How many coffee filters should I use to brew a cup of delicious coffee? Many readers have reached out to us asking about the amount of filters to use. The short answer is: you should use only one filter. Let’s explore more.

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I love filtered coffee (mostly for personal reasons). How many filters should I use to brew a cup of great coffee? Can I use more than one coffee filter to brew?

Owly Choice reader Samantha

Samantha wonders how many coffee filters she should use to brew a delicious cup of coffee.

In fact, you should only use one paper filter to brew coffee. This will ensure the richest flavors and most aromatic results.

Using one filter gives you more freedom to play with the coffee-water proportions. A coffee filter has the exact permeability to allow an optimal extraction time. What that means is that water needs to stay in contact with coffee only for a certain period of time, because a longer contact period leads to coffee that is bitter and over extracted.

Therefore, if your end goal is a cup of delicious coffee, you should only use one paper filter.

A perfect cup of coffee

When you brew coffee, you have an option to add more grounds to the brew basket, or to alter the quantity of water water quantities, depending on how strong you want coffee to be. For instance, if you prefer weaker coffee, you would either use more water, or apply fewer coffee grounds. Conversely, if you like your coffee strong and bold, you will use less water or more coffee grounds.

Using one filter helps brew flavorful, correctly extracted coffee cups, indifferent of the strength level that you prefer.

Depth vs over-extraction

Some people might advise the use of two coffee filters in order to brew stronger coffee. However, we need to make the difference between strong coffee and over extracted coffee.

The two are not of the same quality. Using one filter can brew stronger coffee: you just need to use more coffee grounds and keep the same quantity of water as usual, for instance. But using two filters brews over extracted coffee because the double filter wall does not allow water to flow, which means that water stays in contact with the coffee grounds longer than the optimal extraction time.

Paper flavor from paper filter?

Paper filters may also impact the flavor of coffee. This is because some paper filters are chemically treated. As a result, the chemical residuals find their way to coffee. Paper filters that are not made of white, chemically treated paper should not have that problem.

In order to avoid any type of flavor alteration, you can brew coffee using a permanent filter. These filters come with a thin metal mesh, and many coffee machines come with their own filters altogether.

Manufacturers of coffee makers always recommend (and strongly warn) using one coffee filter (either permanent filter or paper filter, but never both). This is for the following two reasons:

  • Overflow of coffee: if we use more than 1 filter in a coffee maker, the machine will most likely overflow. This can not only destroy a coffee machine, but may also cause electrocution.
  • Flavor of coffee: manufacturers have also found that one filter brews an optimal cup of coffee.

Owly’s conclusion: how many filters to use for coffee?

So, we recommend that you use only one filter to brew your coffee. Your brew will taste good, and you will save money as well (because two filters cost more than one, don’t they?).

What do you think?

How many filters do you use to brew coffee? Do you see much of a difference?

Let us know in the comments!

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