A good French press coffee ratio is 1:15 to 1:16 by weight. Start with 20 g of ground coffee and 300 g of water for a fuller cup, or 320 g of water for a lighter one. Use a coarse grind and a four-minute steep as your first recipe, then adjust one variable at a time.
Weighing both ingredients makes the recipe easy to scale. Stay within the press’s fill limit and leave room for the grounds and plunger.
Key takeaways
- Start at 1:15 or 1:16 by weight: 20 g of coffee with 300 g of water for a fuller cup, or 320 g for a lighter one.
- Weigh the water instead of filling to the printed lines. Grounds, foam and the raised plunger all take up room the markings ignore.
- A 350 ml press should never get 350 g of water once the coffee is in. Leave visible headroom.
- Change the ratio to fix strength. Change the grind or steep time to fix sour, harsh or drying flavors.
What 1:15 and 1:16 mean
The first number is coffee, the second is water. At 1:15, multiply your coffee dose by 15 and that's your water weight: 20 grams of coffee calls for 300 grams of water. At 1:16 the same 20 grams takes 320 grams. Going the other direction works too—divide the water weight by 15 or 16 to get the dose.
For home brewing, 1 gram of water is close enough to 1 milliliter that the number on the scale doubles as a volume reading. The printed lines on the press are handy for a rough fill check, but they can't replace the scale, because the grounds, the foam on top, and the raised plunger all take up room that the markings don't account for.
Well-known recipes don't all land on the same number. Stumptown's French press guide uses 56 grams of coffee to 850 grams of water, which works out to roughly 1:15, with a four-minute brew. If the press you own came with its own instructions and they say something different, follow those first.
French press ratio chart
Choose a water amount that fits your brewer with room for the grounds and plunger. These are water weights, not press sizes or finished drink volumes. Coffee doses are rounded to the nearest gram.
| Water | Coffee at 1:15 | Coffee at 1:16 |
|---|---|---|
| 240 g | 16 g | 15 g |
| 250 g | 17 g | 16 g |
| 300 g | 20 g | 19 g |
| 350 g | 23 g | 22 g |
| 400 g | 27 g | 25 g |
| 450 g | 30 g | 28 g |
| 500 g | 33 g | 31 g |
| 600 g | 40 g | 38 g |
| 750 g | 50 g | 47 g |
| 1,000 g | 67 g | 63 g |
For a batch that isn't on the chart, divide the water by the ratio number. 420 grams of water at 1:15 comes out to 28 grams of coffee. If you brew several methods, the pour over coffee ratio chart uses the same math with a slightly different starting range.
A straightforward four-minute starting recipe
- Heat enough water for the brew plus a splash to preheat the press. Use hot water just off the boil as a starting point, or follow the temperature recommended by your coffee roaster. Discard the preheating water before adding coffee. A regular hot-water kettle is suitable.
- Weigh and grind the coffee. Start coarse. For a 300-gram batch at 1:15, that's 20 grams.
- Start the timer and add 300 grams of water. Wet every bit of the grounds without splashing past the safe fill level. A gentle stir is fine if you see dry pockets; otherwise leave it alone.
- Set the lid on with the plunger pulled all the way up. Allow four minutes in total from the first contact with water, unless your coffee or press instructions say otherwise.
- Press slowly, with the press sitting on a stable counter. Move the brewer off the scale before pressing. Stop if you feel unusual resistance; never force the plunger.
- Pour right away. Anything you won't drink in the next few minutes goes into a separate carafe or mug so it stops steeping on the grounds.
For freshly ground beans: the Yozcoffee manual steel burr grinder with 40 settings is an option for this routine. Its adjustable grind lets you record a setting and return to it next time. Start toward the coarse end and adjust by taste; setting numbers are not interchangeable between grinders.
Scale the Recipe Without Overfilling the Press
Work from water weight
For 400 g of water, 1:15 needs about 26.7 g of coffee and 1:16 needs 25 g. Those numbers describe what goes in, not how much coffee comes out—the grounds hold onto some of the water. If the water plus grounds would crowd the working fill line or leave no room for the plunger, drop to a smaller batch instead of pushing it.
Sidenote: The grounds keep some of the water for themselves, roughly two to three times their own weight. Brew 20 g of coffee with 300 g of water and expect something like 240–260 g in the cup, so size the batch for the drink you want, not the water you pour.
Separate a strength test from an extraction test
When the coffee tastes balanced but simply too strong, brew the next one at 1:16 with the same grind and steep time. When it tastes sharp, drying, or harsh, concentration and extraction can both play a part. Hold the ratio steady for your next test and change just the grind or steep time. Write down whichever change you made so the next cup can tell you whether it helped.
