Updated October 2026
You sourced a great lot and roasted it to show what it can do. Then your customer brews it with the same fixed recipe they use for everything, and it comes out sour or bitter. They blame the beans. One free QR code on your bag can change that.
Print the recipeseries.coffee QR code next to your roast date. Your customer measures the beans, gets a recipe matched to your roast for espresso, filter, French press or AeroPress, and fixes sour or bitter with one button.
I caught up with my original Coffee Sensei one day and asked what great single origin he was drinking. I was shocked when he sheepishly confessed he had ‘given up’ on single origins, because it took most of the bag to dial each one in. With his usual blend, at least it was always the same, and he didn’t have to struggle.
He isn’t unusual. Around 4 in 5 bags of coffee don’t suit the standard fixed recipe, the 1:2 espresso most people are taught (the full case). Grinding finer or coarser can’t close the gap, so a light roast stays sour and a dark roast stays bitter, however carefully it’s made.
And when the cup disappoints, the roaster takes the blame. On the Coffee Lit podcast, asked why so many excellent coffees are brewed badly, Tony Konecny said he leans towards blaming the roaster (listen from 3:07). Your customers think the same way. The real problem is the recipe, and it’s fixable.
A sour or bitter cup reads as a bad roast. Your customer never finds out it was the recipe.
Customers who struggle with a single origin retreat to a familiar blend, or to another roaster.
Dialling in by grind alone can use up much of a bag before it tastes right, if it ever does.
Light, fruity single origins show your skill best, and they’re the hardest to brew with a fixed recipe.
The Coffee Recipe Series (CRS) matches the recipe to the roast. It’s free, there’s no account or app, and it works with any coffee you roast.
Put it next to the roast date. It points to recipeseries.coffee, where customers learn how CRS works.
They weigh 100 ml of beans to get the density. It takes about a minute with a measuring cylinder and a scale.
Dose, grind, ratio, temperature and time, for espresso, filter, French press or AeroPress.
Sour? Extract More. Bitter? Extract Less. Usually right first time, and almost always within one change.
Think of the starting recipe as a weather forecast. Density shows how far the roast has developed, the biggest single factor in how a coffee extracts, so CRS can predict the recipe your coffee most likely needs. It’s usually right first time, and when it’s off, it’s only off by a little. A fixed recipe is like forecasting the same weather every day: right only on the days that happen to match.
~9,500
density measurements from CRS users
4 in 5
coffees don’t suit a fixed recipe
1 in 10
starting recipes needed changing, in my notes on 222 coffees
Every recipe sets all the brewing parameters together within established industry ranges, so your customer makes one decision, sour or bitter, and presses one button. Your taste notes and your roast are what they end up tasting.
A trainee barista was pulling an excellent Bourbon Pointu at a by-the-book 1:2 and didn’t like it. He suspected the beans. The density-matched recipe, plus one Extract Less step, gave him what he called the best coffee he had ever tasted. Nothing about the beans had changed.
No fee, no sign-up and no app. Just a QR code your customers can scan.
Light, medium or dark, filter or espresso roast: the recipe follows the beans, not the label.
121 recipes each for espresso, filter, French press and AeroPress.
When single origins taste right, customers try the next one, and the one after that.
Download the QR code and add it to your next run of bags. It prints sharp at any size and scans reliably even on a small sticker.
Want to talk about printing density on your labels, or how CRS could work for your café or customers? Get in touch.
