How to Use a Coffee Maker: Ratio, Grind, Temperature, & More

Today’s drip coffee makers are capable of creating cafe-quality brews from the comfort of home. However, brewing excellent drip coffee requires a little more than the simple touch of a button. Factors like coffee freshness matter, as well as how much coffee and water you are using at a time.

Here are my step-by-step instructions on how to brew drip coffee.

What you’ll need:

• Drip coffee machine
• Coffee grinder (or you can ask the shop to grind the coffee for you)
• Scale
• Paper or mesh filters
• Measuring spoon
• Coffee
• Room temperature water

How to Use a Coffee Maker: Step by Step

Step 1: Weigh Your Coffee

• Weigh the amount of coffee you’re going to use with a scale.
• The standard ratio of coffee to water is 1:17 for drip coffee makers.
• If you don’t have a scale, try measuring around 4-5 tablespoons of coffee for a full pot. For a single cup of coffee, use roughly 1 tablespoon.

Step 2: Grind the Coffee

• For a drip coffee machine, aim for a medium grind (similar to sea salt).
• If you don’t have a grinder, add the coffee grounds to a filter.

Step 3: Place the Filter and Add the Coffee

• Insert the filter into the basket of the drip coffee maker, and add the coffee.
• Give the basket a light shake to make sure the grounds are level.

Step 4: Add Water

• Add the appropriate amount of room temperature water to the reservoir of your drip coffee maker.
• Use 1 liter of water for a full pot depending on the size of your machine.

Step 5: Brew the Coffee

• Flip the on switch and wait for the coffee maker to start brewing.

How Does a Coffee Maker Work?

A coffee maker brews coffee by pouring hot water over coffee grounds to extract their flavors before dispensing the results into a separate carafe.

Although there is slight variation in aesthetics and enhanced features, most drip coffee makers consist of the same four parts:

• A water reservoir
• A heating element
• A filter basket where water dispenses over the coffee grounds
• A vessel where the brewed coffee goes.

The general working mechanism of a drip coffee maker is that a heating element heats the water in the reservoir. The hot water then moves up the machine through a tube that connects to the sprayhead, where it gets dispersed across the coffee bed.

Although there are not many ways to brew drip coffee, there are a few differences in how water gets distributed across the coffee bed.

This slight difference affects the quality of the drip coffee’s taste. When water dispenses through the sprayhead, it will either flow at a consistent rate of water the entire time, or it will distribute water in segments.

Distributing water in segments is commonly called a pour over style. This creates a better extraction of the coffee grounds, resulting in a smoother, more flavorful cup of coffee.

How to Make The Most Of Your Coffee Machine

Use fresh coffee

Beyond a great machine, your coffee is only as good as the beans that you’re using. Coffee freshness is important to flavorful coffee. This is because coffee that is too old has released most of its carbon dioxide, which contains most of the flavor in coffee.

Similar to aging food, contact with air is also what causes coffee to lose its freshness.

Coffee is at its most optimal freshness between 2-4 weeks, so try to use beans that are less than a month old.

Buy whole bean coffee

It’s better to purchase whole beans so that you can freshly grind them for each batch of coffee. When you grind beans, they also release CO2, which creates an especially aromatic cup of coffee.

Grind coffee evenly

Even coffee extraction means that every element of coffee brewing–from the water’s flow rate to the size of the coffee ground particles–is the same.

On this note, it is especially important for the particles of coffee grounds to be the same size. The way to do this is by using a burr grinder to grind your coffee beans.

A burr grinder has two rotating surfaces that crush coffee beans evenly, which is different from a blade grinder that chops them into pieces with one surface. Today’s market has a variety of burr grinders for both cafe and home use, and even portable ones for travel.

If you’re unable to purchase a burr grinder, ask a coffee shop or grocery store who likely has one in-store to grind for you.

Weigh your ingredients

Be intentional about the levels of water and coffee you’re brewing with. The amount of water combined with the amount of coffee you’re using is considered a ratio.

For drip coffee, it’s standard to use a 1:17 ratio. In other words, for every gram of coffee you’re using, add 17 grams of water to your batch.

If you don’t have a scale, you can also use 1-2 tablespoons of coffee for every 6 ounces of water.

Keep your machine clean

Over time, certain parts of a drip coffee machine will accumulate coffee stains or buildup. This is especially true of the basket where the grounds sit, and also within the carafe.

To prevent this from happening, try to take your used coffee filter out of the basket as soon as it is done brewing and clean the basket. You can also wash the inside of your carafe when you’ve finished drinking your brewed coffee.

If there is buildup that you can’t remove with soap and water, try brewing a batch of hot water with distilled white vinegar. Sometimes, there will also be scaling, or mineral buildup, within the water reservoir of the machine. There are coffee cleaning tablets that can remove both mineral buildup and coffee stains.

Creating your own coffee recipe or coffee ratio

Although 1:17 is a baseline ratio for brewing drip coffee, you may need to alter certain factors depending on how the coffee tastes. Sometimes coffee will taste especially sour, bitter, or burnt. Here are some tips for troubleshooting your drip coffee.

My coffee tastes astringent or sour

Your coffee might be underextracted, meaning the water did not absorb enough flavor from the coffee grounds. Try to adjust the grind size of your grounds by making them finer.

Or, change the amount of coffee you’re using. Use less grounds for your next batch.

My coffee tastes burnt or muddy

Your coffee may be overextracted, meaning the coffee absorbed too much of the coffee components. The grounds may be too fine. Try to make your coffee grounds more coarse.

My coffee tastes watery and bitter

Your coffee could be underextracted from using too little coffee with water. Add more coffee grounds to your next batch.

FAQ