Mariposa Coffee Roastery

The American household staple: automated filter drip brewers. Although a great and rather unique concept, it is unfortunate that the vast majority of automatic coffee makers do not brew at the proper temperatures. The science of coffee is this, hot water acts as a solvent to dissolve soluble solids out of the coffee into the brew. So, in filter brewing, you are essentially only brewing soluble solids and leaving the insoluble solids out. A few insoluble brewing methods are the French press, espresso, and Turkish coffee.

Here’s what you need to know about the typical home automatic coffee maker: the water is not heated to the proper temperature, saturation of the coffee is lacking, and length of extraction is not usually long enough. The automatic coffee maker usually heats water to about 175-182 degrees, this will vary across models but this is pretty standard. Coffee really needs to be at 195-205 F for proper brewing, many times coffee brewed from a home coffee maker is under-extracted, tastes a little dull, and papery. Feeling discouraged yet? Don’t get us wrong, we’re definitely not trying to insult your beloved automatic coffee friend, we just want you to be well educated that the little guy may not be able to work as well as other manual brewing methods. Lastly, $20 or $150, it doesn’t matter. You end up paying for the bells and whistles like thermal carafe, clock that brews automatically for you, or that built in “grinder.” Don’t even get us started with the built in “grinder”…

So, how do you salvage the loyal “Mr. Coffee”? We’ll do our best to help you out. Don’t get us wrong, you can absolutely brew a decent cup of coffee with an automatic coffee maker.  Here’s the kicker to remember when brewing coffee: nothing is better than manual brew methods. Our methods may be a little non-traditional and some intense connoisseurs may scoff at us. Here’s what we’re trying to achieve, the best possible cup with what we have to work with, right?

1. Put a dry filter in the filter basket and add a couple of cups of freshly filtered water. Run the coffee maker without the coffee – yep, we’re not crazy.
2. Dump the water out of the coffee carafe.
3. Add about 8 grams of coffee for every 4 ounces of brewed coffee. What this means is if you add 36 ounces of water, but get 32 ounces of coffee, 32 is the number to go by. Take 32 divide by 4 = 8 cups. 8 cups multiplied by 8 grams = 64 grams of coffee to use. We’re a fan of using a grind that is fine, but not too fine to allow the coffee grounds to pass through the filter.
4. Dump the grounds in the now wet filter.
5. Use freshly filtered water.
6. Push the button to brew, watch in anticipation, and enjoy!