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Drip Brew (North American) Coffee

We'll start with the brewing method most popular in North America, the drip brew method. Quite simply, this method heats the water to an optimal temperature, and then drips it onto a filter holding ground coffee. The hot water absorbs flavor from the coffee, passing through the filter and into a carafe.

As discussed in the Grinding Coffee section, the type of grind to use depends on how long the water will be in contact with the coffee. When making coffee by drip-brewer, use a medium grind of coffee.

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When it comes to your drip brew coffee maker, the ideal heated water temperature is approximately 200 degrees Farenheit or 90-95 degrees Celsius. The manual that comes with your brewer should give this information. If it doesn't, assume it's not heating water adequately, or it would boast this in its manual.

Wattage is another very important characteristic of your brewer because a coffee maker without as much power will take longer to brew your coffee, causing something called "overextraction". This means the water extracts more than the optimal amount of solids from the ground coffee, which can lead to an undesirable heavier "sludgier" coffee. The ideal rating of your coffee maker is 1,000 watts. Most home coffee makers will have a rating around 850 watts, which is certainly acceptable but remember the closer to 1,000 you can get, the better the coffee in your cup.

Heat on the coffee

Coffee can burn after it is heated either at too high a temperature or for too prolonged a period. Once coffee has burned, it has a nasty effect on the coffee's flavor. Personally, I would sooner dump an entire pot of burnt coffee than drink it. An important factor in the time it takes coffee to burn is certainly the amount of coffee in the pot. A smaller amount of coffee will burn faster than a larger amount.

Some coffee makers have a setting for the heat of the burner. My suggestion would be to favor the lower or medium heat setting for the burner. The lower the setting, the less likely you'll burn your coffee, but if you find that the coffee you serve is not hot enough, go with the medium setting. I would not use the high temperature too frequently if at all, as it will tend to burn your coffee unless the entire pot of coffee is emptied and served very quickly. If that's the case and you like hot coffee, then you would use the high temperature setting. Otherwise, consider setting it to low and leaving it on that setting.

Thermal Carafe

One of the biggest improvements in drip brewing has been the thermal carafe. Instead of a glass 'coffee pot' sitting on a heating element, the brewed coffee drips from the filter into a thermal carafe. The thermal carafe is insulated to keep the coffee as hot as it was brewed without relying on a heating element that could potentially burn the coffee from exposure. The only real disadvantage is not being able to see the coffee as well since there isn't thermal glass. Otherwise, this is certainly better than letting coffee heat until it is burnt.

How long does it take for coffee to burn? Canadian coffee giant Tim Horton's will not serve coffee that was made over 20 minutes prior. While you don't need to be so stringent in your own home, you should assume that coffee that's been sitting on the burner past 20 minutes has started the process of becoming burnt. An hour is a good maximum, beyond which the coffee might still be drinkable, but only at great sacrifice to the flavor.

The Filter

The type of filter you use is also important. Your choices are a paper filter sold in any grocery store in the coffee aisle, or a metal filter that is re-usable but needs to be cleaned between each brewing. The benefit of the paper filter is easy cleanup. After the brewing, you pull out the paper filter containing all of the ground coffee and throw it in the garbage. What you lose with a paper filter however is that it absorbs many of the colloids that would otherwise give you a more full-bodied coffee were it allowed to pass through.

A colloid is brewed coffee that is not fully dissolved but adds body to your cup of coffee. A colloid will get trapped in a paper filter, but passes through a metal filter. For this reason, coffee brewed through a metal filter will result in a sediment at the bottom of your cup which can be a minor inconvenience. If you swirl your cup before the last couple sips, that sediment will get absorbed into the coffee and you won't even see it. Remember that sediment is not a bad thing, it's coffee solids (and flavor) extracted from the ground coffee that wouldn't have been able to pass through a paper filter.

Other Brewing Methods

With the exception of the pod coffee makers (ie. Keurig), the drip-brewer is so popular because of its ease of use. Coffee in a filter, water in the maker, flip a switch. If you are willing to put in a few extra steps in exchange for more and fresher flavor, learn about the other ways to make great coffee:

French Press: Also known as the press pot or by its trademarked name the Bodum, this is a method of steeping coffee by letting it sit in a container with hot water for a few minutes. The "press" is the plunger that pushes the ground coffee to the bottom so you're left with nothing but great brewed coffee that pours from the same container. Learn more!

Pourover: Also known by its trademarked name the Chemex, this improves on the drip-brewer but requires that you manually pour the hot water over the ground coffee in specific stages for optimum extraction of solids (and flavor) from the coffee. Learn more!

Next Step

Click here to check out Marc's blog posts on Brewing Coffee