ailing to do so will result in a weak or strong brew. Having the right amount of coffee is important to make a good brew, no matter which method you are using. Too little coffee will make a weak brew, while too much will make it strong.
Most people prefer coffee that is not too weak or too strong.
Although it may seem difficult, measuring coffee without a scoop is not as challenging as one might think. The difficult part of measuring coffee is knowing how much is appropriate for a specific brew, and a scoop cannot provide that information.
A food scale is the most accurate way to measure the coffee-to-water ratio. For a 350ml cup of coffee, you would need 22 grams of coffee. Another way to measure this is to use slightly less than 4 tablespoons of coffee beans. 1 tablespoon of coffee beans equals 6 grams.
The ideal ratio of coffee to water is 1:16, something that many coffee enthusiasts strive for. If you’re concerned enough about your ratio, let us take you through some more in-depth information.
The golden coffee ratio
Although there is no one definitive ratio, the term “the golden ratio” is still used to describe the ideal coffee to water ratio. This ratio varies depending on the brand of coffee, the brewing method, and the personal preferences of the coffee drinker. The underlying principles behind the ratio, however, remain consistent.
A perfect cup of coffee is a balance of acids, sugars, and bitterness, all of which are pleasant to the taste.
There is a generally agreed upon ratio among coffee enthusiasts of 1:16, or one part coffee to sixteen parts water. This ratio will produce the best results, though people may use different units of measurement so long as the ratio is maintained.
Weighing coffee with a food scale
Once you’ve found your personal golden ratio (we’ll use 1:16 for the rest of this post), you can start measuring things out. The best way to do this without a scoop is to use a kitchen scale.
You should use a food scale to measure your coffee, even if you do have a scoop handy.
The scales will more accurately tell you how much coffee you have than a measuring scoop or spoon because the air gaps between coffee grounds can make the scoop or spoon measurements misleading.
The problem becomes bigger the larger the coffee grounds are, with instant coffee being the worst offender. If you use instant coffee, you don’t need to be as accurate with your measurements.
Measure your coffee by counting beans
If you don’t have a food scale or tablespoon, you can estimate the amount of coffee you need by counting the beans. 1 gram of coffee is approximately 7 beans, so you would need 154 beans for 22 grams of coffee.
It’s probably not the best idea to count out each of the 154 beans by hand. A more efficient method would be to find a spoon or another small, scoop-shaped object and use it to determine how many beans it would take to fill it. Once you know that number, you can divide your desired coffee weight by it to find out how many scoops you would need.
Weighing coffee with a tablespoon
To determine how many tablespoons of coffee beans you need for your desired amount, divide the weight by six.
If you wanted to make a 350ml cup of coffee, you would need about 22 grams of coffee. This would be a little less than 4 tablespoons of coffee beans.
Starting with the amount of coffee you want to use
Let’s say we want to use 20g of coffee. Multiply that by our brew ratio, which in this case is 15:
20g x 15 = 300 (grams of brewed coffee)
When making coffee with a French Press, use scales to measure out 20g of coffee. Place the press on the scales, add the ground coffee, press tare on the scale, then pour water into the press until the final weight is 300g.
Decide how much coffee you want to make
Figure out how much coffee you want to make, then calculate your brew ratio based on that amount. The first challenge is deciding on how much coffee you want to make. A standard cup of coffee is around 10 ounces (300ml), but there is no definitive answer.
So we want to make a 300g cup of coffee, which will be approximately 300ml in the cup. To work out the brew ratio and the amount of coffee to use for 300g of water, we’ll go:
So, our brew will require 20 (grams or milliliters) of coffee The brew will require 20 grams or milliliters of coffee.
We will add 20 grams of coffee to make a 300ml cup of coffee.
Brew ratios to use for each brew method
As a starting point:
- 1:15 brew ratio is good for most immersion brew methods
- 1:17 brew ratio is good for most pour over methods
If you want your coffee to be stronger in flavor, add an extra gram of coffee. If you want it to be lighter, use a couple of grams less.
How to use brew ratios
The brew ratio is a guide that tells us how much coffee and water to use. It is a simple recipe that we can follow and is a good starting point for different brews.
A brew ratio refers to the amount of coffee to water used in brewing. A 1:15 ratio means there is 1 part coffee to 15 parts water.
Abrew ratio of 1:15 means that for every 1 part of coffee, there are 15 parts of water. So, if you have 20 grams of ground coffee, you would need to use 300 mL of water to make an approximate 300 mL cup of coffee.
