http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/23/dining/how-to-make-coffee.html?_r=0
2. Use a Scale, Not a Scoop
Now that nerd has gone from a slur to a compliment, it frees you to be
more compulsive about how you make coffee. To start, coffee should be
measured in grams, using a digital scale. It doesnt have to be expensive.
You can buy a perfectly functional digital scale for less than $15.
This suggestion shouldnt be a surprise to anybody who has bought a baking
cookbook recently. For years, pastry chefs have weighed their ingredients
in grams, and now its standard for all corners of a restaurant kitchen. If
youve baked using a digital scale, you know it is very easy to use and
delivers better results with less mess or waste.
And its not just the coffee you should weigh. Ideally, you would also
weigh your water, or at least measure volume in liters, rather than cups
or ounces. Heres why: When you brew coffee, youre working with a ratio, a
certain amount of coffee to water that you can scale up or down depending
on how much you want to make. Most Americans do this with scoops and cups,
meaning the cup measurements marked on the coffee machine. But a cup on a
coffee machine is usually five ounces (not eight), and a scoop is
arbitrary (there is no standard measurement). Its a messy system.
If you are going to the trouble of creating that ratio every morning, you
may as well do it right. A good benchmark is 55 grams of coffee to 1,000
grams (or one liter) of water, which is the Golden Cup Ratio of the
Specialty Coffee Association of America. Dont let the metric system scare
you; it actually makes doing any math much easier.
As for the scale itself, an inexpensive one is all you need; be sure it
has a capacity of at least two kilograms. But if you want to nudge open
the door of coffee obsession, consider the Hario V60 scale ($60), which is
accurate up to 0.01 of a gram, has a built-in timer and comes in Death
Star matte black.
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