What’s the Best Coffee to Use in a Pour Over Cone (Hario V60)?

Pour over coffee brewing relies on precision and consistency to produce a delicious cup. Unlike immersion methods like French press, pour over highlights the inherent qualities of the coffee bean and its origins rather than the flavors imparted by the roasting process.

To get the most nuanced and flavorful cup from your pour over routine, start by choosing coffee beans with an origin and processing method that matches your taste preferences.

In this guide, I’ll break down how to select the best coffee beans for pour over brewing, like in a Hario V60 cone, to get the best cup possible suited to your taste.

What Kind of Coffee Can You Use in a Pour Over Cone?

First off, you can use beans with practically any origin, processing method, and roast profile for pour over brewing. Light roasts tend to be the best, but medium and dark roasts have their place in the world of pour over coffee, too.

What’s most important is grinding the beans fresh to the ideal consistency. This allows for proper and consistent extraction during brewing, which is crucial for great taste.

As for roast level, I personally find light and some medium roasts to be ideal for pour over brewing. Beans roasted for a shorter time maintain more complex fruit, floral, and acidic notes inherent to their origin and processing. Since pour over accentuates these types of flavors, light roasts are a natural fit.

But…every coffee drinker is different, so you need to find what works for you. Let’s take a look at how different roast levels fare in pour over cones so that you can dial in your ideal pour over coffee.

Light Roast Coffee for Pour Over Brewing

I’m a huge advocate of light roast coffee beans for pour over brewing. During the roasting process, naturally occurring sugars, amino acids, and aromatic compounds within the green coffee beans undergo complex chemical reactions. This transforms the beans from green to yellow, and then to different shades of brown, and it develops the signature coffee flavors and aromas we love.

Light roasts, sometimes labeled City, City+, or New England roast, are roasted for a shorter period of time compared to darker roasts and reach a lower internal bean temperature. A light roast might be roasted for just 8-10 minutes total to reach a temperature of between 380 and 400 degrees (F). This preserves many of the delicate aromatic compounds inherent to the coffee’s origin, like esters, aldehydes, and phenolic acids.

Specifically, fruity and floral esters are abundant in light roasts, lending notes of berries, apple, citrus, jasmine, and honeysuckle. Acids like chlorogenic, quinic, malic, and citric acid also remain high, providing a bright, tart snap. And the amino acid content stays stable, allowing for a silky mouthfeel.

Meanwhile, sugars don’t fully caramelize, and the Maillard reaction between amino acids and sugars is limited. This means concentrations of darker, roasty compounds like pyrazines and phenols develop less. Light roasts provide a crisp, nuanced cup highlighting the bean’s inherent fruitiness and brightness.

Since pour over brewing tends to accentuate these delicate aromatic compounds, light roasts are a perfect match, in my opinion. The tropical fruitiness pops, the florals bloom, and the acidity delights the palate. Meanwhile, the flavors imparted during roasting take a backseat. Light roasts truly let the terroir and origin character shine through.

Some phenomenal light roast coffees I’d recommend trying in your pour over cone include the following:

Costa Rica La Minita Tarrazu: Tastes of lime, melon, and honeysuckle with silky body
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere: Intense floral and citrus notes with bergamot and jasmine
Guatemala Huehuetenango: Bright and complex with apple, lime, and milk chocolate

Medium Roast Coffee for Pour Over Brewing

Medium roast coffee beans, sometimes labeled Full City or Full City+, strike a pleasant balance between light and dark roasts. They spend a bit more time in the roaster compared to light roasts, usually 10-12 minutes, and the beans reach an internal temperature of between 400 and 430 degrees (F). This additional roasting time causes more of the sugars to caramelize and more amino acids to undergo Maillard reactions.

Ketones like 2,3-butanedione develop, giving buttery and caramel flavors. Some pyrazines form and lend nutty, roasty notes. The amino acid content drops slightly, reducing the body and tartness. And some of the fruitier acids and esters degrade. As a result, you lose a touch of the inherent brightness in exchange for those more decadent flavors.

Medium roasts still retain some of that fruity, floral origin character—just a bit more muted compared to light roasts. This means you can still pick up those lovely jasmine and berry notes in the cup. There’s still a pleasant but understated acidity, too.

Meanwhile, the additional caramelization and Maillard reactions provide a warming roastiness, extra body, and a touch of sweetness. With pour over brewing highlighting the inherent bean flavors, medium roasts deliver a balanced profile in the cup.

Some scrumptious medium roast coffees I’d suggest trying with your pour over setup include the following:

Peru Organic Chanchamayo: Milk chocolate and praline notes with citrus acidity
Sumatra Lintong: Herbaceous and earthy with hints of vanilla and tobacco
Guatemala Acatenango: Caramel apple and nutmeg with a creamy body

Dark Roast Coffee for Pour Over Brewing

Dark roasts like Vienna, French, and Italian stay in the roaster the longest, usually for between of 13 and 16 minutes, allowing the beans to reach an internal temperature over 430 degrees (F). This extended roasting time completely transforms the chemistry of the beans significantly.

