$5 Flat Rate Shipping | Free Shipping Over $50
Login/Account Shop Subscriptions Education About Locations

a bag of driftless coffee is opened

Driftless Brew Recipe on the Bonavita 8-Cup Brewer

For those of you that use a drip maker each morning, we want to help you get the best from your brew. If you’ve got a different brewer, scroll to the bottom of this recipe for additional tips.

We’ve used a regional favorite, Driftless Blend, for this brew on our favorite drip brewer: the Bonavita Connoisseur 8-Cup Brewer.

Ultimately, a cup of Driftless should taste like an ode to the classic cup of coffee. Expect flavors of rich and smooth cacao powder, met with soft and playful fruit tones of plum, and finishing sweetly with a touch of toffee. 

Water:

Fill carafe with filtered water and pour into the brewer  

Coffee:

64g (approx. 8 rounded tablespoons) 

Grind: 

Medium (table salt size) 

Filter: 

We recommend using taller filters such as the Melitta 8-12 cup basket filters. 

Turn on the switch and brew! Brew time is approximately 6 minutes.

Optional: Pre-infuse mode. To set your brewer to pre-infuse (aka allow the coffee to bloom) before each brew, press and hold the power switch for 5 seconds. At that point the power switch light will flash and 2 beeps will be heard indicating that you’ve enabled the pre-infusion mode. Press and release the power switch a second time to begin brewing. You can disable the pre-infusion mode by pressing the power switch until the light blinks (5 sec.) and a single beep is heard. The brewer will remain in this mode until the mode is turned off or the brewer is unplugged.   

 

Have a different brewer on your countertop?

Here's how to get your brew just right.

Ratio is Key

When brewing a pourover, we typically use a coffee to water ratio of 1:16-17, depending on desired strength. We’ll apply this same ratio to drip brewers.

Water

While it may seem straightforward, brewing a good cup of coffee on a traditional drip coffee maker can be difficult, largely because of the variance in coffee/water ratio. Each coffee machine measures a ‘cup’ differently and can range from 4-6oz. 

Tip: to determine the size of cup for your brewer, measure 12 oz of water, pour into the reservoir/carafe and you can check the level next to the cup markers to see how large a cup is.

Coffee

For brewers with 6oz ‘cups’: 10 grams (1 rounded tablespoon) of coffee needed for each cup.

For brewers with 4oz ‘cups’: 7 grams (1 leveled tablespoon) of coffee for each cup.

Example: A 10-Cup brewer (measured at 6oz/cup) would need 100 grams of coffee to brew a full pot. 

Grind
Flat filters: medium grind (about the size of sea salt).
Cone filters: finer grind (about the size of granulated sugar).

Additional Notes: often, traditional drip coffee makers are not designed to hold this much volume of ground coffee in the basket. Historically, drip coffee makers have been designed to brew exceptionally weak coffee. When using our recommended coffee/water ratio, there’s a risk of overflowing the coffee basket.

If this happens, there are a few things you can do to enhance the flavor of your coffee, while avoiding overflowing grounds. Start by using a little less coffee and grinding slightly finer, as close as possible to table salt size, if not even a touch finer. This will help aid the extraction, yielding stronger and more full-textured flavors. If it continues to overflow, test by subtracting 10 grams each time and/or adjust the size of your grind.

Our final tip: Stay curious! The key to success is trying different things until you achieve your desired cup of coffee. 

 

Peru San Fernando Brew Recipe on a French Press

While Driftless is our go-to medium roast, San Fernando is our standby lighter roast. It features more tuned citrus and nougat flavors and a focus on the liveliness of the coffee over deeper roast depth flavors. To best highlight these flavors, I'd recommend whipping out your handy French Press to create a balanced and sessionable brew. 

Coffee
30 grams: ground to kosher salt size. 
Water
500 grams water: temperature around 205 degrees (2-3 minutes off boil). 
Brew
Brew time: 6 minutes.
Process
Fill your French Press with Peru San Fernando.
Pour in the hot water evenly over the grounds, up to 500 grams water.
After pouring, give the brew a stir with a spoon.
Allow to rest for 5:30.
At 5:30, softly and slowly plunge your French Press filter, avoiding over-agitating the coffee grounds which have settled at the bottom of the brewer.
Slowly pour the coffee out of the French Press and enjoy the nuance and sweet tones of San Fernando!

 

Enjoy!

    x