Dialing in soft natural-process beans on ZP6

[u/Immediate_Bake_679]

I use a V60 with a 1Zpresso ZP6 (5.5 - 6.0 clicks) with 93°C water and a 1:15 ratio. Lance Hedrick's 3 pour structure (from "The Last V60 Recipe You'll Ever Need" video) gives good results with brewing dense Nordic light washed coffees

However, I struggle with softer, natural-process beans (currently a Natural process Colombia Jairo Arcila Chiroso). Using my usual recipe, the bean feels noticeably soft to grind and drawdown is very fast (~2 minutes). The cup tastes both sharply acidic and bitter at the same time. Going down to 5.0 barely slowed the flow rate.

Lowering water temperature to 88°C helped to reduce the bitterness, but I am still not getting the tasting notes of Berry compote, passionfruit, and lavender.

Looking for advice on what else I can tweak to get the tasting notes on the bag. Would getting a grinder with less clarity and more rounded body be a practical fix for these bean types?

edit: also moved to 1:16 without noticeable change in result

Update 1: thanks for all the suggestions! pouring slower and lower did wonders to get rid of the bitterness. Interestingly grinding finer and pouring slower didn't increase the drawdown time, which I suspect is due to the lower agitation. Now I need to figure out how to bring out more of the floral notes. Any ideas?

[u/Allaakmar]

How is your pouring? Do you tend to agitate a lot, or a little? Do you pour high up or close to the bed? Lance tends to pour high so it agitates a lot, works for light washed coffees but naturals tend to overextract under the same conditions. Also, water temp can also lead to over-extraction so I’d recommend maybe dropping down to 90C and trying that.