To use brew ratios, you can go one of two ways:
- Start with the amount of coffee you want to use, or;
- Decide how much coffee you want to make (…and then figure out your brew ratio based on that).
How much coffee for 6 cups
If you’ve read this far, you should be able to use brew ratios to figure out the answer to this common question.
If we use 10oz or 300ml as our standard cup of coffee from the above example, we will need 1800ml (or grams, same thing) of coffee. Using a brew ratio of 15, this is how it would look on paper:
We need 120 grams of coffee to make 6 cups of coffee.
How accurate does your measurement need to be
How accurate you want your measurements to be will depend mostly on how much of a coffee lover you are.
If you are not an enthusiastic coffee drinker, you do not need to be concerned with being super accurate with your measurements because you will not notice the difference.
anyone who is using instant coffee, coffee enthusiast or not, is not choosing the best option for a great cup of coffee. Instant coffee is not the best choice for a great cup of coffee for a good reason.
If you love coffee and can’t stand to drink coffee that has been made poorly, you should get a proper coffee setup for your home.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get the supplies you need.
A scoop would be useful, but it is not necessary. To find the best ratio for you, experiment and then make sure you can replicate the ratio easily. This means you do not have to weigh coffee and break out a calculator to determine how much of it you need.
A good way to make your coffee measuring process more efficient would be to figure out how much coffee and water you need and then find a more manageable way to measure it.
If you were to use a spoon to measure your water, for example, it would take a long time.
If you have a good set of digital kitchen scales, you can measure both water and coffee directly into the press. Instead of being precise with your spoon and adding water directly to the French press, estimate the amount of water you need and transfer it to the press. Do the same thing with your coffee. If you own digital kitchen scales, you can be more precise with your measurements.
This way, when you come to make your coffee next time, you will save time by not having to weigh coffee or spoon out thirty plus spoonfuls of water.
Different roast = Different mass
Evenness and precision are extremely important in the specialty coffee world. Detailed measurements are taken of various elements, such as the total amount of dissolved solids in a cup of coffee or the particle distribution of coffee grinds.
Although we have all of these high-tech measuring and analytics tools, the most important and valued tool is a simple digital scale.
We measure the coffee beans and water in grams when brewing coffee because it is more reliable and precise than using volume based measurements like cups or tablespoons.
All coffees have a different mass.
After roasting that number will drop to around 4%. When coffee is roasted, the moisture content of the bean decreases from 11% to 4%.
This makes the beans much easier to handle and transport. When the moisture is reduced, the weight of the beans is reduced by 15-20%. This makes it easier to handle and transport the beans.
When coffee beans are roasted, the water content in the beans decreases, turning into steam and being released. This leaves the beans weighing 15-20% less than before they were roasted.
The darkness of a coffee roast is inversely proportional to the moisture content. In other words, a darker coffee will have less moisture than a lighter roasted coffee.
Amount of coffee matters
If you want to make great coffee, it’s important to use the right amount of coffee. If you use too much coffee, the brew may be under-extracted.
This coffee will taste sour, with little sweetness, and may taste a little salty. It will lack any real depth. If we don’t add enough coffee, the resulting brew will taste weak and thin, flat and watery.
How much is the correct amount of coffee to drink? This is a matter of opinion and there is no right or wrong answer, just preference. Some people will swear that their way is the only way.
While there is some variation, most coffee professionals, including the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) generally agree that a good starting point is around 60 grams of coffee per 1 liter of water (60g/L).
In addition to measuring the coffee and water, using filtered water will also produce a better cup of coffee.
Water that comes from a typical faucet contains chemicals that are there to keep it safe for consumption by humans. It’s inevitable that the water will taste different when chemicals are added to it, even though every effort is made to make it tasteless.
The flavors of your coffee brew can be affected by the way the chemicals in coffee combine with acids.
Although tap water may not have a significant impact on the taste of coffee, those who are concerned about measuring coffee correctly should use filtered water.
If not, you’ll find your coffee taking on a distinctly funny taste. You should clean your pots, mugs, and anything else you use when making coffee so that the coffee doesn’t taste funny.
Final thoughts
There are alternative ways to measure coffee other than cups, coffee scoops, and tablespoons, but these methods are all based on volume, which makes them inaccurate.
We can’t say definitively that you should care less about your coffee measurements, but it’s probably not worth losing sleep over the fact that they might not be perfectly accurate.
We certainly would not encourage you to suddenly start caring less about the quality of your coffee. However, maybe you don’t need to be so precise when measuring the coffee grounds next time you make coffee.