Folks who source and roast coffee are notorious tinkerers, but sometimes even we just want an easy recipe for a few cups of very good coffee. This recipe uses our recommended brewer (Technivorm Moccamaster) and electric conical burr grinder (Baratza Encore), and it might just be your slickest path to sensational sipping.

In addition to the brewer and the grinder, we recommend having a scale, good paper filters (like these!), and Third Wave Water on hand to yield the best possible results.

How it’s done:

MEASURE OUT YOUR COFFEE AND POUR IN YOUR WATER!

We like a 1 : 15 coffee : water ratio for this brewer (that’s a little stronger than what the Moccamaster manual recommends), so depending on how much coffee you need, that’s:

33g : “4 cups” / ½ L 

50g : “6 cups” / ¾ L 

66g : “8 cups” / 1 L  

For most of our coffees, the provided Moccamaster scoop holds 10 - 12 g of whole bean coffee when leveled off (not heaping). Because of variance between coffees and the imprecision of “the scoop,” we strongly recommend using a scale!

Note that the markings on the water reservoir represent fractions of a Liter on the left (so ¼ L = 250 ml, etc.), and on the right you have “cups”—but in this sense they are only a little over 4 ounces.

GRIND YOUR COFFEE!

We like a medium-coarse grind for this brewer—typically somewhere between settings “25” and “30” on your Encore—but grinders are annoyingly akin to snowflakes in that each one is a litttttle different, so some trial and error may be required to find your perfect setting. Generally speaking, smaller batches require the finer end of your spectrum.

If you’re making a batch that is 750ml (“6 cups”) or smaller, MAKE SURE THE LITTLE SWITCH IS FLIPPED TO THE HALF CARAFE OPTION, but if brewing 1L (“8 cups”) or above, FLIP IT TO THE FULL CARAFE OPTION—this button actually alters the flowrate of the water through the bed, and you want a slower flow rate for the smaller brews (otherwise the brew bed just gets swallowed up and finished too quickly, thus woefully underextracting, and vice versa).

SWITCH HER ON!

Once everything is in place (coffee in the filter basket, water in the brewer, switch on the correct setting), just turn that thing on and let it roll! Around 6 minutes later, you should come back to a pot full of beautiful coffee <3