How to Brew with Less Than 10g of Coffee Beans? The Most Coffee-Bean-Saving Brewing Methods

Just like the portafilter in espresso brewing, pour-over coffee drippers also have suitable coffee doses. For example, a size 01 dripper is suitable for 13-20g of coffee, while a size 02 dripper can accommodate more. When we use coffee amounts outside these ranges, the brewed coffee often develops issues - either becoming weak and thin in body, or developing bitter, undesirable flavors.

The specific reason, as FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned in previous articles, is that the amount of coffee affects both the thickness of the coffee bed and the water volume, which directly impact extraction. When we use the same brewing method for coffee amounts outside the recommended range, the coffee easily becomes under-extracted or over-extracted due to shifts in extraction efficiency. This led to our article "How to Brew Large Amounts of Coffee with Small Drippers." Since we've covered how to brew with large amounts, FrontStreet Coffee will now share how to brew delicious coffee when you have less than 15g (single serving). Often, when you reach the end of a bag of coffee beans, you're left with just a few grams - not enough for a single serving, but too much to waste without other beans to blend with. If you don't want to throw them away, you'll need to find a way to extract their full value.

How to Brew Delicious Coffee with Too Few Coffee Beans?

Generally, when we have too little coffee, our brew tends to be under-extracted. As FrontStreet Coffee mentioned, the amount of coffee affects both water volume and the coffee bed. When we use less coffee, we need less water, and the coffee bed becomes thinner.

If we continue brewing with our usual method, the hot water will finish pouring too quickly, and the coffee liquid will pass through before the flavor compounds have fully dissolved. The resulting coffee will be weak and thin-bodied due to insufficient contact time between water and coffee grounds. And that's not all! If you're using a conical dripper, the reduced surface area of the coffee bed makes it easier to pour water along the edges of the dripper, creating bypass water. This not only reduces the amount of water that actually contacts the coffee but further dilutes the coffee concentration - making a bad situation even worse.

In summary, we can see that the core reasons for poor extraction with small coffee amounts are: too little water, too fast flow rate, and insufficient extraction time. Additionally, when using a conical dripper, there's the issue of too small a surface area of the coffee bed. While this might seem troublesome, these problems are actually easy to solve since they essentially relate to water pouring and extraction efficiency. So when you want to brew with much less coffee than the dripper's recommended amount, you might want to consider FrontStreet Coffee's two brewing approaches below:

Method 1: Finer Grind

This method is more suitable for those with good water control skills! If you can control your water flow to keep hot water concentrated in a small area of the coffee bed without pouring it along the dripper edges, then you only need to change one parameter during brewing - that is, grind finer. While increasing water temperature is also a good correction method, grinding finer can give us more complete extraction. It not only increases extraction efficiency but also increases the resistance of the coffee bed due to smaller particles, slowing down the flow rate. This gives water and coffee grounds more contact time, allowing flavors to dissolve more completely.

FrontStreet Coffee tested the minimum amount of coffee using a size 01 V60 dripper, finding that 7g was the minimum usable amount. Anything less would be extremely difficult to brew and wouldn't produce enough to drink, so there was no need to test further. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee will demonstrate using 7g of coffee. When brewing 7g of coffee with good water control skills, FrontStreet Coffee would grind about one notch finer than for 15g of coffee. For example, if FrontStreet Coffee uses setting 10 on an EK43 grinder for 15g of light roast beans, then for 7g of coffee, we would use setting 9. All other parameters remain the same - water temperature at 92°C, and coffee-to-water ratio still at 1:15.

The brewing method is still three-stage pouring, but during pouring, we need to use a small water flow throughout to extend the brewing time and allow hot water to fully contact the coffee grounds. For the first bloom stage, we still use twice the coffee weight in water - 15ml for 30 seconds. After the bloom, we pour 45ml of hot water in small circles with a small flow - be careful not to use a large flow and avoid pouring water along the dripper edges. Once the coffee liquid has completely flowed into the lower server, we pour the remaining 45ml of hot water in the same way. Then simply wait for the coffee to finish dripping, remove the dripper, and end the extraction. The total time is exactly 2 minutes.

Method 2: Multiple Small Pours

If you're new to pour-over coffee and not confident in your water control skills, you can try FrontStreet Coffee's second method, which is also used when brewing coffee bags: multiple small pours.

The parameters remain the same as brewing 15g of coffee - no need to grind finer since we'll significantly extend the extraction time. First, we still use twice the coffee weight in water (15ml) to wet the coffee bed for a 30-second bloom. After the bloom, we pour 30ml of hot water in small circles with a small flow. Once the coffee liquid has filtered through, we pour another 30ml of hot water in the same way. Similarly, after the coffee liquid flows through, we pour the remaining 30ml of hot water in the same manner. Finally, just wait for all the coffee liquid to finish dripping. This method takes about 2 minutes and 20 seconds, approximately 20 seconds longer than the first method.

Both methods ensure that hot water has sufficient time to contact the coffee grounds and "completely" extract the compounds from them. The taste is no different from coffee brewed with 15g, though the liquid volume is smaller - gone in just two sips. But不得不说, this is also a very bean-saving brewing method. When we don't want to drink too much coffee at once, we can use these methods to brew a small-volume coffee to satisfy our cravings, which is quite an excellent choice.

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