Pour Over Coffee Ratio: How Much Coffee Should You Use?

Start at 1:16 — 1 gram of coffee to 16 grams of water — and adjust from there based on taste. For a standard mug, that’s 20g of coffee to 320g of water. Everything else people tell you about pour over ratios is fine-tuning around that number.

I know that’s not the exciting answer. Everyone wants a secret ratio that unlocks better coffee. There isn’t one. There’s a starting point, and then there’s you tasting your coffee and moving the ratio a gram at a time until it stops being sour or bitter. That’s the whole job.

The Ratio Range That Actually Works

The SCA’s brewing control chart has sat around 1:15 to 1:18 for years. After thousands of cups behind a bar, I still land in that window for almost every pour over. Go tighter than 1:15 and you’re in French press territory — thick, heavy, sometimes muddy. Go looser than 1:18 and you’re making tea that happens to be brown.

James Hoffmann’s public brewing tests land in this same zone. Go outside 1:14 to 1:18 and you’re not adjusting flavor anymore, you’re breaking the drink. That’s the ceiling and floor. Everything interesting happens inside it.

Why Roast Level Should Change Your Ratio

Most beginners skip this. Dark roasts are more soluble. They give up flavor fast, and a lot of it is bitter. Light roasts are denser and stingier with extraction, so they need different treatment.

• Dark roasts: 1:16 to 1:17. More water dilutes the bitterness before it takes over.
• Medium roasts: 1:15 to 1:16 — where most grocery store bags live.
• Light roasts: 1:15, sometimes 1:14.5. They need concentration or they taste like hot water with a rumor of coffee in it.

I run this test constantly for Q Grader prep — same bean, three ratios, blind taste. The light roasts almost always want less water than people assume. Everyone defaults to 1:17 because it “sounds delicate.” It usually just tastes empty.

The Real Bottleneck: It’s Not the Ratio

Six years behind a bar and two years testing gear at home taught me this: people chase ratio precision while ignoring grind size. Grind size does more work than the ratio ever will.

A 1:16 ratio with a grind that’s too fine still tastes bitter and over-extracted. The same ratio with a grind too coarse tastes sour and thin. Dial in your grind first — medium-coarse, like kosher salt, for a V60 or Kalita. Then use the ratio to fine-tune. Don’t try to fix a grinder problem with a ratio change. That’s like adjusting your thermostat to fix a broken window.

If you’re using a blade grinder, stop reading about ratios and go buy a burr grinder. I don’t care if it’s a $60 hand grinder like a Timemore C2. Ratio math means nothing on inconsistent particle size. You’ll have boulders and dust in the same cup, and no amount of gram-counting fixes that.

How to Dial In Your Own Ratio

1. Start at 1:16. Weigh both coffee and water — don’t eyeball it, don’t use scoops.
2. Taste it. Sour or watery? Drop to 1:15. Bitter or heavy? Move to 1:17.
3. Change one variable at a time. If you adjust ratio and grind size in the same brew, you won’t know what actually fixed it.
4. Keep total brew time in the 2:30–3:30 range for a standard V60-style pour over. Way outside that at your target ratio? It’s a grind issue, not a ratio issue.

Scaling Up Without Guessing

Bonavita and Fellow both publish brew guides that scale their kettles and drippers around the same 1:15–1:17 backbone. That’s not marketing. That’s physics, repeated by every serious equipment maker. Use this table to scale by cup count:

These aren’t clean round numbers. Round to the nearest gram — the math doesn’t need to be pretty, it needs to be consistent.

What I’ve Found in Testing

I ran identical beans across a V60, Kalita Wave, and Chemex at 1:16. The Chemex needed to push closer to 1:17 because its thick filter already slows extraction and traps more fines. The V60’s fast flow rate handles 1:15 without turning muddy. The dripper nudges the ratio too. It’s not just about the coffee.

My actual daily setup: 20g coffee, 320g water, medium-coarse grind on a Baratza Encore ESP, 2:45 total brew time. That’s 1:16. It’s boring, and it works on 90% of the beans I get sent to review.

The Direct Takeaway

Start at 1:16. Move to 1:15 for dark roasts or if it tastes weak. Move to 1:17 for light roasts or if it tastes harsh. Fix your grind before you touch the ratio again — that’s where the real problem almost always lives. Weigh everything. What’s your grind size doing right now? That matters more than any ratio spreadsheet you’ll ever build.

— Nora Voss, Home Barista & Coffee Equipment Reviewer