Coffee Brew Planner

Brew method:

Choose pour-over, immersion, pressure, cold brew, or Custom profile.

Final beverage volume:

Enter finished coffee to serve, such as 360 mL or 12 fl oz.

Brew ratio:

Type the water side of 1:x, such as 15.5 for filter or 5 for concentrate.

Brew time:

Enter seconds from first water to drawdown, plunge, or yield stop.

sec

Pour steps:

Use 1 for immersion, espresso, or moka; use 2-8 for pulsed pours.

steps

Water temperature:

Enter kettle target; switch C/F without changing the recipe.

Extraction target:

Hot filter targets often sit near 18-22%; adjust after tasting.

Bloom share:

Enter percent of total water, e.g. 10-20 for many pour-overs.

% water

Bloom duration:

Enter seconds; keep below total brew time so main pours remain scheduled.

sec

Grounds absorption:

Enter retained water per gram coffee; filter beds often use about 2 g/g.

g/g

Pour ledger
Step	Start	End	Addition (g)	Cumulative (g)	Copy
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Brew adjustment brief
Cue	Status	Adjustment note	Copy
{{ card.title }}	{{ card.badge }}	{{ card.detail }}

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A coffee recipe can miss its target before taste enters the conversation. The serving may be planned as 360 mL in the carafe, but the kettle water has to cover both that served liquid and the water trapped in the spent grounds. This is why a scale matters more than a scoop: grams keep dry coffee, brew water, retained water, and served beverage in the same accounting system.

Ratio notation is the shorthand that connects those amounts. In a water-side ratio such as 1:16, one gram of dry coffee is brewed with 16 grams of water. Concentrated styles use much smaller ratio numbers, so a cold brew concentrate at 1:5 or an espresso-style recipe near 1:2 should not be judged against the body and dilution of a normal filter cup.

Served yield: The liquid that reaches the cup, carafe, shot glass, or concentrate jar.
Brew water: The water that enters the bed, chamber, puck, or pot before any liquid is held back.
Grounds retention: Water kept by the wet coffee after brewing, commonly estimated in grams of water per gram of dry coffee.
TDS and extraction: TDS describes drink concentration, while extraction yield estimates how much dry coffee dissolved into that drink.

Retention is easy to overlook because it is not visible until the brew is finished. A wet filter bed that holds about two grams of water per gram of coffee can turn a tidy-looking 1:16 recipe into a short beverage if the served yield was treated as the water dose. Espresso and moka recipes have different physical losses, but the same practical habit helps: weigh what goes in, weigh what comes out, and do not assume those masses are interchangeable.

Coffee brew planning flow from target cup to dose math, pour plan, and strength check.

Strength and extraction are linked but not interchangeable. A dense drink can still taste sour if extraction is low, and a diluted drink can be well extracted but too weak for the serving style. Grind size, contact time, water temperature, agitation, filter material, roast level, and water chemistry all affect the soluble material that reaches the beverage.

The useful habit is controlled comparison. Start with weighed coffee, weighed water, a realistic retention assumption, and one timing plan. After tasting, change one variable at a time so the next cup tells you whether ratio, grind, temperature, or pour rhythm was the meaningful change.

How to Use This Tool:

Choose the brewing style first, then work from the finished drink back to the coffee dose, water amount, and timing plan.

Select Brew method. The preset loads a starting yield, ratio, time, temperature, grind cue, retention value, pulse count, and TDS band for pour-over, Chemex, espresso, French press, AeroPress, cold brew concentrate, or moka pot.
Enter Final beverage volume in mL or fl oz. Use the liquid you want to serve, not the water you expect to pour from the kettle.
Set Brew ratio, Brew time, Pour steps, Water temperature, and Extraction target. The Brew Card should update to coffee dose, total water, ratio, time, temperature, projected TDS, and extraction.
Open Advanced when the recipe needs a different bloom or retention estimate. Bloom share reserves early water, Bloom duration sets when the main additions begin, and Grounds absorption controls retained water in g/g.
Check Pour Ledger before brewing. It turns the bloom and main pours into start times, end times, additions, and cumulative water targets you can follow on a scale.
Use Water Timeline Chart for the water ramp and Extraction Position Map for the ratio and projected TDS position. Those views are most useful when you are comparing one recipe against the selected method band.
Read Brew Adjustment Brief after the plan is valid. It separates ratio stance, strength, pour rhythm, and temperature so the next brew can change one cause instead of several.

