In the Brew

Ratios…..ratios……ratios, so what exactly are they.?

A ratio is a relationship of quantities, in coffee it is the relationship between dry ground coffee and the amount of water used to make that coffee. But why does it matter?

This relationship directly impacts what goes on in your cup of coffee; from its overall strength to the flavour you experience. We’ve all had the experience in coffee shops, the espresso falls flat with no texture or body.. The answer…..too much water. The other side of that it has an unbalanced and over abundant body/ strength….there’s too little water. The same can be said for filter, the difference between the brew systems is volumes overall. In filter we use similar amounts of dry coffee but we use higher overall volumes of water due to there being no pressure to force out flavour.

For espresso we recommend starting with a 1:2 ratio, in other words for every 1 gram of coffee there is 2 grams of water used. Try going with this setup to begin with; 18 grams of dry coffee from which we end up with an espresso that weighs 36 grams.

For filter, like we said a little earlier we need more water so lets use a ratio of 1:15. In this cup we will use 15 grams of coffee to 250 grams of water.

For the moment just get the scales out and just apply this to your brews, in the next post we will look at grind size & brew time.