First off, if you use a drip brewer with a “warming” plate, don’t use the warmer after the brew cycle is finished. I prefer the word “burner”. Immediately upon completion of the brew cycle, decant the coffee to a pre-warmed insulated carafe or thermos. The burner continues to cook the coffee, over-extracting the solids in the water. Everyone has tasted coffee that’s been on the burner for too long, so we all know what I’m talking about. If you’re in the market for a new brewer, please, please purchase one without a burner and select one with an insulated carafe instead. Those hotplates ruin coffee, plain and simple.
OK, now to the brewing process. This is written in order so it shouldn’t take you any longer since there will be several things happening simultaneously.
1 – Make sure your drip pot and grind basket are clean. Washed clean, not just rinsed out. Rinsing does not remove the oils from yesterday’s pot of coffee. Those oils are just aging, stagnating, putrefying and generally going rancid in your gear. Yuk.
2 – Fill the brewer with warm water. It’s OK, really, you can. It won’t hurt the machine. I fact you can use hot, if you like. Your water will come out even warmer, making for better extraction. NEVER use the carafe that comes with the brewer to fill the brewer. Use a different vessel, one that is not used for coffee. It’s possible you could be dumping “dirty” water into the brewer. Your carafe may have residual coffee oils in it and over time will damage the brewer’s heating element and other guts. After using a different vessel, you can set it out to dry or just put it away – no muss, no fuss. But don’t put it away yet, you’ll need it once more.
3 – Add the paper filter or your gold mesh filter.
4 – Turn on the brewer and let it brew a couple cups of hot water through the system. This warms the brewer as well as rinses the paper filter.
5 – Now select your coffee and grind it while the brewer warms up. Choosing the grind can be tricky. I use a medium coarse grind. If the water flows straight through, the grind is too coarse. If the water just stays in the basket, dripping very slowly, it’s to fine. The whole drip process should take about 5-6 minutes.
6 – Once the grinding is finished, turn off your brewer, and empty the carafe into your coffee cup(s) to warm them and refill the brewer. Now you can put you filling vessel away.
7 – Add the grind to the basket. If your brewer has one of those automatic buttons that stops the drip, leave the pot out from under the basket.
8 – Turn the brewer on and watch the basket fill with water making sure all the grounds get wet. I give mine a little stir to be certain. Smell the aroma of the newly wet grounds!
9 – Once all the grounds are wet, set the carafe back in place. BE SURE IT IS EMPTY OF THE WARMING WATER YOU RAN THROUGH IT! Um, I’ve forgotten a couple times, but remembered early enough so it wasn’t a problem. You don’t want to ruin the coffee or have it overflow.
10 – Wait for the brew to finish and enjoy your coffee. Please, I’m begging you; please do not pull a cup of coffee before the cycle is finished. For proper extraction, all of the water needs to flow through the grounds. Pull your cup early and the coffee will be over extracted and bitter, pull it late in the brew cycle and it will be under extracted and watery. Let all the water flow through the grounds and you’ll be happiest
A note on how much coffee to water ratio - I measure mine by weight. For my drip brewer, I use 10 grams per cup of coffee. A typical coffee scoop of 1 tablespoon is roughly 10 grams. There’s no need for you to measure by weight unless you want to become a coffee geek like me. Actually, there’s a good reason to measure by weight. Different degrees of roast create different sized beans, therefore different amounts by weight. In addition, different degrees of roast dry the bens more or less. So, a smaller bean may weigh more than a larger bean. If a scoop holds, say 40 beans of a light roasted, smaller but heavier coffee, the brew will be different than a darker roasted, larger, but heavier bean.
Here’s a link to the scale I purchased. It’s perfectly sized for the coffee cupboard. It’s the 1000g Digital Dosing Mini Scale. Orphan Espresso.
Last, keep your machine clean. There are many products for cleaning brewers. Cafiza is an excellent product and will remove all the stains, oils and general grunge normal dishwashing will not. It’s true! Once you use it after a few months of using your brewer, you’ll be amazed at how brand new it looks after using Cafiza. Also be sure to de-scale your brewer every couple months. There are products available for this as well.
Have fun, drink coffee, do silly things with more energy!