If the Brew Card disappears after editing ratio or retention, make Brew ratio greater than Grounds absorption. A ratio at or below retained water cannot leave positive beverage yield.

Interpreting Results:

Trust the weighed recipe first. Coffee dose and Total water are the numbers you can act on before brewing, while projected strength and chart position are planning clues. A clean-looking map point cannot fix an unrealistic retention estimate or a served-yield target that is not what you actually want to collect.

Pour Ledger is the brew-day checklist: each row gives the water to add, the time window, and the cumulative scale target.
TDS is projected from Extraction target and Brew ratio. It is not a measured refractometer result.
Light-bodied and Heavy-bodied compare projected TDS with the selected method band. Treat the label as a taste prompt, not proof that the recipe is wrong.
Brew Adjustment Brief is strongest after a first cup. If the drink tastes thin, dry, bitter, or hollow, change grind, ratio, pour pace, or temperature one at a time and compare the next Brew Card.

Technical Details:

Brew recipe math starts with mass conservation. The served beverage is modeled as brew water minus the water retained by the grounds. For planning purposes, one milliliter of finished coffee is treated as roughly one gram, which is close enough for recipe scaling but still an approximation.

The coffee dose is solved from served yield, water-to-coffee ratio, and the retained-water estimate. Once dose is known, total water, retained water, bloom water, timed additions, and projected TDS follow from the same recipe. The projected TDS uses extraction target divided by the water side of the ratio, so it is a recipe-position estimate rather than a measured cup value.

Formula Core:

The main equations use grams for coffee and water. Y is target beverage yield, R is the water side of the 1:R ratio, A is grounds absorption in g/g, B is bloom share as a decimal, and E is extraction target as a percent number.

\begin{array}{lll} m_{coffee} & = & \frac{Y}{R - A} \\ m_{water} & = & m_{coffee} \times R \\ m_{retained} & = & m_{coffee} \times A \\ m_{bloom} & = & m_{water} \times B \\ {TDS}_{plan} & = & \frac{E}{R} \end{array}

For a 360 mL pour-over target at 1:15.5 with 2.2 g/g absorption, the dose is 360 / (15.5 - 2.2) = 27.1 g. Total water is about 27.1 x 15.5 = 420 g, retained water is about 60 g, and a 20% extraction target gives a projected 1.29% TDS. Displayed numbers are rounded for brewing use, so small arithmetic differences can appear when values are copied at higher precision.

Method Defaults and Bands:

Coffee brew method defaults and projected TDS bands
Method	Default yield	Default ratio	Time	TDS band	Planning cue
Pour-over	360 mL	1:15.5	3:30	1.25% to 1.45%	Medium-fine grind, bloom, and three main pours.
Chemex	600 mL	1:16	4:30	1.25% to 1.40%	Medium-coarse grind and a slower four-pour schedule.
Espresso	36 mL	1:2	0:28	8% to 12%	Fine grind and a short concentrated output.
French press	480 mL	1:15	4:00	1.20% to 1.50%	Coarse grind, immersion contact, and a fuller body.
AeroPress classic	230 mL	1:13	2:00	1.30% to 1.60%	Compact brew with medium-fine grind and short contact.
Cold brew concentrate	1,000 mL	1:5	12:00:00	3% to 5%	Coarse grind, long steep, and dilution after brewing.
Moka pot	180 mL	1:7	5:20	3% to 5%	Fine-medium grind and a dense stovetop brew.

Boundary Rules:

Coffee brew planner boundary rules
Quantity	Rule	Why it matters
`Brew ratio` and `Grounds absorption`	Ratio must be greater than absorption.	If retained water equals or exceeds brew water per gram of coffee, the plan has no positive beverage yield.
`Bloom share`	Clamped from 0% to 60% of total water.	The bloom can reserve early water without consuming the entire recipe.
`Bloom duration`	Cannot exceed total brew time.	Main additions need nonnegative time after the bloom.
`Pour steps`	Rounded to a whole number with at least one step.	Water and remaining time are split into practical additions.
`Final beverage volume`	fl oz values convert to milliliters before dose math.	The recipe can be entered in serving units while the plan stays in grams.

