the angle between the two sides is 60°C, so it was named V60. We can understand it as a conical dripper with an angle of 60°C.Because a conical dripper's structure goes from narrow at the bottom to wide at the top, it allows coffee grounds to build up a thicker coffee bed, and at the same time each layer of the bed has a different cross-sectional area, from large at the top to small at the bottom.And this kind of coffee bed structure can make the brewed coffee more layered, because each layer of coffee grounds receives different extraction, and the amount of dissolved substances differs. So compared with扇形 and cake drippers, conical drippers can brew coffee with more layers, though relatively speaking, the coffee's taste won't be as balanced as what those two produce.The V60's large spout:The V60 has a large-diameter spout! The number and size of a dripper's spout is one of the main factors determining the flow rate during brewing. Because the V60's spout diameter is relatively large, its flow rate is relatively fast.A fast flow rate can prevent excessive soaking during the extraction of coffee grounds, which allows the substances extracted from the grounds to differ—simply put, it further increases the coffee's layering.And because brewing techniques and pouring methods can also affect the flow rate, a fast-flow dripper can, by comparison, offer more varied ways to play. Simply by adjusting parameters and pouring methods, the V60 can easily adapt to all kinds of different extraction plans.The V60's drainage ribs:It could be said that the V60's most iconic feature is none other than the long, protruding spiral drainage ribs covering the entire cup.The protruding ribs can support the filter paper and form air pockets! The role of these air pockets is to allow the coffee bed to degas better during brewing and increase the flow rate of the coffee liquid. And what sets it apart from most drippers is that, because these drainage ribs are not straight lines but winding spiral lines, besides degassing they can also play a guiding role!The main subject being guided is the hot water. During extraction, the liquid in contact with the ribs can pass through more coffee grounds, which allows the hot water to extract from more targets and dissolve more flavor substances.Combining the above three points, we can see that the V60's brewing advantages are "fast flow rate," "brewed coffee with rich layering," and "more varied ways to play." Even now, these advantages are still not outdated, as we can glimpse from the frequent use by champions at the World Coffee Brewing Championships.And the V60 dripper has many different materials to choose from! Such as ceramic, resin, glass, metal, and so on. Drippers of different materials have different extraction advantages, influenced by the material's specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity. Front Street has covered this in detail in previous articles, so I won't go into too much detail here.And among all the materials, what Front Street likes most is none other than the resin dripper. Setting aside extraction advantages, the resin V60 dripper has two advantages that other materials find hard to have. One is that it's drop-resistant! Even if you accidentally knock the dripper off the table onto the floor, it won't necessarily shatter into pieces;
The other is that it's affordable—the price of the resin version of the V60 will hardly make you feel any burden at all, making it very suitable for beginners to use when they first start exploring! Even if it later gets broken or you abandon the hobby, you won't feel reluctant because of the dripper's price.So in summary, we can see why the V60 is still so popular to this day. Not only very practical, but also affordable.But if we're talking about its drawbacks... it still has some! If a beginner wants to use it to brew a good cup of coffee, a certain amount of practice is needed. Because the coffee bed the V60 builds up is thicker and the flow rate is faster, it demands more attention to brewing technique and coordination between parameters than other shapes of drippers. For beginners, this requires more exploration and practice to fully bring out the V60's characteristics. Well then, practice slowly~ The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
