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James Hoffmann - Coffee Brewing Ratios Explained

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Community upload. AI output has not been independently verified.
Author: James Hoffmann
Categories: Fitness
Tags: fitness
Views: 1 · Last viewed: 2026-10-13 23:15 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Brew filter coffee by weight using grams per liter, starting at 60 grams per liter for pour-over and about 75 grams per liter for infusion methods like a French press or AeroPress. Use these as starting points, then adjust to taste only after your extraction is right. Weighing coffee and water is presented as more reliable than scoops, cups, or ratios like 1:15.

Key Points

  • Scoops, cups, and tablespoons are volumetric and inconsistent: a level scoop of dark-roast medium grind might weigh about 7 to 7.5 grams, while a light-roast fine grind might weigh 8 to 8.5 grams, over 10% more.
  • Ratios like 1:15 or 1:16 are hard to use in the morning because they require dividing the water amount first; grams per liter lets you scale quickly, such as 30 grams for half a liter at 60 grams per liter.
  • There is no single correct strength. The 60 grams per liter figure is a good one-size-fits-all starting point, and 55, 50, or 75 are also valid depending on preference.
  • Extraction should be fixed before changing the ratio: if a cup tastes weak, sour, or not good, adjust grind size, steep time, or agitation rather than the coffee-to-water ratio.
  • Percolation methods (pour-over) hold water in the coffee bed, so less of the water ends up in the cup; infusion methods (French press, AeroPress) keep all water in contact with the grounds, which dilutes the brew at the same ratio.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions:
    • Weigh your coffee and ideally your water rather than using scoops or cups.
    • Pick a grams-per-liter ratio and scale by weight: multiply grams per liter by the liters you want (for half a liter at 60 grams per liter, use 30 grams of coffee).
    • For pour-over (percolation), start at about 60 grams per liter.
    • For French press or AeroPress (infusion, including an AeroPress pushed through the bed at the end), start at about 75 grams per liter.
    • Only change the ratio after you are happy with the taste: if the cup is delicious but a fraction too weak, adjust the ratio; if it is weak, sour, or not delicious, change grind size, steep time, or agitation first.
    • Avoid mixing imperial and metric units, such as grams per ounce.
  • The speaker estimates about one-third of ground coffee is soluble and uses roughly 20% extraction as a simplified figure for the video's math, noting some prefer 22 to 23% or more.
  • Example math: at 60 grams per liter, about 12 grams dissolve into the cup at 20% extraction. In a pour-over, roughly 880 grams of water ends up in the brew from a liter, while in a French press that same 12 grams dissolve into about 1,000 grams of water, making the brew weaker at the same ratio.
  • Water absorption: a pour-over bed typically absorbs about 2 grams of water per gram of coffee.
  • The speaker notes that refractometer software asks whether a brew is immersion or percolation because it affects extraction calculations and taste.

Bottom Line

Weigh your coffee and use grams per liter as the consistent baseline, then tune your extraction before you tune the ratio. Infusion methods need more coffee than pour-over to reach similar strength.