When you walk into a specialty coffee shop and they have ‘V60’ on the menu, you automatically know that things have to be really bad for them to not make good coffee.
The V60 is to filter coffee what the Bialetti is to the Italian coffee maker: a symbol, a declaration of intentions and a ‘gadget’ with a design so perfect that it has not had to be modified in its 20 years of life.
Until now.
Hario launched the original V60 around 2004 in a show of how a simple and functional design could be perfect for any level. Simply put, it is a cone with a 60 degree inclination (hence the name) that can be placed on top of your jug, any jug or even a cup.
In that cone we place a paper filter, add the coffee, hot water and the coffee solution flows to the container.
It is simple and came to solve the problem that Hario had detected in the percolation coffee makers that dominated in the 80s: those typical ones that many of our grandmothers have at home and that are the ones that appear in any American series in which the coffee stayed there passively soaking until it came out due to gravity and the jet black liquid was deposited in the jug.
The classic V60
It was not what best extracted all the nuances of the coffee and Hario implemented three design ideas:
- The cone at 60 degrees so that the water tends to the center, lengthening the contact time without the need to create a long-lasting ‘pond’.
- A single exit hole which made it easy to make coffee for non-expert users, but also gave a lot of control possibilities to the expert user. By restricting the water channel, pouring speed, exposure time or grinding, different “recipes” can be created.
- Spiral striations on the cone. These “ribs” have a lot of technology behind them because they serve to release air between the filter and the wall, avoiding the suction effect of the paper and causing the filter to expand as the coffee releases the product.
The translation is that Hario designed a coffee maker that combined simplicity, complication capacity for experts and that rib design that was very well thought out to facilitate a relatively quick extraction while being able to extract all the nuances of the coffee.
It was so perfect that, over these 20 years, it really hasn’t changed beyond different sizes for the cone or the plastics and glass that came after the original Japanese porcelain version. There were some little problems and limitations and they released an accessory, the Hario Switch, but the most important thing of all is that the V60 was a good, versatile and very, very economical coffee maker that, as we say, there was no need to touch.
And, then, Hario… touched her.
The V60 Neo
In what seems like a clear “find the differences” exercise, Hario introduced the Hario V60 Neo at the end of last year. If you are not very involved in the coffee world and the new one seems the same as the old one, I have to tell you that the Neo was a tsunami that stirred up coffee content creators.
It was the first time that Hario redesigned the conethe core of the V60, and has done so in two ways: design and material.
The new V60
The material issue is the easiest to explain. The Neo is manufactured in a resin called ‘tritan’a plastic that retains great transparency, is resistant to both heat and impacts and has properties that make it very good in an essential issue for the most enthusiasts: very good thermal retention.
This allows the temperature to remain stable during extraction so that the processes are more constant and it is easier to replicate a good coffee. The second change is the one that has drawn the most attention is a new geometry. From the larger “ribs,” Hario transitions to 72 microribs at the top that converge into nine channels at the base.
The explanation is that these grooves will now guide the water much more uniformly, while the nine exit grooves ensure a clearer path towards the hole, minimizing the dreaded channeling. This thing about the channels is interesting because in any coffee maker, the water passes through the coffee and what it looks for is the least resistance in its path.
If it encounters little resistance in one point, it will go that way, failing to go through other areas and, therefore, not extracting the solution that it could extract from the entire coffee. With the new design, what Hario suggests is that these channels will be minimized while we will be able to achieve a more uniform extraction.
It seems like a lie, but there is a lot of technique in a cone that looks the same as the one from 20 years ago, but that makes sense if we look at the narrative of a brand that, it claims, has been working on prototypes and playing with fluid dynamics for two years.
Is she a motorcycle dealer? Well… I don’t know. I have the original V60 and I am clear that my skills do not reach the point of thinking that those microribs are what I was missing to finish making the perfect coffee at home. I have not the slightest interest in this V60 Neo and, although it makes sense from the point of view of the very specific needs of a tiny niche of baristas, At home I don’t think it’s something different..
In fact, what interests me most about the new V60 is that they have kept the price very similar, so it remains one of the most affordable coffee makers with which to prepare a very good specialty coffee at home and, above all, it shows that a simple design, even if it can be intricate with micro-rib technology, triumphs if from the first moment it is a product that makes sense and that is created for something very specific without the need to complicate things.
I look at the V60 like Bialetti’s mocha or Braun’s orange juicer: simple products that simply work. And if you’re wondering how important more or less ribs are, there are REAL DISCUSSIONS on the matter.
Images | Hario
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