Why Ratio Four Series Two Is What I Use To Test New Coffees

Coffee is it The real office biohack and the nation’s most popular productivity tool. As we lose sleep over the transition to daylight saving time, WIRED’s team of caffeine addicts writes about our favorite coffee brewing habits and devices that will keep us awake and maybe even happier in the morning. Today, reviewer Matthew Korfhage explains his enduring love of drip coffee—and why Ratio Four won’t leave his counter. Over the next few days, we’ll add more Java.Base news about WIRED writers’ favorite brewing methods.

Like anywhere vice is worth having, the morning coffee routine can take the character of religion. And like most religion, it is often born as accidental as moral conviction. My religion is sweet, classic drip coffee. That’s what I drink first, before I even think about making a shot of espresso.

I’m WIRED’s top coffee writer and have developed a deep passion for many different types of coffee, from espresso to Aeropress to cold brew. But “coffee” to me, in my deepest soul, still means a hot cup of unadulterated drip. Fortunately, that is also the field of coffee that has been transformed by technology in recent years. Drip coffee from the Ratio Four coffee maker (now quietly in its second generation) sounds to me like a very smooth coffee, the liquid of what my coffee beans smell like fresh from the grinder.

My love of filter coffee began as a teenager traveling and studying in India—perhaps my first glimpse of adult freedom. It was there that I drank the first full cup of coffee that I remember finishing. In Jaipur, filter coffee was a strong, dark liquid mixed with milk and sugar. I decided that if I was going to drink coffee, I would take it straight and learn to love it on its own. A new-found friend, adding jaggery to his drink, laughed at my insistence that I didn’t want sweetened milk. I then downed a thick and strong cup and the caffeine made my hair stand in a perpendicular position. If I made a mistake, I refuse to admit it.

I brought this favorite back to Oregon, drinking unbleached black coffee, the worst in all-night cafes and office lounges. Black coffee had become a moral clause, although it was not a matter of taste.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that drip coffee can be an indulgence every time it’s as refined as a pinkies-up espresso.

Drip Insertion

In part, this was a technical problem. Aside from the classic Moccamaster, more recently home drip coffee makers have been able to produce a great cup. I didn’t keep it at home for years.

What awakened me to the power of drip was the new wave of cafes in Portland, the first pioneer of the third wave of coffee Stumptown Coffee and especially Heart Coffee Roasters in Portland. The owner of Heart’s Norwegian-roaster, Wille Yli-Luoma, explained to me the aromas of the roasting infusion—the fruity aromatics of an Ethiopian who eats peach or nectarine or berries. Scandinavians have long appreciated this, he told me, and have turned simple roasted coffee into pure art. America was finally caught.

However, I could never get that same taste or clarity from a home brewer. Until recently. To get the best version, I still had to go up the street to the Heart and get my coffee from the roaster. Even if I had to spend a long time dripping water over coffee in a coffee filter. I rarely wanted to do this when I was about to fall asleep, already late at work.