- [Narrator] That is real coffee, as delicious as the best cup of coffee, you've ever had brewed. - Today, we're gonna talk about
ratios for coffee brewing. How much coffee should I
use to brew a cup of coffee in terms of filter coffee? Now I'm gonna talk about this
in three separate stages. I'm gonna talk about
why I'm gonna recommend a certain type of ratios of using grams per liter, and then I'm gonna talk
about kinda finding your ideal ratio. And finally I'm gonna talk about why I might recommend a different ratio for different brewing methods. So first thing, why would I
recommend grams per liter? There's a number of different ways people do recipes and ratios. The most common ones still is
to recommend scoops per cup. There's no international
standard for scoops. A scoop can contain about seven grams. It could contain about 10 or 12 grams. Now the problem I have with scoops or cups or tablespoons or teaspoons, or all of that sort of stuff is that they're volumetric measurements. Which means that they'll
have massive fluctuations in actual weight depending
on a few different factors. For example, if I were to use, let's say a dark roast,
medium ground coffee and I have a perfect level scoop of that, that might weigh around
seven, seven and a half grams. If I went for a light
roast finer ground coffee, that might weigh eight,
eight and a half grams, well over 10% more, and
that's me being really careful in loading the same volume each time. It's very easy to have small variances in that volume result
in pretty big variances in the gram weight that you're using. In the day-to-day morning coffee brewing, using scoops will mean that some days your coffee is good
and some days it's not. Even though you seemingly
did the same thing, but volumetric measurements,
they're just not very reliable. Then there's the other
commonly used ratios of like one to 14, one to 15, one to 16. These break my head, I
can't deal with these. They kind of work
completely backwards to me. Those kinds of ratios are pretty useful. If you know how much
ground coffee you have and you wanna work out how
much coffee you can make. That is never a problem
I have, in the mornings. Usually, I have a desired amount of coffee that I wanna brew and I wanna work out, how much ground coffee I need, you know what weight of
coffee I need to start with. So, using a one to 15 ratio. I can't do the maths on that, if I need 500 mL of coffee, I'm not dividing 500 by 15
first thing in the morning. However, if you give me a grams per liter, well, if I'm brewing
half a liter than I need. If at 60 grams a liter,
then I need half that, which is 30 that's not, I don't need my phone and
a calculator for that. I can just do a quick little bit of maths. I like it also because typically a cup, an average cup is about 250 mL of brewing or about eight ounces and
that scales really nicely. Whether I'm making one or
two or three or four or more, two to the grams per liter ratio. You know I'm using half
a liter, a full liter, three quarters of a liter. The maths is never complicated. And there's one other kind of ratio that deserves a special place in hell. The mixed unit ratio, if you are recommending grams per ounce, get out, get out, go
away, you do not belong. Just get, that's all. What are you doing? That's the worst thing in the world. Don't, ah, I mean, you know, the Imperial, I have no time for that to begin with, but don't be mixing Imperial
and metric that is no, stop it. Rant aside. We end up at grams per liter. I think it's a really
nice, neat way to work. So if it's a 60 grams per
liter doing the mass with that, that's very, very easy. It's very, very usable. And this leads us into the
second part of this video. What is the right amount of
coffee per liter of water? And this is a really important point that becomes a little bit complicated. There is no correct ratio. There is only preference. The ratio of coffee to water you use is really gonna determine
how strong the end cup of coffee is, how strong
you like your coffee. that's up to you, right? That's, your decision. I shouldn't get a say. I'll give a good starting point, right? Like I think 60 grams per liter is a pretty good one-size-fits-all. Most people are happy with
the resulting strength of a good brew, but you
can choose 55, 50, 75 that's up to you. But, there's one complicating factor in the world of coffee brewing
and that is extraction. I'll give a very quick
primer on extraction. In ground coffee, about approximately, about a third of it is soluble material. It could be dissolved by water. Two thirds of it pretty much is insoluble. It's cellulose, it's kind of wood. You could steep that coffee,
brew their coffee forever. You still have some grounds left over that you would throw away afterwards. You don't want everything that is soluble and available in coffee. You want, broadly speaking, for the sake of easy maths
