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I have some background as a barista and even as someone who competed in a barista competition (I did very badly), but the cafe I worked at did not use scales. The owner is one of those oldschool guys who thinks the espresso blend should be a generational family secret, that espresso coffee beans should be black ink, and if you can’t develop what you do by touch and feel, you don’t have the touch and feel to work coffee.
That was my start in coffee and espresso.
Since then, I’ve discovered that coffee is seasonal. That coffee has a shelf life. That coffee shouldn’t be roasted to the point where its precious oils leech out and go rancid. That coffee should be freshly ground just before use. That coffee requires a soft and careful touch to taste great.
Many of the things I have acquired to make coffee better cost a lot of money. My daily driver is a Breville Dual Boiler, paired up with Baratza Vario grinder. Those two alone cost $1,500 as a package. Both make my coffee taste better, but when you want to talk about complete bang for the dollar, buying and using a good coffee scale is the way to go. Nothing has improved my overall coffee and espresso quality more.
Measure Everything
The first scale I bought for coffee is one recommended to me on the old CoffeeGeek website: the American Weigh SC-2KG scale. It’s small, but can weigh up to 2 kilograms in .1 gram increments. It cost me all of $13.50 (ed.note: sadly, this scale is no longer available). The scale is small enough that it can fit on the drip trays of most espresso machines, and has a big enough platform that it works with most pour over brewers.
This scale completely changed my brewing for espresso and coffee. Prior to this, I would use a standard kitchen scale we had to “calibrate” the Vario grinder, on very rare occasions. The Vario is a timer-based grinder, so I would just set, and forget the timer button for espresso grinding. The problem is, that basic kitchen scale had a resolution of 2 grams; the SC-2KG scale resolved down to .1g. So let’s talk about how this change to a more accurate and tighter resolution improved all my home coffee.
Espresso
My espresso machine was a source of frustration for some time. I would have days where my shots were excellent and even, then I would have a series of spitting gusher shots, or the opposite, shots where barely anything came out at all. With the new scale, I discovered that my espresso grind doses were off by as much as 1 to 1.5 grams especially when I changed coffees. Because I would also switch the Vario back and forth between drip grind and espresso grind, that exacerbated the issue.
Introducing an accurate scale into my preparation improved the consistency of the espresso I produced, by a major factor. It also helped me improve as a home barista: I got better at “eyeballing” the dose of coffee, and also the feel for what the right volume of grinds in the portafilter was supposed to be when I was tamping down the coffee.
I also learned (because I’d have nearly the exact same dose used each time) that the time of day I brewed espresso would change how the extraction took place. Further, I learned that different coffees, at different roast levels, and different bean ages, all affected the shot consistency. Having a scale really reinforced this: Leaving the Vario untouched, an 18g dose of coffee A would pour perfectly out of the Dual Boiler; swapping coffee B into the grinder, and grinding the exact same 18g dose would result in a gushing shot. I didn’t know this effect was so great before getting a coffee scale.
That little scale improved my overall skills as a barista.
Pour Over
An accurate scale also had dramatic effects on pour over coffee. I thought having a tight accuracy wasn’t as important for pour over as it is for espresso, and that turned out to be true, but quick response times from a scale are very important for pour over coffee, something the AW-2KG provided somewhat, and something my current scale, an Acaia Pearl, is really good at. Most important is that you are getting accurate numbers for everything involved in brewing your coffee.
Always, 1:16 is on my mind for pour over – the SCA standard. That means for every 1 part of coffee, you want 16 parts water. (ed.note: some use 1:17 as the starting ratio; on CoffeeGeek, our standard advised ratio is 1:15, or 1 slightly rounded tablespoon of ground coffee (7-7.2g) per 100ml water used) Using a scale, I can very quickly calculate that based on how much coffee I started with. If I grind 30g of coffee, I want to use 480g of brew water.
The real benefit with pour over and a fast reading scale is you can use the scale more like a timer and flow rate device than anything else. For pour over I want two pouring phases: a bloom pour where I pour double the volume of water to ground coffee used, and then a brewing phase. I’d often have my phone in timer mode running next to the brewing setup, and find based on my flow rate read out on the scale (as the weight climbs) I could time out my bloom pour for 25 seconds or so. Then when pouring the brew water, again, I would time out my pour seeing how many grams I added per second. Seeing both of these readouts helped me be more steady in my technique, improve the saturation times, and overall, improve the coffee.
A scale provides you with this quick and easy readout and soon, it becomes second nature to use it.
How Much
You don’t need a $150 scale to do these things. For years, I worked with a $13.50 scale, and it improved my coffee and espresso more than almost anything else I did, save for getting a really good coffee grinder.
Because I love coffee and it is one of my main hobbies, I did splurge and buy an Acaia Pearl scale, which is the rolls royce of the scale world. The added features and the excellent iOS app make it even better for home coffee and espresso.
That said, there’s still many under $15 scales, like this one, that are not only designed for use with coffee, but have added bonuses, like silicone heat reduction mats (scales can really be affected by temperature), timers, and much more. They are a solid investment in improving your coffee and should not be overlooked.
About the author
Natia loves coffee and relishes at the chance to write about it. She’s competed in regional barista competitions in the past, and while no longer a Barista as a profession, she says espresso runs through her veins.