Drip technique

First, I’ll start off with my disclaimer that I am NOT a barista. I’ve never taken any classes and I have zero experience at any coffee shop. Do I intend on ever opening an actual coffee shop one day? Maybe, but that is “far rocks” as we like to call in the flying world. As for the “near rocks,” we are simply sticking to roasting coffee. I will also add that there are MANY variables to coffee from brew technique to how the coffee beans are processed after they are pulled from the tree. There are too many for me to try to make recommendations on. And, most of us cannot control many of those variables. So, we will attempt to keep it simple by focusing on just two variables…grind size and ratios.

Our fancy drip coffee machine

Breville BCS450

Here are my cliffs notes:

Grind size: Medium course for drip coffee with a coarse salt like appearance

Ratio: 1:14 to 1:15. That is 1 gram of coffee to 14mL of water

If you’re interested in getting into the weeds, keep reading.

So, we use a Breville BCS450 drip coffee maker. It is fancy and can probably do a lot more than we use it for. But, we solely use it for our drip coffee in the morning. I should also add that we use a Baratza Virtuoso Model 586 conical burr grinder. Both accessories are not cheap, but you don’t need to go all out and go super fancy to enjoy great coffee. I often use a cheap, small hand grinder if I take coffee on work trips along with my aero press. The burr grinder lets me really try to hone in on the right grind size depending on my brewing technique. Oh, we also have scale with a timer that I bought for about $20. We use those scales so much now at my home, that we bought two more! We keep our things running smoothly by cleaning them out on an interval. The machine is cleaned when it tells us and I clean the grinder every time I roast coffee. I should probably clean it every time before grinding another type of origin to avoid mixing them (I am not a fan of blends…topic for another post maybe).

Baratza Virtuoso Model 586

Our conical burr grinder

So, what is the trick to a good cup of coffee? In my opinion it’s the grind size of the coffee and coffee to water ratio among many other things that most people can’t control. I set our burr grinder to 17 for our drip coffee and only ever change it if I elect to brew a pour over. I’ll make a post about my favorite pour over contraption and technique some other time.

Regarding grind size, I strive for a course salt type of appearance. I had to mess with our grind settings till I found the # we were happy with. That just happen to be #17 for us. What happens if you grind too fine? Water will not pass through the coffee fast enough. Hence, “overextraction.” All that means is that the coffee will likely taste fairly bitter and not have much flavor to it. If you grind too course, the water will pass through too quickly making it underextracted and leave your coffee “weak.” Again, medium course (aka looks like course salt) is what works for us.

So what ratio do we recommend? My wife used to use scoops as her unit of measure. I’ve since gotten her away from scoops. Scoops=confusion. There really is no correct ratio to use. It only drives how strong a cup of coffee is. If you find yourself with a delicious cup of coffee, but you’re left feeling like you still haven’t woken up yet, you probably need to change your ratio. If you find your coffee doesn’t taste like it is described, then you likely need to change your extraction by changing your grind size. See the previous paragraph.

I’ve heard to use 60g of coffee per liter of water and I’ve heard to use a 1:14 to 1:16 ratio. They’re all about the same, but my go to is 1:14 to 1:16, which just means 1 gram of coffee per 14-16 mL of water.

I know, nobody wants to do math first thing in the morning. So, I weighed how much water goes into my drip machine and divided that by 15. I measured my water to be 1144mL on my cheap scale for a full pot of coffee and, therefore, use 76.3g of coffee (1144/15=76.3). But, now all I need to do is weigh my coffee in the morning after writing 76.3g on a sticky note by my grinder and scale. I even converted that to approximately 5.5 scoops for my wife as I roll my eyes when she chooses to use the scoop. I wake up before her normally to make sure it’s done right and have hidden the scoop at times too.

One last thing, I grind my coffee just prior to brewing. But, sometimes I have to wake up at 4 am or even earlier for my main job and I do NOT want to be weighing coffee and brewing it at that time of day. That is when I weigh, grind, and set the timer on our Breville drip coffee machine so it is ready when I wake up. Don’t tell anyone I do that. Pro baristas would likely give me 0 out of 5 stars for admitting that.

I promise not to unfriend you if you are scoop person. If it works for you, stick with it! Maybe you unknowingly shacked the ratios and should probably go buy a lottery ticket! Good luck and I promise to do my part with our coffee by honing in on the variables I can control through the sourcing and roasting process.