The water timeline is a step path: cumulative water stays flat between additions and rises at each bloom or pour target. The extraction position map compares the current ratio and projected TDS with the selected method's default ratio and TDS band, so it is a recipe comparison aid rather than a lab measurement.

Accuracy Notes:

The recipe math is deterministic, but coffee brewing is not fully described by ratio and time. Treat the output as a planning card for weighed brewing, then verify the actual beverage mass and taste.

Projected TDS does not replace a refractometer reading because no brewed sample is measured.
Retention varies with grind, roast, filter, brewer geometry, pressure, and how long the bed drains.
Temperature cues are recipe cues; water at the coffee bed may differ from the kettle or machine setpoint.
Espresso and moka schedules are simplified as one main addition, so use dose, yield, ratio, and strength checks more than pour timing for those methods.

Worked Examples:

Filter Baseline

A 360 mL pour-over at 1:15.5, 20% extraction, 16% bloom, 45 second bloom, and 2.2 g/g absorption gives about 27.1 g in Coffee dose and 420 g in Total water. Pour Ledger reserves roughly 67 g for bloom, then splits the remaining water into three main additions. TDS is about 1.29%, inside the pour-over band.

Lighter Filter Ratio

Keeping the same 360 mL target and 20% extraction but changing the ratio to 1:18 lowers the dose to about 22.8 g and projects about 1.11% TDS. The strength read falls below the pour-over band, so the next test should be a lower ratio, finer grind, or slower pour if the cup tastes thin.

Concentrated Espresso-Style Output

A 36 mL espresso preset at 1:2 with 0.2 g/g absorption solves to about 20 g coffee and 40 g total water, with projected 10% TDS. That sits inside the espresso band, but taste still depends on grind, puck preparation, pressure, and the actual liquid yield.

Invalid Retention Setup

Setting Brew ratio to 2 while Grounds absorption remains 2.2 g/g leaves no positive beverage yield. Raise the ratio or lower absorption until the Brew Card returns.

FAQ:

Why is total water higher than the drink size?

The grounds keep some water after brewing. Grounds absorption adds that retained amount to Total water so the finished beverage can still match the target volume.

Is projected TDS the same as measured TDS?

No. The displayed TDS comes from Extraction target divided by Brew ratio. Measured TDS requires a brewed sample and a refractometer.

What should I change after a weak cup?

Check Brew Adjustment Brief and make one change at a time. For a light strength read, a finer grind, lower ratio, or slower pour is usually easier to compare than changing all settings together.

Can I plan in fl oz?

Yes. Final beverage volume accepts fl oz and converts it to milliliters for the dose calculation, while coffee and water outputs remain in grams for weighing.

Why did the Brew Card disappear after I edited retention?

The planned ratio likely fell to or below Grounds absorption. Increase Brew ratio or lower Grounds absorption until the recipe can produce positive beverage yield.

Glossary:

Brew ratio: The grams of brew water used per gram of dry coffee, written as the water side of 1:x.
Beverage yield: The finished liquid target in the cup, server, espresso cup, or concentrate container.
Grounds absorption: The retained water per gram of coffee after brewing, entered as g/g.
Bloom: An early water addition used before the main pours in many filter and hybrid recipes.
TDS: Total dissolved solids, the concentration of dissolved coffee material in the beverage.
Extraction yield: The percent of dry coffee mass that dissolves into the beverage.

References:

How Hot is Hot Enough? Brew Temperature, Sensory Profile, and Consumer Acceptance of Brewed Coffee, Specialty Coffee Association.
Just Published: Brewing Temperature and the Sensory Profile of Brewed Coffee, Specialty Coffee Association.
UC Davis Coffee Center Contributes Research to New Brewing Control Chart, UC Davis Coffee Center, January 2, 2025.
A new Coffee Brewing Control Chart relating sensory properties and consumer liking to brew strength, extraction yield, and brew ratio, Journal of Food Science, 2023.