How I make filter coffee at home

In this post I explain how I make filter coffee for 1-3 people at home. I'll tell you how to get started cheaply, what coffee to buy and show you my method of brewing filter coffee.

What coffee maker to buy?

I recommend you start with a V60 2 cup brewer. It's a cone shaped thing that goes on top of your jug/cup. You put a filter paper inside it, add the coffee and pour over hot water to brew coffee. It can make up to 600ml of coffee at once (note on this later). I normally make 250ml for me.

I bought this V60 kit below on amazon for a great price. It comes with a glass caraffe, V60 brewer and filters. It's about £13. Which I think is easily the best deal anywhere online. It works fantasic once you learn how to use it.

What coffee to buy

If you want to drink amazing black filter coffee like they make in cafes you need to buy nice coffee. Shit coffee beans make shit coffee.

Go to a good coffee shop that makes filter coffee. Most will have 2/3 flasks of filter coffee ready made. Ask to try all of them. You might feel a bit awkward doing this but don't. They are almost always super happy to let you try them and even chat to you for ages about what coffee you like.

When you find one you like buy some of those exact coffee beans. You now know exactly how it tastes when it's brewed properly.

After a while you'll start to learn what coffee's you like. I now know I love almost all washed ethiopian coffees. Right now I order my coffee from St Martins Coffee Roasters. I first tried it in my local cafe and loved it. I get a 1KG bag every month for £22! That is a really good price. You'll typically pay around £10 for a 250g bag.

Grinding coffee

This is hardest thing about making filter coffee at home. The grind size you use matters as well as the quality of the grinder.

The cheapest grinder I recommend is Q2 heptagonal from 1zespresso. It's £95. It performs similar to the Comandante C40 which costs £250. It's what I use.

If you don't want to commit to buying an expensive grinder have the coffee shop grind it for you. It won't stay fresh for as long. And you won't be able to adjust your grind, but it will be a high quality grind.

Don't buy a cheap rubbish grinder. Nothing good will come from it.

A warning...

I'll be honest and tell you I had a hard time learning how to make good tasting coffee with the V60. I normally use an aeropress which is far more forgiving. But I was going camping and put myself in charge of making coffee for all my friends. I needed a coffee maker that could do multiple cups at once so I bought a V60.

I then spent 3 days practicing to make coffee with it. I poured about 2 litres of coffee down the drain. But I figured it out and now do love it and use it everyday. I wrote this post to hopefully save somebody some time, coffee and hassle.

My big problem was that the brews were taking too long. Over 10 minutes. And recipes online all say for a 400-500ml brew it should take around 5 mins or less. I kept making the grind size coarser and coarser but it still took too long, and kept clogging up. I reached a point where my grind size was way out of the normal range.

It turns out the problem was the filter papers. This sounds so dumb to me, but the filters are made in a few different factories in the world. One in the Netherlands and one in Japan. And the ones from Japan rock and the ones from the Netherlands suck ass. So I searched amazon for the special made in Japan ones (they come in a box of 40). If they didn't work I was going to return it. But they did work and my brew times were much faster.

I've since run out of my artisan japanese filters and tried the shit ones again. For brews 250ml in size they work okay. But any bigger and it's a bad time.

I recommend you never tell anyone about the japanese vs netherland filters thing. I get a strong feeling is bad bad bad conversation for 99% of the planet.

The recipe

When you youtube V60 recipe James Hoffman is the top result. But I had a bad time with his recipe. I found another recipe by a Lance Hedrick. In the video he says for most people his recipe works much better and I agree. I tried it and instantly tasted the difference.

My actual recipe is as followed:

• 12g of coffee (approx 1100 micron size, 44 clicks on Q2)
• 250g of water at 96C
• lance hedrick one pour technique (video below)

For 400ml is do:

• 24g of coffee (approx 1200 grind size, 48 clicks)
• 400g of water at 96C
• same technique

Conclusion

I love making filter coffee at home now. It was a pain in the ass to begin with but I'm happy I can make a big pot of delicious coffee and share it with people.

Did you find this helpful? Leave a comment because I'd love to hear from you.