Drip Brewer

Found everywhere from home kitchens to offices and hotels, drip brewers, or drip coffee machines, are the ultimate convenience for brewing moderate to large quantities of coffee for multiple coffee drinkers. Their ease and automation can save you a great deal of time over manual methods like pour over or french press, especially when brewing for 3 or 4+ individuals.

This is a broad category of coffee machine representing a range of sophistication and price, including everything from the classic Bonavita Coffee Maker to the popular Breville Luxe Brewer and Fellow Aiden.

In the following brew guide, we provide steps that can be applied to any drip brewer that you encounter out in the wild. We have a dedicated brew guide and recipe for the Fellow Aiden as well, as there is a lot to explore there.

 If you're short on time, jump to the What You'll Need section below to dive right in. Otherwise, you should get to know the basic variables that go into brewing great coffee:

 

Basic variables of brewing:

1. Coffee to Water Ratio: This is the volume of water for every unit of ground coffee (grams/ounces). Generally, we recommend staying between a 15:1 to a 17:1 ratio. However, as your ratio will play a big role in the flavor concentration or "strength" of your final brew, you always want to be brewing something that tastes right for you.
2. Coffee Grind Size: The size of your coffee grounds is a major factor for flavor extraction, dictating how quickly, or slowly, water can pass through. While coarser grind sizes can be beneficial for brew methods like french press, we recommend a medium to medium-fine coffee grind for your drip brewers. Super fine grinds should be reserved for espresso machines. 
3. Water Quality: Always ensure that you're filling up your brew tank with filtered water. Just as a rule of thumb, distilled water is not recommended here as you always want a bit of natural mineral content in your water to pull compounds out of your coffee.
4. Water Temperature: 204-205°, just off-boil, is an ideal temperature for water to properly extract your coffee during brewing. This is a category where older or lower-end drip brewers can really under-perform due to insufficiently heating up the water in their tank. If you have good quality and freshly-ground coffee that still brews a sour, subpar pot from a drip brewer, it could very likely be due to insufficient water temperature.
5. Turbulence & Time: Also known as "agitation," turbulence refers to the contact of the water with the coffee grounds, including any stirring or movement, with "time" referring to the total duration of the brew. The best drip brewers, like the Breville Luxe, have a nice shower head that evenly distributes water, agitating the grounds bed a little bit as they brew. Moreover, they have settings like water pulse and bloom that allow you to manipulate the turbulence and time factors further as you get more and more comfortable with the basics of your machine.

 

 

Recommended Coffee to Water Ratio: 1:15 (balanced)

 

What you'll need

• Drip coffee maker/brewer with a coffee pot and water tank 
• Flat bottom cone filter, either paper or mesh
  
• Fresh coffee, medium-fine ground  (66g)
• 1 liter of filtered water (1000g / 34oz)

Prep

1. Clean any loose coffee grounds off the exterior and interior of your machine.
2. Review your machine's available settings for water temperature. While any water temperature above 200° is workable, 204-205° is ideal for your brew. For any volume settings, indicate that you are brewing 1 liter of coffee. 
3. Similarly, take a look for any settings pertaining to turbulence or water flow, like bloom volume or flow rate. For this recipe, select the standard or "medium" option if available, although we encourage you to experiment with these settings as you get more comfortable with your machine. The most economic drip brewers may not have these settings at all.

Brew

1. Open the top of your brewer and add your wide-bottom coffee filter, whether it is a standard paper filter or a special reusable filter that comes with your machine, ensuring that it is resting snug and flat against the interior of your brewer.
2. Add your freshly ground coffee to the inside of the filter and close the lid of your drip brewer.
3. Pour 1 liter (or 34 fluid ounces) of filtered water into the water tank of your drip brewer. You can ensure that you have the right quantity of water by using the volumetrics located on the side of your water tank to reference "1L" / "34oz," or by weighing your water before the pour.
4. Now it's brew time. Turn on your machine and proceed through any required settings, stopping just short of the final "Brew" command. Depending on how your machine heats water, ensure that you wait long enough for the preheating process to conclude.
5. Click "Brew" or "Start" and wait for the brewing magic to happen! Depending on your machine and its settings, it will take a few minutes for the coffee to properly extract and drip into the coffee pot or carafe below. Most standard drip brewers will automatically stop when your brew is complete. 
6. Serve your coffee and enjoy!

Pro Tips

• While the guide above is a solid introduction to a successful coffee experience with just about any drip brewer out there, we really recommend exploring further manufacturer resources and manuals for your specific brewers. Brewers like the Breville Luxe Brewer and Fellow Aiden will make good coffee if you just push the button and let them do their thing, but will really start to shine once you've had a chance to dig into the programming, experimenting with bloom settings, flow rate, and saving custom presets and recipes.
• When you can, always try to grind your coffee fresh! Pre-ground coffee loses its flavor quickly and grinding your coffee fresh from home will ensure you're brewing coffee with peak flavor retention. Here at Equator Coffees, our home coffee grinder of choice is the Fellow Opus.
• In this recipe, we recommend 204-205° water temperature for most coffees and brewers. However, if you're brewing a super light roast single origin coffee and want to extract more from it, you can try brewing at a higher temperature like 208°.
• The reusable mesh coffee filters that come with machines like the Breville Luxe Brewer and Fellow Aiden are pretty fantastic. However, if you are especially sensitive to the taste of any oils in your coffee, consider using a standard paper coffee filter instead.
• While thermal carafes are great for keeping your coffee hot, we don't recommend letting your coffee sit for any more than 45 minutes to an hour as it can begin to develop a more sour or astringent taste.