Brewing is a science and a craft. It’s an act that through repetition becomes an integral part of the morning coffee ritual. Below are our current best practices for our favorite brew methods.

To brew coffee well, it is advised to weigh your ingredients. Investing in a good gram scale will allow you to brew better coffee. For volume-based brewing, here is a starting point:  1 part Coffee to 7 parts Water @ boiling for 4-6 minutes. 

Unfortunately, the density of coffee is not constant for all roasts, so your results will vary.

For all brewing, grind size is a key variable; as a rule of thumb grind finer for more sweetness and coarser for more clarity. 800um +/- 200um is the typical range for both percolation and immersion brewing.

For percolation brewed (drip, pour-over, etc.) coffee try a ratio of 60g/Kg of coffee to brewing water for five minutes of brew time. A level coffee bed is crucially important for percolation brews. I like to split the water into three equal pours, separated by two minutes each. The first pour should lift the grounds up and wet them evenly, the second should very gently settle them into a level bed, and the third should fully extract without stirring things up again.

For immersion brews (French press, etc), try a ratio of  68g/Kg of coffee to brew water for at least five minutes of brew time. Give it a good stir two minutes in and allow the full remaining time for the grounds to settle before gently plunging and pouring.

For espresso, the following is a starting point as your grinder, baskets, machine, and water all have varying impacts on the extraction of the coffee:

Black Mountain: 20g in, 40g out, 30sec
Light Roasts: 16g in, 48g out, 30sec

The following parameters are a great starting point for Fetco-style programmable brewers:

120g Coffee
205F Water
2000g brew volume
15% prewet volume
1:00 prewet delay
3:30 brew time
1:00 drip delay

Water, being 98.6% of your brew, and 100% of the solvent, matters. I can recommend Gerber Pure, which will assure you are brewing with precisely formulated water that brews coffee well. It’s not the best brewing water, but it is good enough and very consistent.