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How much coffee beans do you need for pour-over coffee? Can you brew a cup with less than 15 grams of grounds?

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Often, a bag of beans cannot be fully utilized in your brewing process. For example: a 100g bag of beans requires 15.5g per brew, with 15g for brewing and 0.5g for grinder cleaning. This 100g bag can be used for 6 brews, totaling 93g, with some remaining.

Often, a single bag of beans doesn't allow you to use them completely for brewing. For example: a 100g bag of beans, where 15.5g is needed for one brew - 15g for brewing and 0.5g for purging the grinder. This means the 100g bag can be brewed 6 times, totaling 93g, leaving about 7g of beans remaining.

This is just an example - in reality, the remaining beans might be more or less, but what's certain is that it's likely not enough for our usual pot of coffee. So here comes the question! How would you use these remaining beans that aren't enough for a full brew? Let's first see what FrontStreet Coffee does!

1. Brew It Directly

When there are about 10g of beans remaining, FrontStreet Coffee will brew them directly, as this is just at the lower limit for brewing with the #01 filter cup (below this, it's difficult to brew well). However, too little coffee powder reduces the thickness of the coffee bed and speeds up water percolation. So if we want to brew a pot of coffee with suitable flavor, we need to make certain adjustments to our brewing technique!

This is how FrontStreet Coffee does it: maintain the same coffee-to-water ratio, but adjust the grind to be finer to compensate for the reduced extraction efficiency caused by the too-fast flow rate; use a small water flow throughout the brewing process, pouring slowly, which extends the extraction time for more complete extraction.

2. Create a Blend

When the remaining amount of one type of bean isn't enough for a full brew, and we have another type of bean available, we can create a blend. Simply supplement the beans to reach the amount needed for one pot - this is what FrontStreet Coffee often does!

However, blending requires consideration. If two completely incompatible beans are blended together, the final coffee flavor might be unimaginably terrible! (For example, a Mandheling blended with Geisha that a FrontStreet Coffee colleague brewed in the morning). Therefore, to not waste beans bought at high prices and to create delicious blended coffee, FrontStreet Coffee suggests that friends refer to the following logic before blending coffee beans.

Similar Roast Levels

As everyone knows, different roast levels give beans different "characteristics." Light roast beans are relatively hard and require "strong" extraction efficiency; dark roast beans are relatively porous and need "gentle" extraction efficiency. When these two types of beans with completely different needs are blended together, it's difficult to find suitable extraction parameters that can perfectly extract both.

Therefore, the prerequisite for blending is similar roast levels. When we have two beans with similar roasts, blending them together might create unexpectedly wonderful flavors as their different characteristics merge.

3. Make Decorative Items

In yesterday's article, FrontStreet Coffee mentioned that coffee has over 130 different species, with numerous varieties under each species. They come in various shapes and sizes. Therefore, if you're a serious coffee enthusiast, you could absolutely turn the remaining coffee beans into specimens for collection!

And creating specimens isn't as difficult as everyone imagines. As long as the coffee beans for collection haven't released oils, all you need is a clean, transparent sealed small bottle to keep them from spoiling even during long-term storage.

Alternatively, you could create some decorative coffee items that have a shorter display time but are absolutely beautiful! For example, the increasingly popular coffee bean Christmas trees, coffee bean decorations, etc. Not only do they provide visual enjoyment, but they can also absorb odors in the space, which is quite nice!