Do you want to brew your favorite coffee from the café at home? We got you covered!
Brewing great coffee does not have to be complicated – and the recipes that help you with it do not have to be secrets.
Follow the recipes step by step and observe what's happening while brewing. After a while, you'll understand which parameters you need to tweak and adjust to reach the desired result.
We suggest not changing too many parameters at once. For example, when preparing a V60 hand drip, choose a grind setting, weight, water temperature, coffee-water ratio for your initial try and observe how long the extraction takes. The next time you brew this coffee, only adjust the grind setting while leaving all other parameters untouched. That way, you can best compare the two brews and understand what difference the adjusted grind setting has made. For your next try, you might want to keep the grind setting the same and play with the coffee-water ratio.
V60 Hand Drip
When brewing a new coffee with the v60 hand drip method, we often start with this basic and very simple brew recipe and adapt it if needed.
extraction time: 2:30-3:00
ground coffee: 15g
water at 93°c: 250g
coffee-water ratio: 1:16.7
- Grind 15g of specialty coffee at a medium-coarse grind setting.
- Rinse paper filter with hot water.
- Pour 50g of water and stir slightly with a spoon.
- Pour 200g of water (250g in total) after 30s and swirl.
- Total brew time should be around 2:30 to 3:00. Adjust grind if brew is faster/slower.
Adjust this recipe to the coffee used and to your preference. We often brew with a third pour: Instead of pouring the remaining 200g of water at 30 seconds, we pour 100g and then another 100g at around 1:00 to 1:10.
Adjusting the grind setting is one of the most common adjustments when working on a brew recipe. At our café, we often change the grind setting, but don't play around with the other parameters too much. We use water at 93°c for our espresso machine. We decide on the amount of coffee and the coffee-water ratio for each coffee after a lot of testing. Taking our Brazil Otavio as an example, we may be using 19 grams for a double shot. The ideal amount of coffee to be used depends a lot on the size of the basket in your portafilter. The same coffee can taste great with completely different amounts of coffee. We choose an extraction time, e.g. 28 seconds for our Otavio, that we may change slightly depending on the exact batch of coffee we use. We then adjust the grind setting until all other parameters reach the desired value and our machine produces a delicious espresso. We adjust the grind setting every morning and make continuous adjustments during the day. This is necessary because the extraction is influenced by humidity, the amount of beans in the hopper of the grinder or the freshness of the coffee (fresher coffee stores more carbon dioxide). Therefore, it is important to always adjust to the conditions.
Wir experimentieren regelmässig mit allen Parametern, um unsere Brührezepte immer wieder zu optimieren. Beispielsweise testen wir den gleichen Kaffee mehrmals mit verschiedenen Extraktionszeiten von ca. 23 bis 36 Sekunden und mit verschiedenem Kaffee-Wasser-Verhältnis («brew ratio»)
We experiment with all variables to constantly optimise our brew recipes. For instance, we brew the same coffee with extraction times ranging from 23 to 36 seconds and with various different brew rations.
These brew guides are here to help you get started with brewing coffee at home. We would like you to take these as a starting point and experiment as you go. They are not carved in stone, neither are they complete. They are meant to be adjusted, tweaked and reversed to get even more out of your beans and to learn more about coffee extraction. There are many other ways to make delicious coffee, these are some of the recipes we use on a daily basis. Keep in mind that every coffee is different – even the same beans can taste completely different today than in a week. For tips and tricks about storing your coffee, take a look at our previous blog post.
View our full collection of brew recipes in our Brew Guides.