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Thunder Sons Coffee Co.Thunder Sons
Brew Better

Brew Guide

A few reliable starting points. Every grinder and palate is different — use these ratios as a baseline and adjust to taste.

Pour-Over

Ratio
1:16.7 (22.5g coffee : 375g water)
Grind
Medium-fine, a touch coarser than table salt
  1. Rinse your filter with hot water to preheat the brewer and rinse the paper, then discard the rinse water.
  2. Add your ground coffee to the filter and level the bed.
  3. Pour in a swirling motion up to 50g of water total to bloom the coffee.
  4. Let it sit for 30 seconds, then agitate the grounds and water together to make sure everything's fully mixed.
  5. Pour up to 200g total water, then agitate again.
  6. Let it sit and bloom — no agitation needed here.
  7. Pour up to 300g total water. This is a sitting phase — don't agitate.
  8. Once the bloom has died down, pour the remaining water up to 375g total.
  9. Agitate the coffee one final time, then let it fully draw down before serving.

French Press

Ratio
1:16.7 (e.g. 30g coffee : 500g water)
Grind
Medium-coarse — noticeably coarser than you'd use for drip
  1. Add the coffee to the empty press and pour all 500g of water in within about 10 seconds.
  2. Set a timer for 4 minutes and let it steep completely undisturbed — no stirring.
  3. At 4 minutes, break the crust with a spoon, then use two spoons to skim off the foam and grounds floating on top.
  4. Let it settle for at least 5 minutes (up to 8 is fine) — this settling time is what actually clarifies the cup, not the plunge.
  5. Rest the plunger just at the surface and press only enough to hold the grounds back — treat it as a filter, not a press. Don't force it to the bottom.
  6. Pour and serve right away.

Drip Machine

Ratio
1:16 (e.g. 62g coffee : 1000g water)
Grind
Medium
  1. Use filtered water — water quality matters more here than almost any other variable you can control.
  2. Weigh your coffee rather than scooping it. Consistency is the main real advantage a machine has over brewing by hand.
  3. Check that your machine can hold water between 195–205°F (90–96°C) through most of the brew — a machine that runs cool is the most common cause of weak, sour coffee.
  4. Use the filter type your machine calls for, rinsed first if it's paper.
  5. Run the brew cycle, then give the carafe a stir before pouring to even out the extraction across the batch.
  6. Move the carafe off any hot plate once it's done — coffee left on heat degrades fast, even in 15–20 minutes.

Espresso

Ratio
1:2 (e.g. 18g dose : 36g shot)
Grind
Fine, like powdered sugar
  1. Dose and distribute grounds evenly in the portafilter.
  2. Tamp level with firm, consistent pressure.
  3. Target a 25–30 second shot time.
  4. Adjust grind finer if it runs fast/sour, coarser if it runs slow/bitter.