V60 vs Aeropress

I love my Aeropress. Genuinely it’s one of the greatest inventions of all time. You take come ground coffee, and it makes some truly delicious brewed coffee. It’s a no brainer, and it’s awesome to use.

I did read up about this nice piece of kit called a V60. It was for drip coffee. I thought I may as well give it a go since it was really cheap to start off with. My friend at Indy Coffee was having a virtual tasting so I bought one of his kits along with a V60 02 to try out. It was a pretty cheap piece of kit and rather well made (dare I say better made than the Aeropress).

I started experimenting with the V60 a little bit, and diving a little bit deeper into small tweaks here and there… and the next thing you know I started tasting coffee in a much different way…

Aeropress - What’s it good for?

The Aeropress is a preferred piece of kit for anyone and everyone. It’s simple to set up, and the coffee you brew from it is delicious.

My go to recipe is as follows:

• Inverted
• 16.5g coffee (medium fine ground - between 20-22 clicks on Comandante)
• 30g water and swirl
• 220g water (total weight including boom = 250g)
• 2 minute brew
• 40 second press
  
  

Depends on the mood and the coffee, but I generally use a metal filter. Paper if I want a bit cleaner of a cup.

I started off with the Aeropress and it’s still one of my favourite ways to make coffee. In my opinion - it’s much more forgiving and you can make truly delicious coffee without much faff. This is pretty much where the Aeropress truly excels. If you love bold coffees, something with decent body, and something easy that’s repeatable - the Aeropress is definitely for you.

V60 - What’s it good for?

I follow James Hoffman’s recipe for the V60 brews. It’s a good overall recipe/technique and that’s pretty much how I learned to make drip coffee. Hoffman is a genius so it’s always going to be a good time making coffee this way.

So as a reminder - his instructions (a lot more in depth) that I nicked from James Hoffman’s Youtube:

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Brew ratio: 60 g/L (e.g. 30 g per 500 mL)
Grind size: medium fine
Temperature: the hotter, the better (especially with lighter roasts)

- Grind 30 g of coffee
- Rinse paper filter with water just off the boil

This removes any paper taste and preheats the brewer

- Add coffee grounds to V60
- Create well in the middle of the grounds

This helps to evenly saturate all the grounds during the blooming phase

- Start timer
t = 0:00

- Add 2x coffee weight = 60 g of bloom water
Don’t use more than 3x coffee weight

- Swirl the coffee slurry until evenly mixed
The aim is to wet all the coffee grounds by evenly mixing bloom water and coffee
Swirling is better than using a spoon

- Bloom for up to 45 s
This allows CO2 to escape which will improve extraction

t = 0:45
- Add water aiming for 60% of total brew weight = 300 g in the next 30 s

This phase is critical!
Since you already added 60 g bloom water, add 240 g in 30 s (flow rate = 8 g/s)
A full V60 is good to maintain high temperatures

t = 1:15
P.S.: Don’t worry about pouring directly onto the V60 filter

- Add water aiming for 100% of the total brew weight = 500 g in the next 30 s
Since you already added 300 g water, add 200 g in 30 s (flow rate = 6.66 g/s)
Poor a little slower than in the first phase, not too aggressively

t = 1:45
- Stir 1x clockwise and 1x anticlockwise with spoon

This knocks off grounds from side wall
- Allow V60 to drain a little
- Give V60 a gentle swirl

This helps obtain a flat coffee bed at bottom of V60 for even extraction
- Let brew drawdown

The higher the temperature, the faster the drawdown
Filter paper also affects drawdown
Aim to finish drawdawn by t = 3:30

The result - the coffee is very BRIGHT. That’s the best way I can describe it, it’s just incredibly bright, delicious, smooth coffee. Lots of juicy acidity and sweet.

The V60 brews some of the most kick ass, bright coffee I’ve ever tasted, and is just lovely. Another nice part - because it’s paper filter, it’s a very clean cup of coffee: basically no silt at the bottom of any cup.

If you like sweet, crisp, bright coffee - the V60 is for you.

Downside of Aeropress

While it makes truly awesome coffee, I’ve found it’s not as great for brightness. Don’t get me wrong, it can rock my peaberry coffees well, but I find that a metal filter gets the best taste that way. Using a metal filter with Aeropress will get you an awesome coffee, but there will be silt/sediment.

I’ve not tried this but I’d say this can be avoided by using double paper filters, at that point I’d say the oils would be completely stripped out, along with some of the flavour.

This is a small downside, but there’s more parts to Aeropress. Not a huge amount, but at some point the suction will have to be replaced. With a V60 - those things pretty much last forever. And yes those parts are readily replaceable, but sometimes I don’t want the faff.

Downside of V60

This thing sometimes is down to chemistry. The water temperature is right, grind size right, pouring right… then the coffee is great. Otherwise it can be a bit of a faff. With an Aeropress, all you really need is a kettle, it’s forgiving with grind size etc. A V60 - to get the best out of it, you need to invest in a gooseneck kettle.

With an Aeropress you can make delicious coffee with minimal kit. With a V60, you do need scales, timer, gooseneck kettle. There’s a lot more involved in making a coffee. Beginners will also find that you need to experiment a bit to get the right balance. It can be quite easy to under/over extract coffee with a V60.

This also brings me to the point of travel friendly. While in concept - you could get away with travelling on a v60, you really need to have all the kit to make it possible. An Aeropress is best if you travel a lot and can’t stand shit coffee.

Conclusion

It comes down to the coffee that you like to drink personally. I love very bold coffee which I feel can shine on the Aeropress. For the times I have single origin peaberry which can be quite sweet, and have that lovely acidity to it, I’ll use the V60 mainly because they accentuate the notes of it for me.

I’ve found a V60 technique that’s very repeatable and yields some tasty, sweet coffee, that works very well with the bright coffees that I like. It’s the technique from April Coffee, and it’s so simple that you don’t even need a fancy kettle to do it. I’ll put a link to the technique here

This ultimately depends on a few things. The best conclusion I can give you all is buy both. They’re fantastic for what they do. If you want something that will take the faff out of the V60 chemistry, but also gives you the longer brews - a Clever Dripper is equally as good, and they are cheap. No chemistry, fancy kettle etc needed. You just need your ground coffee and some hot water.

The big conclusion really is your use case. From this perspective, will you be likely travelling and brewing coffee away from home? Will you be going backwards and forwards, and always needing great coffee everywhere you go?

Either way, there’s genuinely no reason why you can’t have both of them provided you have the room for the kit. If you want my honest opinion, the Aeropress is easier, and my go to for coffee that I love. If I had to choose only one item, I’d choose the Aeropress for the simplicity and repeatability of kick ass coffee each time.

I’ll say this, if you’re making coffee for more than one person, then honestly the V60 is hands down easier/better. You can make multiple coffee Aeropress, but it’s rather tricky to do, and doesn’t always dilute that well.