How to drink this

You do not have to be a coffee person or a tea person to get this right. You need one ratio, one temperature, and about four minutes you are allowed to keep for yourself. This page gives you the numbers, says where each one comes from, and leaves the rest alone.

Why a coffee company writes this down

For a lot of people who work a shift, the cup is the only part of the day that runs on their own terms. It is fifteen minutes that nobody can bill, reschedule, or put a quota on. We take that seriously, which means we do not guess at the numbers. Everything below is either a published standard, the roaster's own specification, or a federal agency's figure, and each one is named where it is used. The jokes are on the bag. The instructions are not one of them.

Coffee: the standard, plainly

Two bodies publish numbers for filter coffee in the United States, and they agree. The Specialty Coffee Association's Golden Cup standard, the one its home brewer certification is tested against, calls for 55 grams of coffee per litre of water, give or take 10 percent, water at 200°F plus or minus 5°F when it meets the grounds, and four to eight minutes of contact for a filter brew. The National Coffee Association's version for a home kitchen is the same thing in tablespoons: one to two level tablespoons per 6 oz of water, medium grind, about five minutes of contact.

In practice, 55 grams per litre is roughly 1 part coffee to 18 parts water by weight. Two tablespoons per 6 oz lands a little stronger, closer to 1 to 16. Both are inside the standard. Pick one, make it the same way twice, then adjust.

Method	Grind	Ratio to start	Time
Drip machine	Medium (like kosher salt)	2 tbsp per 6 oz	About 5 min, set by the machine
Pour over	Medium	1 to 16 by weight	About 3 min
French press	Coarse (like rock salt)	1 to 15 by weight	4 min, then press
Espresso	Fine (like table salt)	Roughly 1 in, 2 out	25 to 30 seconds
Cold brew	Coarse	1 to 4 or 1 to 5 for a concentrate; about 1 to 8 to drink straight	About 12 hours, room temperature or fridge

Grind sizes and the drip and cold brew numbers are the National Coffee Association's. The espresso and French press figures are the working rules most baristas use rather than a published standard, and we say so. Water: filtered if you can, never distilled or softened.

Drip coffee maker

Medium grind, 2 level tablespoons per 6 oz of water in the reservoir, fresh filter, press start. The cup lines on the carafe measure 6 oz cups, not the mug on your desk, so count from the water you pour in. Rinse the basket after every pot; the oil that builds up is what makes yesterday's coffee taste bitter today.

Pour over

Medium grind. Wet the paper filter first and pour that water away. Pour just enough to wet the grounds, wait about 30 seconds while they bloom, then pour the rest in slow circles. Three minutes total is the target.

French press

Coarse grind. Add coffee, add water that has come off the boil, stir once, put the lid on without pressing. Wait four minutes, then press slowly and pour all of it out. Coffee left sitting on the grounds keeps extracting and turns bitter.

Moka pot

Fine, but not espresso fine. Hot water in the base to just below the valve, coffee in the basket without tamping, medium-low heat. Take it off the stove the moment it starts to sputter.

Espresso

Fine grind. A useful starting point is 18 grams in, 36 grams out, in 25 to 30 seconds. Faster than that, grind finer. Slower, grind coarser. Your machine's manual outranks this paragraph.

Cold brew

Coarse grind. For a concentrate, 1 part coffee to 4 or 5 parts cold water, about 12 hours on the counter or in the fridge, then strain and dilute to taste. If you want to drink it straight from the jar, brew at about 1 to 8 instead. It keeps about a week refrigerated.

Pods and capsules

Nothing to measure. Follow your machine. THE STANDING ORDER and THE TRIAL RUN are built for exactly this.

Keeping it fresh

Roasted coffee starts losing aroma almost as soon as it is roasted, so buy what you will drink in a week or two. Once the bag is open, move it to an airtight, opaque container and keep it somewhere cool and dark, not the cupboard above the stove. Whole beans hold their flavour for one to three weeks at room temperature; ground coffee, one to two. The freezer is only worth it in a truly airtight container, taking out a week's worth at a time so condensation never touches the beans. Grind right before you brew if you can.

