This is a question that I get quite often. Of course, it really depends on how much coffee you are using to brew a pot in the first place, and that comes down to how much coffee you use per cup! That is a whole can of worms on its own! For great details on that topic, check out the article about how to brew the best cup of coffee.

Most drip coffee makers are going to be capable of making about 12 cups of coffee. That doesn’t mean you should be making the full pot though. There are many reasons for this, but the main reason is the ratio of ground coffee you should be using to how much water you should use. The recommendation based on the Specialy Coffee Association of America is to use about 2 to 3 tablespoons of ground coffee per 8 oz of water. Thats a little more coffee than what most people are used to, but it truly does result in the best cup you can get!

Its all about proper extraction. Grind size, and the length of time the water is in contact with those grinds results in one of three things. Proper extraction, over extraction or under extraction. When the correct ratio is used, the result is a clean cup of coffee with no bitter, sour or other ‘off’ flavours in the cup. Over extracted and under extracted coffees will exhibit different taints, none of which are good. Bitterness, an off aroma, very light body and sourness are just a few of the attributes to look for when coffee is not prepared properly.

So how many pots of coffee will a pound of coffee brew then?

• 8 ounce cups
• 11 grams per cup
• 454 grams per pound
• 41 cups of coffee per pound of ground coffee
• 5 pots of coffee based on brewing 64 ounce of coffee per pot!

Try it out!  You won’t be disappointed.

Curtis Coffee Makers

If you own or run a cafe that brews specialty coffee, you probably pay alot of attention to your brewing methods. There are several dominating makes of coffee brewers. These include Curtis, Bunn, Aquabrew, Bloomfield, Mr. Coffee and many many more. One of these brewers stands above the rest. Curtis has been advancing coffee brewing technology for many years. Furthermore, they embrace the standards as set for in the SCAA Golden Cup brewing guidelines.

The Curtis brewer features the option of a much larger basket to hold your filter of ground coffee. This basket is called the gourmet basket, and it is designed to hold more ground coffee than the average basket. This is because in order to properly brew coffee, the ratio of ground coffee to water must be perfect. Most brewers allow for 2.75 ounces of ground coffee, which is typically used to brew 64 ounces of coffee. However, the guidelines as set forth by the SCAA require approximately 3.75 ounces of ground coffee to brew 64 ounces of the fine beverage. When tasting both methods, the difference is very clear.

The Curtis line of specialty brewers allow the brewmaster to program ‘brew profiles‘ to find the perfect, magical point at which any given coffee is at its peak flavour. A far cry from brewers of the past that allowed you to put ground coffee in a filter, press a button and have a hot beverage in a few minutes. Further features include pulse brewing, which allows the ground coffee to have an initial soaking in order to begin swelling and become prepared to release all of those great essential oils locked inside the bean.

After using the Curtis brewers for well over a year now, I would be hard pressed to turn around and begin using one of the outdated, and frankly, behind the times brewers for my roasts of specialty coffee.

You can find more information about Curtis specialty coffee brewers and their other fine cafe products at: Wilbur Curtis Co.