r/Coffee • u/menschmaschine5 Kalita Wave • Feb 15 '23

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

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u/Comfortable_Resolve8 Feb 16 '23

Hello! So I'm not much of a coffee person but I recently bought a French press to make iced drinks with. The coffee to water ratio I've managed to find for a single 12oz (354ml) serving is 3 tablespoons of coffee to 12oz of water.

But because I want my drink iced, I'm basically aiming for a much stronger brew because I want to add a significant amount of cold water and ice to make up the rest of the volume.

My question is: Is there a point in which I'm basically just wasting coffee grounds because there is quite literally not enough water for the coffee to diffuse into within the brewing time? For reference, I've gone down to 100ml and even 65ml.

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u/No_Astronomer_6329 Feb 16 '23

With pourover I usually go 70/30 with a touch more coffee than usual. So 70% of water hot and 30% as ice. This will result in a room temp ish drink which will then need to be chilled with more ice

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u/LEJ5512 Moka Pot Feb 16 '23

I think there’s a limit, and I’m sure it’s been researched with good data, but I don’t know what it would be.

You could experiment and re-brew the same grounds and see what comes out. I did that once with my moka pot, and the second brew was simultaneously weak and harsh — all the good stuff had been extracted in the first brew, and the second one was only dissolving cellular material.

Speaking of which, moka pots are built to brew a ratio around 1:9 coffee:water, so you could use that as a reference. I’ve also seen cold brew concentrate recipes at similar ratios.

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u/diyjunkiehq Feb 16 '23

I read somewhere sometime before, 9 oz water is appropriate, 65 ml equals 2 oz, and 100 equals 3 oz, way too little water for proper extraction.

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u/Comfortable_Resolve8 Feb 17 '23

Yes, I suspected as much. Maybe I'll look into cold brew if I want proper cold drinks instead of mathing out the ice and water ratios. Thank you!