Tea, by name

Tea we can be exact about, because every one of ours comes with dose, temperature and time from the people who blended it. Those numbers are below, and they are the ones to trust over any general chart. The one general rule that survives: green tea brewed at a full boil goes bitter, and that bitterness is usually what people mean when they say they do not like green tea.

Tea	What it is	Dose	Temp	Time
RIGHT TIMING	Jasmine green	2.5 g / 12 oz	175°F	2–3 min
THE RESET	Moroccan mint green	2.5 g / 12 oz	175°F	3–4 min
THE GOLD STANDARD	Earl Grey	2.5 g / 12 oz	195°F	5–10 min
NO FINE PRINT	English breakfast	2.5 g / 12 oz	195°F	5–7 min
OUT OF OFFICE	Peach black	2.5 g / 12 oz	195°F	5 min
OPEN ENROLLMENT	Mango black	2.5 g / 12 oz	195°F	5–10 min
OFF FORMULARY	Masala chai	3 g / 12 oz	208°F	5–10 min
THE WARM HANDOFF	Apple cider rooibos, caffeine free	2.5 g / 12 oz	212°F	4–6 min
NO DENIALS	Hibiscus berry rooibos, caffeine free	3 g / 12 oz	212°F	5–10 min
THE RITUAL	Ceremonial matcha, whisked	1 g / 8 oz	175°F	Whisk
LOW OVERHEAD	Hojicha powder, whisked	3 g / 8 oz	175°F	Whisk

Dose is loose leaf per 12 oz of water unless stated. The two powders, THE RITUAL and LOW OVERHEAD, are whisked, not steeped: sift, add water at 175°F, whisk in a W until it foams.

Iced anything. Brew it double strength and pour it straight over ice. Diluting as the ice melts is the point. THE RESET, OPEN ENROLLMENT, OUT OF OFFICE and NO DENIALS all take to this well.

Cold brewed tea. Same dose, cold water, overnight in the fridge. NO DENIALS is the one built for it.

For the record. There is an international laboratory standard for brewing tea, ISO 3103: 2 grams of leaf per 100 ml of freshly boiled water, steeped for six minutes. It exists so that tasters can compare teas fairly, not so that anyone should drink tea that way. Steeping longer or hotter also pulls more caffeine into the cup, which is a measured effect, not folklore. Use the roaster's numbers.

Caffeine, in plain numbers

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cites 400 milligrams a day as an amount not generally associated with negative effects for most adults, and puts a typical 8 oz cup of coffee at roughly 80 to 100 milligrams and an 8 oz cup of green or black tea at 30 to 50. Decaf still carries a small amount. Sensitivity varies a great deal from person to person, and some conditions and medications change it. This page is about brewing, not about you; for that, talk to your own physician.

Our caffeine free options are the herbal teas, NO DENIALS and THE WARM HANDOFF, and the Swiss Water decaf, POST CALL.

A word on grind

If your coffee tastes thin and sour, grind finer. If it tastes harsh and drying, grind coarser. Almost every brewing problem is a grind problem wearing a disguise.

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The numbers on this page are cited because the person who owns this company is a physician, and a physician who guesses at numbers does not stay one for long.

Chief Complaint Coffee & Tea is owned outright by a family physician who still owns her practice. No board, no investors, no one upstairs. That is the whole story, and it is why we care about who owns your doctor as much as what is in your cup. If you want the weekly letter on that, it is called The Chief Complaint, and the signup is at the bottom of this page.

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Sources

• Specialty Coffee Association, SCA Standard 310-2021, Home Coffee Brewers (PDF), the Golden Cup brew ratio, temperature and extraction targets.
• National Coffee Association, Drip coffee, Cold brew coffee and Storage and shelf life, aboutcoffee.org.
• International Organization for Standardization, ISO 3103, Tea: Preparation of liquor for use in sensory tests. The standard itself is a paid document; the numbers quoted are its published method.
• Tea brewing conditions and caffeine: Determination of L-Theanine and Caffeine Contents in Tea Infusions with Different Fermentation Degrees and Brewing Conditions, peer reviewed, PubMed Central.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Spilling the Beans: How Much Caffeine is Too Much?
• Per-tea dose, temperature and time: the tea blender's own specification sheets, supplied with each product.

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