Brew Better at Home2 min read

Coffee-to-Water Ratio Guide: How Much Coffee Should You Use?

A practical coffee-to-water ratio guide for drip, pour-over and French press, with simple gram-based recipes you can repeat at home.
By Tara Duncan
Centered medium roast coffee beside a coffee scoop
Quick take

A practical coffee-to-water ratio guide for drip, pour-over and French press, with simple gram-based recipes you can repeat at home.

Coffee-to-water ratio sounds technical, but it is really just a way to stop guessing.

If one morning you use two heaping scoops and the next morning you use a different mug of water, it becomes hard to know why the coffee changed. A simple ratio gives you a repeatable starting point.

The Specialty Coffee Association uses 55 grams of coffee per litre of water as a starting point when evaluating certified home brewers. That is not a law for every coffee or every person. It is a useful reference that lands close to a 1:18 ratio and can be adjusted with grind and contact time.

A repeatable ratio gives you a baseline. From there, taste tells you whether to use a little more or less coffee.

The easiest recipe to remember

If you want one number, remember this:

30 grams of coffee + 500 grams of water.

Make that cup. Taste it. If you want it stronger, try 32 grams next time. If you want it lighter, try 28 grams. That small experiment will teach you more about your own coffee than memorizing somebody else's perfect recipe.

Keep brewing

Source

Specialty Coffee Association, Certified Home Brewer requirements.

A basic kitchen scale is often more useful than another complicated coffee gadget.
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