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How to brew filter coffee

Clarity,
sweetness,
character.

Clear, sweet and full of fruit: that’s how filter coffee tastes when bean, grind and water work together. Whether you’re pouring by hand for the first time or have been fine-tuning your recipe for years: here you’ll find everything that makes your next cup a little better. We roast the beans, and we write down the rest.

To the base recipe Our filter coffees
Getting better

Filter coffee, a little
better every day.

It happens in small steps, and everyone starts somewhere different. Pick whatever helps you most right now.

  1. The base recipe for beginners 12 g of coffee to 200 g of water, plus five steps. The starting point for every method.
  2. Which beans for your filter coffee? Three coffees, light roasted so the fruit stays. Which one suits your taste.
  3. To the filter coffee recipes Cold brew and cold brew tonic, explained step by step. For hot days.
01 · The base recipe

One base recipe
for every method.

Everyone starts with these values, whether with a V60, Chemex, French press or AeroPress. Set below which beans you have, how strong you like it and how much you’re making, and the numbers follow. Cold brew has its own recipe.

Your recipe
Ground coffee
Water
Bloom
Temperature

Adjust the base recipe to your beans and the amount.

How are your beans roasted?

If your kettle has a temperature setting, go for 93 °C.

Balanced, a good starting point

Brew ratio
1 : 16.7 60 g of coffee per litre
Ground coffeeWater

The filter coffee routine

Five steps, whatever the method.

01 Paper filter in the dripper, rinsed with hot water before brewing

Heat the water, rinse the filter

Bring the water to the boil and let it stand briefly. Rinse the paper filter with hot water: it removes the paper taste and warms everything up.

02 Grinding coffee fresh and weighing it to the gram

Grind and weigh

Grind fresh, medium-fine like coarse sand, and weigh to the gram. Shake the bed level, tare the scale.

03 The coffee bed swells during the bloom

Bloom

Pour 40 g of water, then wait 30 to 45 seconds. Fresh coffee is full of CO₂. It has to escape first, otherwise the coffee extracts unevenly.

04 Pouring water in circular motions

Pour

Top up to 200 g in total. With a pour-over, slowly in two or three pours; the French press gets everything at once.

Grind size is almost always the answer. If the coffee runs through much faster than in the base recipe, grind finer; if it takes much longer, coarser. And change one thing at a time.
02 · Filter beans

Which coffee beans
for filter coffee?

For filter coffee we roast light, so the fruit of the bean stays in the cup. All three come in 250 g bags, one of them without caffeine. Each has something you’ll remember it for.

Show all
03 · Filter coffee recipes

Filter coffee
on ice.

Cold brew mostly needs time, the rest is quick. Both recipes with quantities, step by step.

All recipes
Cold Brew Tonic Rezept
★ 5.018 hours

Cold Brew Tonic

View recipe
Eine Schwimmerin gönnt sich einen Cold Brew Tonic im Zürichsee an einem SUP Board.
★ 5.018 hours

Basic cold brew

View recipe
Good to know

What is filter coffee?

Filter coffee is a brewing method in which hot water slowly flows through ground coffee. Filter coffee is coffee in its purest form. Gently brewed, light-bodied, and full of nuances.

We don't define filter coffee by the paper filter as a decisive characteristic, as seen in various filter coffee machines, the Chemex, or Hario V60. Instead, we define it by the brewing principle: no pressure, no short extraction time, no concentration like with espresso. Instead, more time, more water, and an emphasis on clarity and aromas. Just like with a French Press or Aeropress.

Frequently asked questions

How Much Filter Coffee Per Cup?

Exactly how you like your filter coffee is, of course, a matter of personal preference. But as a good starting point, we recommend using 60 grams of coffee per litre of brewing water.

For a standard 250 ml cup, that works out to around 15 grams of coffee.

As you can see, your best friend when brewing filter coffee is a coffee scale. It allows you to measure both your coffee dose and water precisely, helping you keep the ratio consistent and achieve repeatable results every time.

How Many Scoops of Coffee Per Cup?

We strongly recommend investing in a coffee scale that not only measures coffee accurately to the gram but also allows you to track brew time.

Coffee beans vary in origin, density, moisture content, and roast level. A scoop of our Colombian Fincamigos coffee, for example, cannot be directly compared to a scoop of another coffee. And that's before we even consider whether your scoop holds the same amount of coffee as ours.

That said, if you prefer measuring your filter coffee with scoops, consistency is key. Always use the same scoop and the same number of scoops. Three teaspoons of coffee typically equal around 15 to 21 grams. We recommend weighing your coffee at least once to find out how many grams of a particular coffee fit into your spoon. As a general guideline, we recommend 60 grams of coffee per litre of water.

Keep the amount of water consistent as well, ideally between 250 and 300 grams per cup. Then adjust the grind size until you find the sweet spot where the coffee tastes best. If it tastes too bitter, grind a little coarser next time. If it tastes watery or overly acidic, grind a little finer.

What Is the Best Grind Size for Filter Coffee?

Filter coffee is ground much coarser than espresso or Café Crème. While ground espresso feels almost like flour between your fingers, ground filter coffee is more comparable to sand or fine sea salt.

Finding the ideal grind size is easier than you might think, because it ultimately comes down to your personal taste. Use a coffee scale to ensure you're always pouring the same amount of water over the same amount of coffee. As a starting point, try 12 grams of coffee with 200 grams of water. A temperature-controlled kettle helps you keep the brewing temperature consistent at 93°C.

Taste your filter coffee once it has cooled slightly. If it tastes too bitter, grind the coffee a little coarser next time while keeping all other variables, such as dose and water temperature, the same. If it tastes watery or overly acidic, grind a little finer.

After two or three iterations, you'll start approaching the so-called sweet spot. That's the point where you've brought out the very best your coffee beans can offer with your particular brewing setup.

The other side

Rather strong
and sweet?

Espresso extracts in 25 seconds what filter coffee needs two and a half minutes for. Denser, rounder and the base for every milk drink.

To the espresso world