Automatic Drip

Although automatic drip coffee makers aren’t the best tool to use for a great cup of coffee, they are the most common and most convenient. Following a few simple steps will lead to a nice, convenient cup of coffee. Just the thing to get you up and out the door on a busy morning.

Detailed Instructions

Detailed Instructions

1. Start with good coffee. Assuming you are going to brew Bold Bean, you’ve already taken care of this step.

2. Use the right ratio of coffee to water. 10 grams of coffee for six ounces (coffee cup) of water is a good rule of thumb. If you don’t have a gram scale, that 10-gram measure works out to be about 2 tablespoons of medium roasted coffee beans per six ounce coffee cup. If brewing a dark roasted coffee use a slightly higher volume of beans; for a light roast, slightly lower. If weighing your coffee, keep proportions the same. Most coffee makers, but not all, have cups marked according to the six ounce cup measurement. It’s best, then, to measure your water in a standard measuring cup.

3. Grind coffee fresh for every pot. Use a medium fine or auto-drip grind. Burr type grinders are ideal. They allow you to dial in accurate grind settings and achieve evenly sized grounds. Blade grinders chop coffee, resulting in uneven and powdery grounds. This leads to bitter, watery coffee and dreaded coffee sediment. If you are going to use a blade grinder, make sure you don’t overload it. And, be sure to “pulse grind” the coffee, using short bursts.

4. Use fresh, clean water. And, unless you are in one of the few cities boasting good tap water, always use filtered water. Chemicals such as fluoride and chlorine, as well as high concentrations of minerals such as iron and lime, will negatively affect the flavor of your coffee and will shorten the life of your coffee maker. It’s best not to use distilled water. You need water with some trace minerals for proper extraction. Without minerals present in water used for brewing, coffee is basically tasteless. In short, either use a filter or buy spring water.

5. Brew for the full cycle. Don’t pour a cup of coffee during the middle of the brew cycle. That cup will be thick and strong and the rest of the pot will be watery.

6. Don’t let your coffee pot sit on the burner after brewing is finished. This will quickly lead to burnt tasting coffee.

7. Keep your coffee maker and coffee pot clean. Dispose of grounds soon after brewing and rinse and wipe filter basket clean. Any surface that ground or brewed coffee touches should be cleaned regularly, ideally after every use.

8. Enjoy!

Extra: Automatic drip brewers generally don’t brew a great cup of coffee because very few of them extract the coffee evenly. Just look at the head on your auto-drip machine. Does it have a big shower head that evenly saturates the coffee bed? No? Well, this will result in under extraction of half of the coffee over extraction of the other half. You can minimize this though. Try stirring the coffee grounds a few times during the brew cycle. This will help incorporate all of the grounds into the brew water allowing for a more even extraction.