Carlos Escobar competes — and placed 3rd in the world — in exactly this: filter coffee. Here's the house base recipe so a specialty coffee tastes in your kitchen the way it should: clean, sweet and aromatic. No tricks, just what actually moves the cup.
The essentials: a grinder (ideally burr, better than blade), a pour-over dripper like the V60 with its filters, a scale with a timer, filtered water and, of course, fresh specialty whole-bean coffee. Grinding right before brewing is what changes the aroma the most.
The base ratio is 1:16 — 1 gram of coffee for every 16 of water. For a large cup: 15 g of coffee and 240 g of water. Want it stronger, go to 1:15; softer, go to 1:17. Weighing is the difference between repeating a good cup and guessing.
For filter, a medium grind (like beach sand or coarse salt). If it tastes watery or sour, grind finer; if it tastes bitter or takes too long to drain, grind coarser. Water between 92 and 94 °C — right after it boils, wait about 30-40 seconds.
1) Rinse the filter with hot water and discard it. 2) Add the ground coffee and bloom: pour twice the weight of the coffee (about 30 g of water for 15 g of coffee) and wait 30-45 seconds for it to "breathe". 3) Pour the rest in 2-3 batches, in circles, without touching the walls. 4) The total (bloom + pours + drawdown) should land between 2:30 and 3:00 minutes. 5) Swirl gently, serve and enjoy.
Any of our filter coffees shines in a V60. To start: the FRUTTI TUTTI (sweet and easy) or, for something competition-grade, the GEISHA, the OMBLIGÓN or the SL28. To understand what each process brings to the cup, see our processing guide.
Using a blade grinder (grinds unevenly), not weighing, using boiling water (scorches the coffee), grinding too fine (clogs and turns bitter) or using stale coffee. Fix those five and you're already drinking better coffee than most.
Pick my filter coffee See the house guides →
perfectdailygrind.com · jameshoffmann.co.uk
Published by Dif≠erente · Manizales · 2026-10-27