How Much Coffee-To-Water Ratio Should I Use When Making Coffee?

How Much Coffee-To-Water Ratio Should I Use When Making Coffee?

There are a lot of opinions and myths about making coffee. It’s not complicated unless you “wing it”  and measure things “by eye”. I am always scepticle when people have a recipe using a spoon of anything. We recommend using scales, as using the same amount of coffee each time means that the ratio can be consistent.

Filter Coffee-Coffee-To-Water Ratio

My recommendation is that, for all versions of filter coffee making, you start with 60g of coffee per litre of water.

This covers batch or filter coffee machine brewers, V60’s, Aeropress, Kalita, Clever Dripper and even XBloom.

60 g per litre is an approximate ratio of 1:16

1 Part coffee, 16 parts water

60 g of coffee per litre is also 6% coffee if you look at 60 g of coffee over 1000g of water, which is 6/100.  You don’t want to extract all of that.

As an example, a standard AeroPress can take up to 200 ml of water, so you could start at 12g of coffee. If you were brewing a One Cup V60 (also known as V01), you might use 15g of ground coffee to make 250ml of coffee as a starting point.

Espresso  Shots Coffee-To-Water Ratio (Shots and Americano)

The amount of coffee you use depends on your coffee equipment. Most Sage, De’Longhi, and La Marzocco home machines typically have baskets that have a capacity of between 14 g and 18 g.

Our starting Ratios for House Blend espressos are 1 part coffee to 2.7-3 parts water. Some examples below.

14g of coffee into 38- 42 g of espresso,

16g of coffee into 43- 48 g,

17g into 46- 51 g.

18g into 48-54 g.

Espresso Shots For Milky Drinks, Coffee-To-Water Ratio

If you are making espresso for your flat whites, lattes and cappuccinos, you might want to reduce the amount of water in the shot to help it carry through milk better.

1 part ground coffee to 2 parts espresso liquid, also known as 1:2.

14g of ground coffee into 28g espresso, 16g ground coffee into 32g espresso, 17g  ground coffee into 34g espresso, 18g ground coffee into 36g espresso.

Your 14g won’t taste as full as the 18g, but keep reading, and maybe there will be a pearl of wisdom that gets you very close.

If you are looking to make big shots and split them, please check out the post on Aussie Rules.