What’s the most important item in your kitchen when it comes to whipping up your perfect cup of coffee? Is it the grinder, the freshness of your beans, or could you be overlooking something just as important? Scales are now an essential part of any coffee aficionado’s kitchen and if you’re serious about making the perfect cup, here’s why it should be part of yours too.

A WEIGHTY ISSUE

Many people don’t weigh out their coffee and then wonder why, with quality beans and a high tech machine, they don’t always get their cup quite right. Just like with a recipe though, it can take only a small margin of error to ruin your brew completely. Why risk ruining your cup just to save a fraction of time? It also means you can rule out ratio as being an issue when your brew goes wrong and who doesn’t want to eradicate room for error when it comes to perfecting your cup?

ACCURACY

Coffee is more of a science than an art form and when you’re in the lab it helps to have accurate quantities. Most serious coffee lovers wouldn’t dream of just guessing how much water or beans they need and will meticulously measure them out using the scale. This way you can avoid using too little water or wasting precious coffee grounds. It also means when you discover the coffee ratio for your perfect cup, you can repeat it again and again.

A NEW SIDE TO COFFEE

Experimenting is all part of the coffee journey and it’s almost impossible to do without scales – how else will you know what exactly you’ve whipped up without noting down the quantities? It opens up a whole new world for coffee lovers to explore and help you get to know exactly what ratios you love best.

WHAT A WASTE

If you’ve spent money and effort finding your perfect beans and your preferred machine, why wouldn’t you invest in scales? Blindly dishing out your coffee without first weighing and estimating how much water you need leaves a huge margin for error and while it might add a little time on, it’s less than what you’ll waste every time you get those quantities wrong. It should also help you stop throwing excess away.

TOO EASY

Just because you’re using scales doesn’t mean making your coffee has to be more complicated. Most standard baristas use 16 grams for a double shot and 20 grams for a triple, which will only take you a minute or two to measure out. When you have more time, you can go in for a more in depth process.