The Coffee Multiplication Table

Brew a Perfect Cup of Coffee ... Every Time

Why is coffee so much better when you drink it in a coffeeshop? No, it's not the barista's suspenders,* super-tidy mustache, or super-obscure music by a band you've never heard of. But if you watch carefully, you might notice your next cup is brewed with a level of precision that you may not be applying when you make coffee at home.

Brew the Right Weigh

Good coffeeshops, like good bakers and grocers, brew coffee not by "scoops" or the "spoons," but by weight. Coffee from different farms can vary greatly in density and size, and the only way to accurately (read: repeatably, reliably) measure how much coffee to use is to weigh it. And as much as I admire the anachronistic Imperial system used in the United States, grams are the way to go.

Find Your Ratio

Baristas love to bicker about the right ratio of beans to water, but most would agree that a ratio of somewhere between 17 parts water to 1 part coffee (17/1) and 13/1 is going to work for most every brew method. I generally use a Chemex brewer with a 16/1 ratio. I use 800 grams of water and 50 grams of fresh-ground (and usually home-roasted) coffee. For French Press, I usually grind a little coarser, and use a bit more coffee - a 13/1 ratio works best for my tastes.

End the Bottom of the Bag Blues

What do you do when you only have 13 grams of beans left in a bag? Just how much brewed coffee will that make? Using your preferred ratio, simply follow the column down to see how much water corresponds with the amount of beans remaining. With a 15/1 ratio, you can make 200 grams of brewed coffee - a smallish cup.

Counter-Sized

The Coffee Multiplication Table is a compact 5 inches in the horizontal direction, and 8 inches tall (13 x 20 cm), perfect for tacking on the wall behind your brew gear (or framing, if you're fancy). Protect it like your aunt Marge's "guest couch" by leaving it in the compostable plastic sleeve, or show off the texture of the embossed printing by taking it out.

Two Prints in One

The chipboard edge protector that comes with the multiplication table is delightfully-decorated with an antique etching of a coffee plant showing both its fruiting and flowering stages in striking gold metallic ink.

This open-edition print was printed by hand, with love, on 100-year-old, gluten-powered letterpress equipment using mostly soy-based inks. The paper is 100% recycled, and like the ink, made in the USA.

American-made French Paper

The poster is printed on 100% recycled (30% PCW), chlorine-free French brand paper, made in Niles, Michigan. If you're as big a paper nerd as you are a coffee nerd, you'll want to know that it's 140# Speckletone cover in Starch White. 

* But suspenders can't hurt, right?

** It's a thing. Coffee brewers use their own kind of "customary cup" that is less than what you probably think of as the volume of a traditional coffee cup.