What you need
Get a dripper, paper filters, a kettle and a kitchen scale. Drippers come in two common shapes, cone and flat bottom. Counter Culture finds the flat-bottom kind easier to get right, and says a cone gives a bit more clarity of flavor. A gooseneck kettle lets you aim a thin stream. First, rinse the filter with hot water to wash out the paper taste and warm your mug.
Ratio and grind
Start at 1:16 to 1:17, coffee to water by weight. Counter Culture uses 1:17 as its standard. Stumptown pairs 21 g of coffee with 360 g of water for a 10 oz mug. Grind to medium-fine, about the size of table salt. For a Chemex, grind coarser, closer to kosher salt. A finer grind slows the water down, and a coarser one lets it through faster.
| Small mug | 10 oz mug | Two mugs | Full Chemex | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Water | 250 g | 360 g | 500 g | 700 g |
| Coffee at 1 : 16 | 16 g | 23 g | 31 g | 44 g |
| Coffee at 1 : 17 | 15 g | 21 g | 29 g | 41 g |
The bloom
Wet the grounds with about twice their weight in water: 30 g for 15 g of coffee. Coffee keeps giving off carbon dioxide for about two weeks after roasting. The gas tastes sour and pushes water away, so the bed puffs up and bubbles. Give it 30 to 45 seconds to escape. Recipes disagree on the wait: Stumptown's cone recipe moves on after 15 seconds.
Pouring in stages
Add the rest of the water in three or four equal pours. Move the spout in a slow spiral from the center out. Counter Culture keeps the dripper between half and two-thirds full. In one popular one-cup recipe, you add 50 g at a time, every 20 to 25 seconds, until the scale reads 250 g. Finish with a gentle swirl of the dripper.
Timing and taste
From the first pour to the last drip, plan on 3 to 4 minutes. If the brew drains in 2 minutes, grind finer. At 5 minutes, go coarser. Then taste. A sour cup means the water pulled out too little, so grind finer or brew longer. If it tastes bitter, do the opposite. Change one thing at a time so you know which change worked.
