Cafetiere Brew Guide

How do you make the perfect cafetiere of coffee? Well, the instructions below will get you pretty close to a perfect cup and importantly, be able to replicate it time and time again.

Firstly, there a few tools that you will require, so go ahead and put together everything on the ‘tools’ list:

- Cafetiere of your choice
- Freshly roasted, course ground coffee
- Your favourite coffee mug
- Measuring scales – kitchen scales will be perfect
- Spoon
- Stopwatch
- Kettle
- Filtered water – bottled water will suffice

Once you have the items above, you’re ready to make the best cafetiere of coffee ever and this is how to achieve it:

1. Fill your kettle with your filter water and begin to boil.

2. Work out how many millilitre’s your cafetiere is – an 8 cup is usually around 1000ml

3. Place your cafetiere onto your measuring scales and ‘tare’ the weight so that with the cafetiere on, the weight is zero.

4. With the volume of your cafetiere understood, we need to firstly decide on your desired weight of coffee. We use a range of 60 – 75g per 1000ml depending on the coffee. As a rule of thumb, let’s start with 65g per 1000ml.

5. With our weight of 65g per 1000ml decided, let’s do some maths! So for an 8 cup cafetiere we would need to measure in 65g of freshly ground coffee. For a 4 cup at 600ml we would need to do: 65 / 1000 * 600 = 39g. Using this equation we can work out exactly how much coffee to use each and every time you make your cafetiere.

6. Place your mathematically decided weight of coffee into the cafetiere and once achieved, ‘tare’ the weight once more.

7. The cafeteire and coffee will equal zero weight and this is to precisely measure the volume and weight of water.

8. Once the kettle has boiled, allow to stand for 90 seconds for the water to cool to 92 degrees Celsius.

9. Poor the water into the cafetiere, covering all the coffee until your target weight has been achieved. In this case 1000ml for our 8 cup cafetiere.

10. Stir once.

11. Start your timer and wait for 4 minutes.

12. Once 4 minutes is reached, gently remove the floating grinds by scooping them out with your spoon. This will leave less mess later on!

13. Attach the plunger and plunge. This would take about 10 – 20 seconds to achieve and shouldn’t feel too ‘stiff’. If it does, the coffee may have been ground slightly too fine.

14. Poor some remaining water from the kettle into your mug and discard. This is solely to pre-heat the cup.

15. Once the plunge has been completed, poor your coffee into your cup and enjoy!

The above guide has been put together by hours of practice and patience! It will allow you to produce the same cup of coffee time and again and will give you a good grounding in which to cup coffees against each other, knowing that they have been made the same way.

If you come across any other variations of how to make the perfect cafetiere, do feel free to email us!

Happy coffee drinking