Things you will need before we get started:
• Kitchen Scale that measures in grams
• Paper, pen, or a note app on your phone
• A calculator or app on your phone
The beverage we enjoy on a daily basis in its most basic form is just ground coffee beans mixed with water. What helps to create a beverage that tastes good and balanced depends on a couple variables. The most basic variables are: the quality of the water we use, the quality of the beans, and how we decide on mixing those together. Other more advanced variables that also affect how our coffee tastes are the grind size (how fine or coarse), brew time, water temperature, and brewing device that we use.
For this guide we’re going to focus on what we call the brew ratio and specifically the best ratio for common drip brew methods. A brew ratio is simply a guide to help you figure out how much water and coffee you should use for brewing. You can also think about the brew ratio as the ingredients list portion of a recipe for brewing coffee.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when chatting with coffee nerds about brew ratios:
• Since coffee is 98% water, the larger number in the ratio is always water. We say this because you will hear people say 13:1 or 1:18 without clarifying which is which, and this can be confusing at first.
• Another key piece of information is remembering that for water, milliliters = grams. So if your brewing water weighs 250 g that is equal to 250 ml in volume. The standard cup in US is 8 oz, and 1 oz is approximately 30ml. So for an 8 oz cup, you’re looking at 240 ml.
Now that we have touched on these tips we can move forward to talking about what our recommendation is for common drip brewing methods.
We typically recommend a 1:18 ratio which means that for every 1 gram of coffee you will need to use 18 grams of water.
Click the links below to learn how to apply this coffee ratio to your preferred brew method.