Eyeballs are great: I have two. I like spoons too. However, if you want a consistent dose of coffee for a great espresso or pour-over, an accurate scale is the somewhat fiddly way to go.
I can still remember a time when, every morning, to weigh my coffee beans, I would place a small measuring cup on a digital scale, then press a button on the scale, then wait about a second for the scale’s display to light up to set the value Zero before pouring coffee beans into the dosing cup. Back then, in the sands of time – October 2024, I think – I didn’t find it a major inconvenience. This is how coffee scales work.
But maybe that’s not necessary. Over the last year, some coffee brands have come up with the simple idea of combining a dosing cup and a scale in one device. Trigger bulbs across the forehead and chokes on the shoulders. Perhaps the most elegant of these is the Subscale, a novelty from the Singaporean coffee brand Subminimal (also manufacturer of our favorite milk frother).
The Subscale is a black-on-black cup that holds about 60 grams of coffee and has a scale accurate to a tenth of a gram at the bottom. Since I got it, it hasn’t left my countertop – and it’s made me enjoy my morning coffee ritual a little more.
Keep it simple
The key to subscale’s appeal lies in its insistent simplicity. The world of craft coffee is now full of new, complicated and sometimes confusing conveniences. Once a humble tool, the coffee scale has developed into a basis for coffee miracles of all kinds. The Fellow Tally Pro (8/10, WIRED recommends) calculates for you and at the same time determines the recommended water weights for ideal brewing conditions. The Bluetooth enabled Acaia Pearl S Tracks your brew time and the flow rate of your water while playing music.
The subscale does none of this.
It’s a cup. It is a lightweight, clear, minimalist mug with a spring-sensitive scale at the bottom that measures the precise weight of the contents. There is no Bluetooth, no app and no particular learning curve. It takes up very little space on my countertop and looks great there.
