Drip Coffee Makers
1) Measure out your water (use a simple food scale and set it to grams)
2) Use your phone’s calculator to divide the amount of grams of water by 16—this is the amount of coffee you want to use—16:1 water to coffee ratio by weight
3) Grind your coffee fresh—Yes! Do yourself a favor and get a grinder! Seriously, this is the first recommendation I would make to anyone short of buying better coffee. You will notice a big difference in freshness!
4) If you have the ability to change your brew temperature, play around with a higher temperature for lighter roasts and slightly cooler temperature as you go up in roast level. If you don’t have the ability to change your temperature, you may want to play around with pre-boiling the water (look below for more information)
Maybe you’re here because you’re like me and you like to tinker with things until you get the best possible end product. Maybe you’ve tried brewing some of my coffee in your machine and things just didn’t taste right. Or you were disappointed that you couldn’t taste some of the flavors I’ve described on the bag. This page is for you.
There are several challenges that come to mind when dealing with a typical drip coffee maker—First, the vast majority of cheap machines out there don’t reach the temperature ranges that we look for when brewing coffee. There’s a small trick to try if you own one of those machines—preheat your brew water. This is obviously a clunky workaround since boiling your water ahead of time adds an extra step to your morning routine. Additionally, I would point out that most machines have a plastic water tank that aren’t really meant for hot water. But most consumer machines nowadays are at least BPA free and are likely safe enough to give it a try. Don’t be surprised if your machine creates a lot more steam! If you do want to give this a try, simply get a cheap kettle and bring your water to a boil before CAREFULLY pouring it into your machine’s water tank.
The second obvious issue is that most machines recommend a maximum amount of coffee for a full pot that is typically way too low. Do yourself a favor and either throw out their instructions for how much coffee to use for each cup size, or just ignore their instructions! These brands are in the business of selling you machines that are safe and won’t spill hot liquids all over your countertop—not giving good recommendations for how to get the best coffee possible from their machine. A word of caution: if you follow these instructions, you may find that your brew basket is nearly overflowing. You may even get some issues with the machine spilling from too much coffee in the tiny brew basket. What I would suggest is starting with roughly a half pot and see if you can get better results with this size first. You may be able to scale it up from there…or you may overflow your brew basket when using the proper amount of coffee to water ratio that I recommend. Your mileage may vary. All in all, you’ll have to do a bit of experimenting to see what is a safe amount for your machine and most importantly, what tastes good!
The third thing I want to mention is that most people brew coffee into the pot and leave the pot on the heat plate. You might think, “why wouldn’t I want the coffee to stay as hot as possible?” I can’t stress enough—don’t do this. No matter what kind of coffee you use you’ll end up with burnt coffee from the heat being added to the glass. Even folks who don’t care much about the taste of their coffee will notice how bad it is after an hour of overcooking on the hot plate. Brew your coffee and remove the pot for drinking.