What Makes V60 Stand Out Among All Coffee Drippers?

If you're a coffee enthusiast who's just starting out with pour-over coffee and you ask an experienced expert for a practical, easy-to-use, and attractive pour-over dripper recommendation, there's a high chance they'll suggest you buy a V60.

V60, a universally beloved affordable dripper that everyone who uses it praises, can be said to be one of the essential tools that every pour-over coffee enthusiast must have. As a regular feature in FrontStreet Coffee's store production, we use it hundreds if not thousands of times per year, making us quite experienced users of the V60. So, with so many dripper styles on the market, why has the V60 alone become the "crowd favorite" of the pour-over world?

Who Invented the V60?

Hario, the company that designed the V60 dripper, was founded in 1921 in Tokyo, Japan. As a well-known local glassware manufacturer, they initially focused on designing and producing heat-resistant glass instruments and equipment for scientific research institutions. The heat-resistant glass sharing pot, often used with pour-over coffee, is one of Hario's popular products.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Hario officially entered the household equipment field, with the siphon pot being their first coffee extraction device. At that time, slow immersion methods were the mainstream extraction form in the coffee market, such as Melitta drippers, flannel filters, and siphon pots—either with too small pore sizes or overly complicated brewing steps, and generally time-consuming. Therefore, Hario hoped to create a brewing filter that was simple to operate and had a faster flow rate.

In 1964, Hario's designers began experimenting with laboratory funnels for coffee extraction, but these were not used for commercial purposes, and related records are scarce. In the 1980s, Hario developed a paper filter dripper (similar in shape to Chemex, with a funnel-shaped filter in the upper part connected to a container in the lower part), which began production in 1980.

In 2004, Hario redesigned the prototype of the V60, making the dripper's shape closer to the one we're familiar with today. It was named for its unique 60° cone angle and "V" shape, and was officially launched to the market a year later. On the HARIO official website, we can find the prototype of this dripper: a conical ceramic dripper inner wall with 12 toothpicks neatly attached to simulate drainage channels.

The Extraction Philosophy of the V60 Dripper

1. Compared to other drippers, the conical shape and 60° angle design means that when brewing with a V60, water must flow to the center before dripping into the lower pot, extending the contact area between water and coffee grounds, thereby allowing for full extraction of aroma and flavor.

2. Its signature single large aperture allows water to flow unimpeded. The liquid flow rate largely depends on the brewer's ability to control the flow and directly reflects in the coffee's flavor. If your pouring habit is heavy or fast, delicious substances may not have enough time to release from the coffee before extraction ends, resulting in coffee that will likely taste thin and bland. Therefore, to brew coffee with good flavor and high sweetness using a V60, you indeed need to practice and adjust your pouring technique to better express the balance of acidity and sweetness in coffee.

3. On the side walls, multiple raised ribs of the spiral pattern vary in length and run throughout the entire dripper. Firstly, they prevent the filter paper from fitting tightly against the dripper, creating enough space for air circulation to maximize the water absorption and expansion of coffee particles. Secondly, the spiral groove design also allows the flushing water flow to compress the coffee bed, creating richer layers while extending the water's path, avoiding under-extraction caused by the large aperture.

What Made Everyone Start Paying Attention to the V60 Dripper?

Before the new millennium, the coffee market was dominated by medium-dark roast as the mainstream roasting direction. Coffee brewing also emphasized expressions of richness, body, high sweetness, and aftertaste, as well as caramelized flavors derived from dark roasts, such as chocolate, maple, nuts, and vanilla. With the arrival of the third wave of coffee, people began pursuing terroir flavors, such as Ethiopia's white floral notes and Kenya's berry acidity. Coffee roasting began to shift from dark to light, and flavor tasting also transitioned from rich and sweet to delicate acidic aromas.

Before the emergence of V60, immersion-based slow extraction methods made coffee flavors present overall characteristics of roundness, thickness, balance, and sweetness, but struggled to express the floral and fruity aromas and light acidity of some light-roasted beans. For example, slow drippers like Melitta and KONO focus on rich flavor profiles. The V60's fast extraction characteristics恰好 allow coffee to obtain more three-dimensional aroma and acidity, thereby presenting certain delicate flavors.

Among V60s, Which Material Brews Coffee Better?

Nowadays, there are various materials of V60 drippers on the market. Besides the resin material that FrontStreet Coffee particularly favors, there are also ceramic, glass, copper, stainless steel, and other versions. Each material not only affects the dripper's appearance and weight but also produces subtle extraction differences in heat conductivity during brewing, though the structural design remains unchanged.

The reason why FrontStreet Coffee "uniquely loves" the resin version of the Hario V60 is, firstly, that the resin material effectively prevents heat dissipation. Secondly, in standardized industrial mass production, resin material is the easiest to shape and has the smallest margin of error. Besides, who wouldn't like a dripper that's not easy to break, right?

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FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)
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