Brewing Perfection: Understanding Dose, Time and Yield

To optimise your coffee experience, whether at home or work, it's crucial to remember a fundamental principle: the relationship between Dose, Time (grind), and Yield. Whether you're encountering a new coffee or struggling to achieve the best results, keeping this principle in mind ensures consistent success and boosts your confidence with your grinder.

When approaching your coffee, you will need three key tools: a grinder, scales, and a timer. With these, you will be able to clearly understand what you're getting and therefore make the best calculated decisions.

Understanding the interplay between these elements is essential.

Firstly, you'll notice that time is accompanied by grind. This is your key to unlocking all that deliciousness. The size of the grind particles will determine how fast or slow your coffee will pour; therefore, the grind affects time.

Your dose determines the amount of coffee you have available to extract flavour, while yield indicates how much deliciousness you've extracted from your coffee. This means that if you use too little coffee and have a very long yield, you will run out of flavour quickly and extract undesirables. Therefore, it's crucial to strike a balance between the amount of coffee you use and the amount you extract.

Achieving balance between these factors is crucial—a ratio of 1:1-1.5 for espresso or 1:15-16 for filter coffee typically produces a well-balanced cup, adjustable based on personal preferences.

The grind setting, along with the dose, determines the "contact time" or how fast/slow coffee pours. Finding the right contact time, considering the dose-to-yield ratio, is key to extracting delicious flavours.

In practice, start with a set dose and yield, and establish an extraction time, and taste. Adjust the grind if the extraction is too fast or slow, and tweak dose or yield for body and flavour balance.

Coffee brewing is a journey of discovery, with variables serving as your compass and map. Change one variable at a time to efficiently find your sweet spot.

Explore, experiment, and enjoy the variety of flavours that coffee offers.

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Blog written by Pablo (Paradox Coffee Roasters, NSW Training Manager)