The V60
A cone open at sixty degrees, a single large hole, spiral ribs: Hario's V60 leaves almost all the flow control to the pour. It is the reference tool of manual filter brewing for specialty coffees.
Why does the V60 have spiral ribs?
Start the scene or choose a stage. The animation simplifies the mechanism; what follows gives the details and the available references.
The grind forms a deep bed above a single large hole. The water converges toward the center and passes through a thickness of coffee.
Read the stages without animation
- The sixty-degree coneThe grind forms a deep bed above a single large hole. The water converges toward the center and passes through a thickness of coffee.
- The bloomTwice the weight of the coffee in water, thirty seconds of waiting: the grind swells and degasses. The gas escapes before the water has to pass through.
- The ribs lift the paper offBetween the paper and the wall, the ribs leave a gap where air circulates. The paper filters over its whole surface and clogs little.
- The water that bypassesSome of the water runs through this same gap, without passing through the whole bed. The cup is diluted and the bottom of the bed stays less extracted.
- The hand sets the flowPouring fast or slowly changes the height of water in the cone. The same cone gives a light cup or a richer one, in under three minutes.
To remember: The gap left by the ribs makes all the paper filter, but also lets some of the water bypass the bed: the pouring hand sets the cup.
In history: In Japan, in 2004 and 2005.
Read the full article and its sources ↓History
Hario was born in 1921 as a maker of heat-resistant laboratory glass, and its first household object was a coffee siphon (source 1). The manufacturer says the idea of the cone came from the laboratory funnel and the filter paper folded in four that were lying around the company. A first conical filter holder came out in 1980, with wire rods to hold the paper; it failed, at a time when instant coffee and electric coffee makers held the market, and when boat-shaped filter holders had reigned for more than half a century (sources 1 and 2).
The manufacturer's two sites do not agree on the date. Hario UK writes that in 2004 the designers took up the project again with resin makers and Arita potters, to recover with paper the taste of cloth-filtered coffee (source 2); the global site writes that the V60 was “finally born in 2005” (source 1). No patent was found to settle it. The name describes the shape, a V open at sixty degrees (source 1), an angle that Chemex's patent already claimed in 1941 (source 7).
The ribs are the invention. They rise to the top of the cone and lift the paper off the wall, to let the air out without hindering the swelling of the grind (source 1); their height was set by trials done by hand, according to the head of development (source 3). The V60 received Japan's Good Design award in 2007; its popularity in Japan came back from abroad, through the baristas who had adopted it (source 3), and Hario dates its worldwide spread to the world manual filter brewing championship, the World Brewers Cup, held in London in 2010 (source 2). The 2026 redesign is described in plate XV, section 05.
The motion
The manufacturer's recipe comes down to five steps: rinse the paper and warm the server, level the grind, pour twice its weight in water and wait thirty seconds, then pour the rest in three goes, each time four times the weight of coffee, in a spiral from the center without aiming at the paper, all in under three minutes (source 1). This recipe works out to a ratio of 1:14, calculated from its proportions.
The pour is the adjustment. Hario promises a light cup if one pours fast and a richer one if one pours slowly (source 1). Gagné adds that a high water column pushes the water to bypass the grind, and that pouring in small doses limits this bypass but cools the coffee slurry (source 4).
The settings
- Grindnot specified in the manufacturer's recipe (source 1)
- Dosefree, the water is counted in multiples of the weight of coffee (source 1)
- Brew ratio1:14, calculated from the manufacturer's recipe (source 1)
- Temperaturenot specified in the recipe read (source 1); Gagné heats the kettle to 99 °C for a plastic V60 (source 5)
- Timeunder 3 minutes (source 1)
- Pressurenone: gravity alone
What it has going for it
- The paper, lifted off the wall by the ribs over the whole height of the cone, offers a very large free surface, which makes the V60 very resistant to clogging (source 4).
- Flow is set by the pour: the same cone makes a light or rich cup depending on the speed of the kettle (source 1).
- The plastic version insulates the coffee slurry well, which Gagné seeks in order to hold the temperature (source 4).
- The choice of paper also sets the speed: 11.0 mL per second for a tabbed Hario, 6.9 for an untabbed Hario in the same setup (source 6).
What is held against it
- The ribs open a path for the water between the paper and the wall: this is bypass, which dilutes the cup and leaves the bottom of the bed less extracted (sources 4 and 5).
- The finer the grind, the greater the share of water that bypasses: one can hardly grind fine without getting a weak, astringent cup (source 4).
- The result depends a great deal on the hand and the kettle, hence on the cup from one to the next.
What it gives in the cup
The V60's paper stops the grounds and the oils, and the cup comes out clean. Like any percolation, it extracts with constantly renewed water; Gagné's simulation concludes that a percolation overrepresents compounds that extract quickly, whereas an immersion reflects more of the composition of the bean, the author cautioning that the size of the effect is not measured (source 8).
At equal slurry temperature, Gagné finds his V60 cup almost without sweetness where the flat bottom gives a sweeter, less sour cup; he attributes it to a more even flow through the whole bed of the flat bottom (source 5). No yield or concentration value specific to the V60 is given here for lack of a source that publishes it.
Anecdotes
The sources for this sheet
- Hario, “The origin of the V60,” “History of the V60 transparent dripper” and “V60 basic recipes” (according to the manufacturer), accessed October 21, 2026 · online · secondary
- Hario UK, “Birth of the Hario V60,” April 3, 2018 (according to the manufacturer) · online · secondary
- Newswitch (Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun), article on Hario's development department, March 18, 2021 · online · secondary
- Jonathan Gagné, “The four rules of optimal coffee percolation,” Coffee ad Astra, March 4, 2021 · online · secondary
- Jonathan Gagné, “Brewing with the Fellow Stagg [X] dripper,” Coffee ad Astra, December 9, 2020 · online · secondary
- Jonathan Gagné, “An in-depth analysis of coffee filters,” Coffee ad Astra, August 4, 2019 · online · secondary
- Peter Schlumbohm, US patent 2,241,368 “Filtering device,” granted May 6, 1941, claim 4 · online · primary
- Jonathan Gagné, “Why do percolation and immersion coffee taste so different?” Coffee ad Astra, July 16, 2019 · online · secondary