We have looked at all the best available scales suitable for coffee brewing, evaluated all their features and created a quiz to help you find the best coffee scale for you. Just take the short quiz to find out which you should buy.
What brew methods can you use the scale for?
Coffee scales are generally used for measuring weight of coffee beans as well as measuring weight of extracted coffee. They can also be used for measuring time and calculating flow rate.
To decide which scale suites your needs you need to consider what you plan on using the coffee scale for. Size can become a factor in your decision making.
If you are measuring espressos then it will need to fit above the drip tray allowing space for the mug above.
Pourover and immersion methods require the scale to be a bit larger to allow for the vessel to be placed on top.
Do I need a smart scale?
Smart scales are essentially scales that connect to your phone allowing you to get more detail around what the scale is reading. They can be particularly useful for seeing the flow rate of your pour or the extraction. They also allow for online connectivity, enabling you to save and share your brew methods, as well as get brew methods from the roaster for the particular coffee you have chosen.
However, while these things are nice they are not exactly necessary. You may even find that you will not use them much. So you have to decide if they are really worth the extra expense, because smart scales are significantly more expensive.
How sensitive should a coffee scale be?
Accuracy of coffee scales go from showing you 1g increments to 0.01g increments. Basically the more you pay the higher the accuracy. 1g is fine when you are just starting out, but when you want to experiment this becomes quite a limiting factor.
Most coffee scales show 0.1g accuracy, and we think this is good enough, a scale is a great way to improve your coffee skills but there are plenty more factors to focus on and we think 0.1g will be best for the vast majority of coffee aficionados.