Everything about the Hario V60 is a refusal to make decisions on your behalf. It is a cone, some ribs, and a hole — no valve, no basket geometry slowing the water down, no reservoir metering the flow. The dripper controls nothing, which means the person holding the kettle controls everything: grind, temperature, ratio, and the shape of the pour itself. How the bean got to your kitchen in the first place is told in a history of coffee; this treatise is about the last four minutes of that thousand-year journey.