WOLFF WEEKLY VLOGG 034 | Kelsey Carr and Espresso Fundamentals | Brew Ratios
Hey guys, my name is Kelsey. Welcome back! Today we’re going to be talking about some of the fundamentals of espresso. So “dialling in” - or, making coffee taste good - is something that baristas do every morning, and it’s something that’s actually quite easy to achieve. Making a good cup of coffee, when you’re working with a good product, is really easy and we’re going to talk about how to achieve that.
So first of all, we’re going to talk about brew ratio and then in the next section we’re going to look at extraction and setting the grind. So a brew ratio, what is it? It’s basically a recipe for baristas. So when you’re cooking you follow a recipe, and if you have good quality ingredients- Say you’re making brownies, and you’ve got really high quality, premium chocolate (which you’re snacking on) and you’ve got some great quality butter, and you follow a good reliable recipe, you’re going to come out with an excellent product at the end: some tasty brownies.
Well, it’s the exact same for coffee. If you’ve got good quality product: you’ve got well roasted coffee and you’ve got a good quality water and you follow a good recipe, you’re going to come out with a tasty espresso. So this recipe, it’s called the brew ratio and a brew ratio is just a relationship.
It’s the relationship between the ground coffee we put in the basket, weighed in grams and the espresso liqueur we get out, again weighed in grams. So we’re using scales at both ends. We use 20g VST baskets, so our recipes are based off 20g in. The brew ratio for a double espresso is 1:2. Super simple maths: we’re putting 20g of ground coffee in the basket and we’re weighing out 40g of espresso. Say you wanted to pull a double ristretto, the maths gets even easier. It’s a 1:1 relationship. 20g in, 20g out.
So once again, for a double espresso: 1:2, 20g in, 40 g out. For a double ristretto: 1:1, 20g in, 20g out. Sounds simple, right? What’s really important, though is that it’s achieved in the desired time. Next time when I join you back on the Vlogg, we’re going to talk about how to achieve your yield in the desired time. See you then!