The sugars thoroughly caramelize, forming flavor compounds like cellobiose which lend rich molasses and maple flavors. Bitter alkaloids like trigonelline and quinolones develop, balancing the sweetness. The amino acid content drops even further, reducing body, tartness, and acidity. And nearly all the delicate fruit esters and floral aromas disappear.

What’s left is an intense, bittersweet profile dominated by the flavors formed during roasting. Chocolate, spice, molasses, pecan, and earthiness come to the forefront.

However, for pour over brewing, dark roasts may not be ideal. Since pour over highlights the inherent qualities of the bean, it tends to mute the complex flavors imparted during roasting. Without those roasted flavors, dark roasts can taste surprisingly hollow and flat—the opposite of what you’d get from brewing the same beans in a French press or an espresso machine.

You might still enjoy a dark roast pour over if you crave that bitterness and char. But just know that the chocolate, maple, and molasses notes are likely to be a bit subdued. For me, dark roasts shine through best in immersion style brewing where those roasted flavors permeate the cup.

Some dark roasts you may find some success with in a pour over cone include the following:

India Monsooned Malabar: Intense smokiness with spice and tobacco
Sulawesi Kalossi: Super dark and earthy with notes of tree bark
Ethiopia Harrar: Dry and winey with hints of blueberry

The Impact of Grind Size on Flavor for Pour Over

To get the absolute most out of your chosen coffee beans, you need to grind them fresh right before brewing. And you need to nail the grind size. This is crucial for coaxing out all the flavors through proper extraction when brewing pour over.

For pour over, you want a medium grind around the consistency of granulated table salt. Precisely, the ideal grind size is 400 to 800 microns in diameter, ideally toward the lower end of that range. This provides ample surface area for excellent extraction, while allowing for an appropriate flow rate through the coffee bed.

If your grind is too fine, approaching espresso territory, the water will pass through the bed far too slowly. This leads to overextraction, pulling out excessive bitter compounds while missing the fruity acids and aromatics. The result is an astringent, muddy cup.

Conversely, if the grind is too coarse, the water races straight through the bed. This underextracts the coffee, leaving behind sweetness and body. You end up with weak, sour swill.

With pour over, controlling that flow rate and contact time is everything for balanced extraction. And grind size has the biggest influence on flow rate. Investing in a high end burr grinder for consistent grinds takes your pour over to the next level. Check out my recommendations for the best coffee grinders if you’re not sure where to start.

Dialing in that grind size, while choosing beans that play to the strengths of pour over, lets you experience coffee at its peak flavor and nuance. The result is a ritualistic, sensory experience that keeps you coming back cup after cup.

Wrapping Up: Finding Your Perfect Pour Over Beans

In summary, you can’t go wrong experimenting with different coffee beans in your pour over cone. Try out light, medium, and dark roasts with all sorts of tantalizing origins to find your favorites. Pay attention to how the pour over brewing affects the flavor versus other methods like French press.

Generally, light and medium roasts allow you to experience the inherent fruit, floral, and brightness of the bean itself. But you should give dark roasts a shot too—you might like them in pour over more than I do! With a wide world of coffee to explore, the right beans for your taste preferences are out there waiting to be discovered.

No matter what you choose, be sure to master that grind size for balanced extraction. And grind those beans fresh every time. The search for new bean treasures to try in your cone never has to end, so experiment and enjoy the journey!

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between a light roast and a medium roast?

Light roasts spend less time in the roaster, usually 8-10 minutes. This preserves more bright, fruity, and floral notes inherent to the bean’s origin. Medium roasts spend more time roasting, around 10-12 minutes. Some fruitiness remains, but you get more caramel, chocolate, and nutty flavors from sugar and amino acid reactions during roasting.

Can I use dark roast espresso beans in my pour over?

You can try using dark roast espresso beans in pour over, but the heavily roasted flavors like cocoa and molasses likely won’t come through as much. The pour over may mute the complex flavors formed during longer roasting, and since dark roast coffee lacks the fruitiness and acidity that pour over cones highlight, you might just get bitterness and ashiness with minimal complexity. I’d suggest using either a light roast or a medium roast with some roasted character but also fruity acidity to balance it out.

Is light or medium roast better for pour over?

It depends on your taste preferences! Light roasts highlight fruity, floral origin flavors which pour over brewing accentuates. Medium roasts provide more balance between origin flavors and nutty, chocolaty roasted flavors. Try both and see which you prefer in your cup, and take notes on what you like and don’t like so that you can adapt as you try more coffee varieties in your pour over cone.

How important is a good grinder for pour over coffee?

A quality burr grinder is crucial for pour over brewing. You need a very consistent grind size between 400 and 800 microns (ideally between 400 and 500 microns) for proper extraction. Too fine, and you’ll get tons of overextraction and bitterness; too coarse, and you’ll get underextraction and a sour cup. Blade grinders don’t offer that consistency. Investing in a nice burr grinder provides precision and control over grind size, which translates directly to ideal brew times and better, more balanced flavors in your cup.