If you’re in the market for a premium pour over style coffee maker, the Ratio Six is a great option. This machine is easy to use, brews balanced and smooth coffee quickly, and makes coffee that meets the brew standards set by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). With features like a removable heat shield and automated pre-infusion, the Ratio Six is a perfect choice if you’re looking to upgrade your drip coffee maker to something with the little details needed to make the perfect cup of coffee to start your day.
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The Ratio Six Coffee Maker is designed for the modern coffee drinker. Inspired by pour over brewing style, the Ratio Six includes a 45 second bloom cycle that fully saturates coffee before moving on to a seven minute brew cycle — all done with the touch of a button. Backed by a 5-year warranty, this no frills coffee maker features a unique silicone heat shield that keeps brewed coffee close to 200 degrees. -
The Ratio Six Coffee Maker is designed for the modern coffee drinker. Inspired by pour over brewing style, the Ratio Six includes a 45 second bloom cycle that fully saturates coffee before moving on to a seven minute brew cycle — all done with the touch of a button. Backed by a 5-year warranty, this no frills coffee maker features a unique silicone heat shield that keeps brewed coffee close to 200 degrees. -
The Ratio Six Coffee Maker is designed for the modern coffee drinker. Inspired by pour over brewing style, the Ratio Six includes a 45 second bloom cycle that fully saturates coffee before moving on to a seven minute brew cycle — all done with the touch of a button. Backed by a 5-year warranty, this no frills coffee maker features a unique silicone heat shield that keeps brewed coffee close to 200 degrees.
Pour Over Flavor With Added Convenience
You can take the guesswork out of the blooming and brewing process with the Ratio Six, and you’ll still get a great cup of pour over style coffee. Pour over coffee is a style that often extracts more vibrant brew results, so you can taste the more subtle undertones in your cup. With pour over coffee, you see a more even saturation of the grounds, so you avoid over-extraction and end up with a more balanced cup of coffee. Drip coffee can sometimes come out unbalanced since parts of the bed will be over-extracted while other parts are under-extracted when the hot water is poured through one concentrated spot in the grounds.
The unique showerhead dripper of the Ratio Six.
Unlike a typical drip coffee maker, the Ratio Six has a circular showerhead that will evenly pour hot water through your coffee grounds to get a more even extraction, allowing more even water distribution and resulting in a more balanced flavor. When paired with the pre-infusion that this machine offers, you get the main benefits of a balanced cup of pour over coffee without the dedicated time it takes to brew it. The Ratio Six is able to brew a cup of coffee that will highlight the subtle flavor notes of your coffee with a smoothness that makes your cup very easy to drink.
I brewed a batch with the Fuego Coffee Roaster’s Ethiopia coffee beans, and I love how the Ratio Six brought out the flavor notes of the beans. The subtle tastes of tropical fruit and chocolate were really present in the aftertaste of the coffee, and the even distribution of the water helped keep any over-extraction from the grounds at bay, leading to a smooth and balanced drink. My usual two morning cups turned to three and a half because I couldn’t get enough of the coffee I brewed in the Ratio Six.
The indicator light for the Ratio Six's automated blooming process
Automated Pre-Infusion
The pre-infusion process is key to correctly blooming your coffee grounds to get the most out of the flavor profile of your coffee. As someone who is newer to the world of pour over but loves the taste, this feature is great for making sure that the coffee blooms properly without having to get out a timer and double-check how much water I’m pouring in during the blooming stage. The 45-second pre-infusion process of the Ratio Six gives your coffee enough time to bloom and fully saturate before brewing, and it lets the flavors of the beans you’re using really shine. This helps achieve a pour over style with the convenience of an automated drip coffee maker, and it’s one of my favorite parts of this machine.
Quick Brew Process
Mornings are chaotic enough without having to manually make a pour over coffee to get the flavor that you want out of your favorite roast. The seven-minute brewing cycle is convenient, and the easy-to-follow indicator lights on the front of the machine will let you know the moment your coffee is ready to drink. Seven minutes is just the right amount of time to get your breakfast ready or clean up your grinder, so you can streamline your morning while still brewing nuanced and flavorful coffee. The circular showerhead really shines during the brewing process, and I enjoyed the convenience of not having to stand over a pour over dripper.
Substitute in Your Favorite Pour Over Coffee Maker
If you’re attached to your pour over coffee maker but are looking for a more convenient, automated option, you can get the best of both worlds with the Ratio Six. To use your own pour over coffee maker, just remove the heat shield and filter basket and place your pour over dripped on top of the carafe. The Ratio Six is designed to work with Ratio’s own line of carafes, which have a magnet in the bottom to let the sensor know something is in place. If you want to use your own device, like a Chemex, you can place a magnet on the sensor, but make sure that your carafe is balance. Our resident photographer Brian figured out that if we added a magnet and a rubber ring, you can brew with your own carafe and keep it balanced.
