I’m using a Fellow Stag and a metal V60 with a fabric filter. I do a 1:16 ratio (16g of coffee and 256g of water). Generally I’ll place the V60 on the Stag while it brings the water up to a boil in order to heat it up. Then I’ll saturate the fabric filter with the hot water. I’ll use 212F water, but after pouring the water over the grounds, my instant read thermometer will read 195F. It seems weird that despite doing everything in my power to preheat all the equipment, the water drops a lot in temperature as soon as it hits the grounds. Any tips to tackle this problem?
Since the coffee grounds are at ambient temperature, there is no way to prevent a temp drop when you first pour over.
Don’t worry though, it happens with every single brew method. The methods specify the water temp that you pour/brew with, not the outlet water temp.
Sounds like you’re doing enough to preheat your brewing eqpt, but keep in mind if you wet the filter then let it sit for even a minute, it will be cold. Make sure your v60 is nice and hot, that will retain temp much better than your filter.
Overall it sounds like you’re keeping an eye on some of the right things, just don’t worry so much about outlet temp so long as you’re preheating as much as possible. Cheers!
Do a good long pour of boiling water in the v60. Make sure it’s hot to the touch. This won’t eliminate temp drop but at least help.
Another question: is it a glass v60 or plastic? The plastic ones work much better at keeping the temp counterintuitively.
It’s actually metal. I figured the metal shouldn’t sap much energy from the water since it doesn’t have much thermal mass
Plastic tends to be the best, imo. I don’t even really worry to heavily about preheating when using my plastic v60. But if j. Brewing with my Stagg XF, I absolutely place the Stagg XF on top of my Stagg kettle as well while it gets up to temp. Though the Stagg XF does have the benefit of being double walled stainless steel, so it does a great job of keeping temp.
I’d honestly love to see someone measure temp drop of metal vs plastic V60s. Although metal conducts heat more easily (i.e. it “takes” heat from the water more easily), it’s thermal capacity is lower than plastic, glass, and ceramic. In my mind, preheating the metal should be less of a concern because it takes less energy to bring the metal up to temp. This is all theoretical though. Maybe I’ll meet someone with a plastic V60 one day and ask to borrow it for this exact test.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The drop in temperature is normal and probably pretty consistent, so you can adjust your recipe to it and not end up with varying results. Let taste guide you, not just numbers!
You can microwave the beans to heat them up. (But I don’t recommend doing so.)
