Want to make better coffee? Here's one, really amazing and simple tip.
It's really as easy as it sounds.
Want to make better coffee?
I got you.
I’ve written about coffee for years.
I know a thing or two.
This one thing will take your coffee game from zero-to-hero.
This one thing doesn't take much effort, and doesn't have to cost much money.
This one thing will help you enjoy better coffee.
It's not a new brew method. Not a fancy new toy. It isn't a brand new coffee.
No. The one thing you can do to make better coffee is...
Use scales.
It's that simple.
Use scales.
Weigh your coffee. Weigh your water. Drink better coffee.
No one thinks twice about grabbing scales when they're baking scones, bread, a sourdough starter or meth. Everyone can agree you get better results if you're being precise and using weight measurements instead of volume measurements.
Most of us have tasted scones or cakes where there's too much salt, or worse, too much baking soda. You can taste it and it ruins it. One person's pinch is another person's scoop. But you can avoid the scorn of your mother-in-law if you simply weigh it all out.
The same is true for coffee.
True story.
Coffee brewing generally follows a simple recipe. For filter coffee, you use approx 60 grams of coffee for 1000g of water. For espresso, you shoot for a 2:1 recipe of coffee out to coffee in. All of these things means you need scales.
Even the humble and much maligned French Press can be taken to the next level of an incredible coffee experience if you follow the recipe and use scales.
Once you start using scales, you won't look back.
Which scales are the best?
Which scales should you use for coffee?
Well, there's a bunch of fancy scales that link to your phone, some that are super fast, or are crowd-funded so they have street cred blah blah blah. But the best scales you should use, are the ones you have available. Easy.
For some reason, coffee scales are expensive. The basic Hario brew scales are $105 NZD (I used have a set of these which I bought when I was in peak coffee wankery). The Acaia Coffee scales retail for $499.95 (WTF) and they look super cool - but cool looking gear doesn't make better tasting coffee. Sorry everyone.
The good news is you don't need to spend anywhere near that much.
To prove that point, back in 2020 I purchased some 'coffee scales' from Aliexpress for 20 New Zealand dollarydoos. They look identical to these $44 NZD scales available from a New Zealand based store... [I can't verify if they are the same scales - but they look suspiciously identical - though, they are JUST scales, so not that hard to copy.]
I had low expectations to be honest. They're only $20 so they must be pretty inferior compared to my $100 purpose built scales, co-designed by the king of all things specialty coffee (read coffee wankery) James Hoffman (who I actually love), right?! RIGHT?!
Wrong.
I was wrong.
Everything consumerism and marketing had taught me over the years has just been blown out of the water.
Cheaper is better.
Head-to-head, the 'Coffee Scale' brand of coffee scales were as good, if not better than my Hario scale. In a weigh off, they were as accurate as each other, but the cheaper scales were more responsive (quicker to register changes in weight). They both have timers to measure how fast your coffee is brewing, but the 'cheaper, dumber' scales had a feature where it beeped every minute - which was awesome.
The cheaper scales even had the option of using different units for measurement, and an awesome green back light. I love green. My Hario scales don't even have green on them. What's the point.
The great thing about a $20 set of scales is that you won't feel like you need to care too much for them. That means you can take them camping, tramping, to work (whenever we get back there) - basically anywhere that you're making coffee, cheap scales can go with you. If you break em, smash em or drown em, you wont' mind so much. This means you can have amazing coffee everywhere - there is no excuse.
Here I am brewing a post-kayak Chemex by the river, brewed with scales so it didn't suck - cos there's nothing worse than having crap coffee after bombing some mighty whitewater.
Four years with the scales - are they still alive?
These $20 scales are now my daily. They have been abused. They have been drentched. They have been dropped. They are my coffee scales, my baking scales, my pool chemical scales. They just won’t die.
My Hario scales - the ones that were FIVE TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE - well, they’re dead. They died a watery death during one of the COVID lockdowns. THey couldn’t even hand a bit of water - seemingly a fatal flaw for a set of coffee scales…
Cheaper scales for the win.
There you have it. To improve your coffee experience no end, dig around your kitchen and pull out those kitchen scales, or jump online to find some cheap-yet-reliable digital scales ($20 from The Warehouse, or these sexy beasts from Temu for $18.78) or go all out and spend up large.
What ever you do, do yourself a favour by starting to use scales.