The setup Brian devised to help the Ratio Six brew with a Chemex.
Once you have your carafe or dripper in the machine, you can play around with different measurements to make sure you’re getting the same taste as your traditional pour over with the Ratio Six. I found the brew was a bit overextracted when I brewed in a Chemex, so make sure to opt for a coarser grind. Our grounds were similar to the consistently of table salt, so if I were doing more brewing, I would personally dial in by trying to get closer to a sea salt consistency. One positive of brewing this way is that the temperature, flow rate, and pre-infusion process are the same for every brew, so you can play more with other factors until you get your perfect cup. Another thing to note is that you may lose some of the heat that the Ratio Six is so good at conserving during the brewing process since the heat shield won’t be in place.
$49.14
Keep Your Coffee Warm
As someone who likes to drink coffee throughout the morning, the carafe on the Ratio Six was great at keeping my coffee warm for hours. The double-walled stainless steel is not only aesthetically pleasing, but it also does a good job of keeping the coffee fresh and warm if you brew extra to drink later on. I poured myself a few cups and topped them off over the course of about four hours, and I found that the coffee in the carafe was still warm and tasted fresh every time I poured it into my cup. The included lid for the carafe is easy to pop on after brewing to keep coffee warm throughout so you can top-off your cup throughout the morning without having to sacrifice the taste and temperature of a fresh brew.
Works Well With
The best coffee is brewed from freshly ground beans, so it’s important to get a grinder that will allow you to refine your grind based on your brew method. When paired with the Eureka Mignon Crono Coffee Grinder, I was able to get the perfect medium-coarse grind to my coffee grounds. It really helped bring out the notes of tropical fruit and chocolate that I love in Fuego’s Ethiopia coffee beans.
Adding grounds to the Ratio Six brew basket.
The Crono also makes it easy to repeat the settings once you’ve found just the right brew for your Ratio Six with the number adjustment knob. The Crono’s micrometric adjustments for the flat burrs allows you to go from a coarse grind for making cold brew to a finer grind for french press coffee and everything in between. You can also be sure you’re getting the right amount of coffee ground each time with the built-in, adjustable timer. If you prefer a more manual approach, you can also hold down the button to grind out just the right amount you need.
$189.00
Once you find the right timing for the amount of grounds you need, the notched dials make it simple to set your machine exactly the same each time. For a full 8 cup batch, you should be grinding about 75g of medium-coarse coffee. Since the knob makes multiple rotations, you may have to play with the coarseness at first to find the right coarseness for your tastes. Once you find the right consistency, set the timer to grind for 35 seconds to get 75g of grounds.
The Eureka Mignon Brew Pro's bean hopper.
When I tested the Ratio Six out in our studio with a Chemex, I used the Eureka Mignon Brew Pro Coffee Grinder, and I found it also made coffee with the right consistency for pour over. The main differences between the Brew Pro and the Crono are the knobs and the screen. With the Crono, you can make multiple rotations to the adjustment knob, so you have to be sure you’re matching the number on the dial as well as the number of rotations. The Brew Pro only makes one rotation, making repeatability easier. The Brew Pro also has a digital screen that makes it easy to program a single and double dose as well as a manual mode that’s easy to switch to.
In Conclusion
If you love pour over coffee but don’t love the time you spend hand pouring water into your pour over coffee maker, the Ratio Six combines the ease of an automated drip coffee machine with the flavor of a manual pour over coffee maker. The five-year warranty that Ratio offers also makes it clear that this machine is built to last, so you can rely on your Ratio Six for your morning brew for years to come.
Unlike traditional drip coffee makers which generally don’t have a blooming process and also have a more concentrated area where the water flows through the grounds, the Ratio Six mimics a pour over with its automated pre-infusion process and circular showerhead. This helps avoid any over-extraction and bring out the subtle notes in your coffee beans that can sometimes be lost in a traditional drip coffee machine. Instead of spending your morning pouring hot water into your pour over coffee maker to make sure you’re getting the best tasting brew and worrying that factors like the temperature of your water or how evenly you’re pouring are just right, you can set your Ratio Six and get repeatable brew results every morning.
The Ratio Six is available now on the Whole Latte Love website, and if you have any questions, our customer service team is always available to help. If you’ve tried out the Ratio Six yourself, make sure to leave a Ratio Six review on the product page!
