calculators.coffee

Coffee to Water Ratio Calculator

Dial in any brewing method — pour-over, French press, AeroPress, cold brew, more.

Brewing method

Your recipe

30.0 g coffee · 495 g water

1:16.5 — Strong but balanced — the centre of the pour-over (V60 / Kalita / Origami) band.

Method
pour-over (V60 / Kalita / Origami)
Brewed yield
435 g
Method tip
Aim for a 2:30–3:30 total brew time with a medium-fine grind.

Last updated

How to use this calculator

Pick your method. The defaults are where working baristas and competition brewers land, so for most home brews you can stop reading and start pouring. Know how much coffee you have? Type it into Coffee dose and the water adjusts. Know how much brewed coffee you want in the cup? Switch on Brewed yieldand we’ll work backwards. Units toggle next to each label — grams default, ounces and millilitres one click away.

Why the coffee-to-water ratio matters

A ratio is a small lever that controls a big outcome. Pull it one way and the cup gets syrupy and bitter; pull it the other and it goes flat and sour. Everything else you might fiddle with — grind size, water temperature, pour technique — matters more after you’ve got the ratio in the right neighbourhood. Get the ratio first; tune the rest second.

The Specialty Coffee Association settled on 55 grams of coffee per litre of water (about 1:18.2), ± 10%, as the standard band for what most drinkers will call “a good cup.” That gives you a range from roughly 1:16 to 1:20. Different methods sit in different parts of that band: a thick-filter Chemex wants more water for a clean cup, a French press tolerates less because immersion brewing extracts harder. The presets in this calculator are where the SCA standards, James Hoffmann’s published recipes, and the recipes our team brews on the bar at Timberline all overlap. Treat them as the centre of the runway, not the centre line of the road — fly five percent either side and you’ll land fine.

Recommended ratios by brew method

MethodDefaultRangeWhy this band
Pour-over (V60, Kalita, Origami)1:16.51:15.0 – 1:18.0Strong, balanced midpoint of the SCA Golden Cup band.
Chemex1:17.01:15.0 – 1:18.0Thicker filter retains more fines, so a slightly higher ratio keeps the cup from feeling thin.
Auto-drip / batch brew1:17.01:15.0 – 1:18.0The literal SCA Golden Cup target.
French press1:15.01:12.0 – 1:17.0Immersion + steep tolerates more coffee without bitterness. Hoffmann's 1:17 is the clean-cup outlier.
AeroPress (standard)1:15.01:12.0 – 1:17.0Median of World AeroPress Championship winning recipes 2015–2024.
AeroPress (concentrate)1:8.01:6.0 – 1:10.0Brew short and strong, dilute to taste.
Cold brew (ready-to-drink)1:15.01:13.0 – 1:17.0Steeped 12–18 hours room temp, 18–24 hours fridge.
Cold brew (concentrate)1:6.01:5.0 – 1:8.0Always shown with the dilution maths — usually 1:1 with water or milk at service.
Moka pot1:10.01:8.0 – 1:12.0The boiler is the constraint; ratio runs strong because extraction is near-complete.
Siphon / vacuum1:15.01:13.0 – 1:17.0Behaves like pour-over once you cut the heat.

Espresso is on a different page. Espresso ratios are dose to liquid yield (typically 1:2 to 1:2.5), not coffee to water. Use the espresso calculator.

Common mistakes new brewers make

  • Scooping instead of weighing.A level tablespoon of light-roast Yirgacheffe and a level tablespoon of dark-roast Sumatra can differ by 30% in mass — same volume, different beans, different cup. A $15, 0.1-gram coffee scale is the single best upgrade most home brewers can make.
  • Treating “espresso ratio” and “brew ratio” as the same thing. They aren’t. Espresso ratios are dose to liquid yield (typically 1:2 to 1:2.5). Brew ratios for everything else on this page are coffee to brew water (typically 1:15 to 1:18). The numbers look similar; they describe different physics. The espresso calculator lives on its own page for a reason.
  • Mixing up cold-brew flavours of “ratio.” 1:6 cold brew is a concentrateyou’re meant to dilute. 1:15 is ready-to-drink. They are not better or worse than each other; they are different products. Brew the first one and drink it straight and you’ll think we lied to you.

Pro tips from the brew bar

  • The ratio is the starting point, not the verdict. 1:16 is where the SCA, Hoffmann, and most published pour-over recipes converge — but it isn’t a law. If the cup tastes sour and thin, go a touch stronger (lower the second number); if it tastes bitter or chalky, go lighter — before you start moving the grinder.
  • French press is forgiving on ratio, unforgiving on grind. A coarse, even grind matters more than chasing decimals on the math — fines slip through the mesh and grit the cup no matter how clean your numbers are.
  • Your ratio should scale; your time should not. Doubling the dose and water keeps the ratio constant, but a 60 g pour-over brews longer than a 15 g pour-over. Coarsen the grind one notch and expect an extra 30–60 seconds when you scale up.

Frequently asked questions

Related calculators