Every kitchen needs a workhorse, and for a lot of us, that's the autodrip machine. It's the daily driver. The thing that's already running before you're fully awake. The machine that doesn't care if you're brewing for yourself or for a whole house full of guests who showed up unannounced.
The trick with autodrip isn't the machine, it's what you feed it. Get your ratios right and this "boring" method can go toe to toe with anything fancier sitting next to it on the counter.
What you need
- One super sweet automatic brewer
- A filter sized for that brewer
- 106 grams, about 1 cup, of coffee ground for auto drip
- 1,774 grams, roughly 7.5 cups, of water
This recipe is built around a ten cup brewer, so if yours is smaller, just scale the numbers down proportionally and you're good to go.
How to brew it
- Place the filter inside the brewer and presoak it with hot water. Dump out the excess water once it's rinsed through.
- Add your coffee into the filter, then pour your measured water into the reservoir tank.
- Turn on your machine and let it do its thing. Genuinely, that's the whole step. Let it brew.
- Grab your favorite mug and enjoy some really awesome coffee.
Getting more out of your machine
Most autodrip coffee tastes disappointing for one simple reason: not enough coffee for the amount of water. People eyeball it, guess low, and end up with something closer to coffee flavored water. Weighing your coffee and water, even just the first few times until you get a feel for it, fixes this almost instantly.
Filter quality matters too. A cheap, thin filter can let more fine particles through, leaving your cup a bit gritty. If your coffee's been tasting off lately, it might not be your beans at all, it might be time to switch filters.
And don't sleep on cleaning your machine regularly. Coffee oils build up over time and that buildup can turn even great beans a little bitter. A machine that's cared for makes better coffee, plain and simple.