in the video to come, about to 20%. Some would prefer a little
bit more, 22, maybe 23, maybe even more, but let's
say for the sake of argument about 20%. If you do a good job
of brewing your coffee, that will have a nice resulting strength, but if you didn't do a good
job, brewing that coffee, that 60 grams liter would
produce a weaker cup. Let's say, you under extracted it, you ground it to too coarse,
you brew too quickly, however it happened, you
end up with a weak cup. So if you're trying to change your ratio, if you're trying to work
out your ideal ratio, you only want to change the ratio, once you're really happy with the taste. If you've brewed a cup of coffee and you think that was delicious, I just wish it was a fraction stronger. That's the time to change your ratio. If you brew a cup of coffee and
you think that's a bit weak, it's a bit sour, it's
not really delicious. Don't change your ratio. Change your extraction. Grind a little finer,
steep, a little longer, agitate a little bit more. Those things need to be fixed first before you mess with your ratio. Once you're happy with
taste, sure experiment. In my life, I kinda
wandered around in terms of what I prefer in
terms of the end strength of my cup of coffee. It's a personal thing. Whatever you like is okay. There is no one answer to this question. This brings us into the
third part of this video, which is why I might recommend
using a different ratio for different brewing methods. Now you can broadly divide
all coffee brewing methods into two camps. Percolation and infusion. Now with percolation,
water is passing through a bed of coffee. In infusion, all of the
water, and all of the coffee are hanging out together
during the brew time. A pour-over is percolation. A French press, an AeroPress. Those are infusion methods. Now, I would recommend using
a little bit more coffee for an infusion method than
I would for a pour-over for a percolation method. I'll explain why. Let's imagine for the sake of argument, we're gonna brew a liter of coffee and we're gonna use 60 grams per liter. That's a good starting point, and in this theoretical brew, we're gonna extract 20%
of the coffee, right? So it means that of those 60 grams, about 12 grams were dissolved and brought into the liquid coffee. Now when you brew a percolation, when you brew a pour-over, not all of the water that you
pour in, ends up in the brew. Typically, about two grams per
gram of coffee get absorbed by the ground coffee. That bed still contains
a good amount of water and that water never really got involved in the brewing process. So what you have in the
resulting brew, is 12 grams of coffee dissolved in round
about 880 grams of water. If you take a French press
and you do the same thing, you brew 60 grams per liter, those 12 grams of solubles
that we've extracted, that 20% extraction, that's now dissolved into a thousand grams of water. All a thousand grams we're
involved in the brewing process and those solubles are distributed amongst the whole thing, that
makes that brew weaker, even though it's the same extraction. That's why if you want
a similar extraction and a similar strength, I would recommend using more
coffee, in my infusions. 70 grams, maybe 75 grams
per liter of water. If you dive into extraction theory and you start playing the refractometers, you'll notice that the
software does ask you to specify if it's an
immersion or a percolation, because it does affect your
extraction calculations. But more than that, it really just affects the strength and the taste. So that's why with any infusion brew, any brew where all of
the ground is in contact with all of the brew water
for a period of time, even if in the case of an AeroPress, you're gonna push that liquid through the bed of coffee at the end. It was still an infusion. Any pour-over I would recommend
about 60 grams a liter. Any infusion brew, I'd recommend
about 75 grams a liter. I think those are both
great starting points, but they're not the answer. Don't take it as gospel. Find your own way. Find your own preferences. If they are too weak too
strong, well change them. Being consistent in how you brew, and that means weighing the
amount of coffee going in and ideally weighing
the amount of water too means that you actually
understand what's affecting your morning coffee. You don't have to make decisions, you don't have to guesstimate the amount of water you poured in
or the amount of coffee you're brewing, especially frankly, before you've had coffee. So, get a set of scales. This is a great starting point. I'd love to hear what
you're brewing at home. I'd love also to hear
more about your journey. Has this changed for you over time? Have you gone weaker? Have you gone stronger? Are you kinda bouncing
around all over the place. I'd be really interested
to hear what you're doing. As always, thank you so much for watching. I hope you have a great day. Dammit.