How to fit the recipe to a 350 ml or 600 ml press
The Yozcoffee double-wall glass French press comes in nominal 350 ml and 600 ml sizes. Both use a stainless steel mesh plunger and carry printed milliliter and ounce markings. You pick one size per order; the listing doesn't bundle both.
Nominal capacity and finished coffee are two different things. A 350 ml vessel should not get 350 grams of water after the coffee goes in. Start with a batch that leaves visible headroom for the grounds, the bloom, and the raised plunger, then let the markings and the product instructions tell you where the real safe fill is.
Choose the 350 ml size for a smaller personal brew, or the 600 ml size for more room when sharing. Match the size to the water you actually use, allowing for water retained by the grounds. A mesh filter produces a fuller texture than paper, and you heat the water separately. Our guide to reducing French press sediment covers what metal mesh can and can't hold back, and the paper vs metal filter comparison explains the texture difference in more detail.
How to adjust strong, weak or bitter French press coffee
Balanced but too intense? Move to 1:16 before you touch the grinder. Balanced but thin? Try 1:15. Either way you've changed the concentration while keeping the brewing process the same, so you know exactly what you're tasting.
If the cup is sharply sour, drying, or harsh, changing the ratio alone may not solve it. Hold the dose and water steady and look at grind and brew time. The coffee taste troubleshooting guide walks through how to tell flavor problems apart from concentration problems.
If the coffee is gritty, check the filter fit, grind and pouring technique. Pour gently and leave the last sediment-heavy sip in the press. More water changes strength but does not remove fine particles.
Which French press tools are worth adding?
Build around the part of your routine that needs help. If you already own a press, a scale is the first useful addition for testing this recipe. Add a burr grinder if you want to grind whole beans and control the texture yourself.
- Inconsistent strength: compare the Yozcoffee coffee scales by platform size and total load. A timer is convenient, but a separate timer also works.
- Grinding fresh beans: browse manual and electric coffee grinders for a suitable coarse adjustment range and the effort you want to spend each morning.
- Brewing French press and pour-over: the Yozcoffee 0.9 L temperature-control kettle offers a 40–100°C (104–212°F) setting range. It is useful if you want adjustable water temperature across several brewing methods. The gooseneck spout is optional for French press; use the kettle on its supplied electric base.
You can start with pre-ground coffee, a suitable press, a kitchen scale and a kettle you already own. Choose extra equipment when it makes a specific step easier.
For the recipe in this guide, the press sets the batch size, the scale keeps 1:15 or 1:16 honest and a burr grinder holds the coarse setting steady.
Best for fitting the batch
Double-Wall Glass French Press
Choose 350 or 600 ml, each with printed ml and oz markings and a stainless steel mesh plunger. Heat water separately and leave room for grounds.
View both sizes
Best first addition
Digital Coffee Scale with Timer, 2 kg
Weigh the grounds, tare, add the water and time the four-minute steep on a 140 × 124 mm platform. The 2 kg limit includes the press.
View Black and White
Best for grinding fresh
Manual Steel Burr Grinder, 40 Settings
A stainless steel burr with 40 settings, so you can record a coarse French press setting and return to it. Folding handle, no power needed.
View Black and SilverA two-batch adjustment test
- Brew one batch at 1:15. Write down the coffee, water, grind setting, and the four-minute brew time.
- Use the same 20 g coffee dose with 320 g of water for the 1:16 batch, keeping grind and time unchanged. Check that both recipes fit your press.
- Taste both at about the same temperature. Pick by strength and balance, not by which number sounds more correct.
- Keep the ratio you preferred, then adjust grind only if the flavor still needs work. Use the grind size chart as a starting reference rather than copying a setting from someone else's grinder.
The useful ratio is the one you can repeat and actually enjoy drinking. Once it's written down, a bigger or smaller batch is arithmetic, not a new recipe.
Product details reviewed September 22, 2026. Cover: editorial illustration, not a product photograph or measured test.
After brewing, follow the French press cleaning routine to remove grounds from the screen and dry the parts before reassembly.
Final thoughts
The ratio is the easy part. Pick 1:15 or 1:16, weigh both sides, and any batch size becomes simple division.
The hard part is holding everything else still long enough to learn something. Run the two-batch test this week, keep the version you'd happily drink again, and write it down with your grind setting. The next time a cup tastes off, you'll know whether to reach for the scale or the grinder.