Weighing coffee is an intrinsic part of making any coffee regardless of skill level. At home or as a professional barista scales can be relentlessly used when measuring the coffee input, beverage output and brew times to create coffee to a high standard. An awful lot is demanded of them, from their ergonomic design, speed, durability and multi-functionality.

The challenge for any espresso machine coffee scale is water resistance; even the neatest barista is inevitably going to give the scales a good, hot showering every now and then. Full water-proofing for any electronic device is obviously a challenge, and it’s best to think of the Arc as water resistant and not water proof. Note that this is pretty much the standard for any scales claiming to be immune to the influence of water. We have run the Arc underneath an open grouphead for 10 seconds and it's given us no complaints. Although the sensitivity is reportedly 0.1g, as with the coffee gator scales there are a significant number of users saying that they don't actually appear to be as sensitive as they're supposed to be. The Felicita ARC scales are possibly the ultimate and only scale you’ll ever need for taking coffee brewing seriously at home. I’ve done that numerous times and you end up all fingers and thumbs, it’s so much easier and more convenient when both the weight and time are incorporated into the scales and you can do it all on one device. Response time So the main negative point in my opinion is they're overly faffy. I often end up in a mode I didn't want to be in, I often turn it on or off accidentally, the interface is just a bit faffy, and I can't really think of a better word to describe it.The price. They're probably around two hundred quid more than the majority of people would consider spending on coffee scales – and some would see the price of these scales as utter lunacy, see what I did there? ;-). But they are made with pricey materials, they're certainly well built, and nothing feels cheap about them. The Arc is a great combination scale that suits espresso and filter brewing, but repeatedly switching the scales between auto-tare and auto-timer will probably lead to frustration, and we’d recommend the Arc primarily with an espresso workflow (e.g. the auto-timer/auto-tare will likely mess with the initial bloom of a filter coffee, which can be followed by a pause of up to a minute before you continue brewing. We did find that without reading the instructions (we know, we know), the auto-tare was a little confusing to turn on/off, but after a few goes it became fairly routine for us. Key Highlights

Japan-based Felicita is a specialist producer of high-end coffee equipment, mainly scales although they also make a temp control kettle. I am not seeing any drift in the displayed weight, ether while on my solid counter or on the drip tray of my Londinium The more accurate you can be, the better your coffee will taste so however you choose to make your coffee, using dedicated coffee scales will give you an all-round better experience. Finally, coffee beans are different weights depending on the roast type, I’ve weighed them (I know, extremely sad). Darker roasts weigh less than lighter roasts and so when you combine all of these things, you’ll simply never get an accurate weight for your coffee if you use spoons or scoops.You'll be OK with most of the Sage or Breville machines. It's slightly tight with the Gaggia Classic, but you can improve this by getting a bottomless portafilter and/or fitting a low-level drip tray. Not all rechargeable scales are the same when it comes to how long they last on a charge, though, and generally speaking the more expensive scales last longer on a charge. Some also have more obscure charging ports while some come with USB-C ports which are the same as most modern smartphones except iPhone, which can be very handy. How much should you spend on coffee scales? If you don’t want to time how long your coffee extraction is taking and you don’t mind the accuracy being slightly out, you can certainly use any digital scales that you already have for general kitchen use. It's supposed to stop the timer and hold the weight for you when you remove the cup, when it works that's great – but it doesn't always work, good feature but slightly hit and miss.

It has an auto-shutoff when it turns off in five minutes after being inactive (while the timer is off); This might not be a big issue for you, but I find it a real pain when I find that something has run out of batteries, and I have to go hunting for the AAAs. I'm sure there's an environmental element to this too, I would assume that re-charging an internal battery is better for the environment overall than using disposable batteries. In this article, I’ll explain why the best coffee scales are a great weapon in your armory in the quest for coffee perfection, why you should consider using a dedicated set of coffee scales for specifically weighing coffee, and how/why they differ from ordinary kitchen scales.This is the reason I've said that I “used to” own these scales. Technically I still do, but they no longer work. I had a little bit of a spill, I wiped the scales, and thought nothing of it – but the next time I went to use them, I turned them on and the weight reading was continually increasing. Power: Rechargeable lithium-ion battery with reportedly up to 20 hours of continuous use per charge. Micro USB. I’ll also help you to understand the difference between the vastly differently priced coffee scales, as you'll see that they range in price from about a tenner to over two hundred pounds! Why do you need coffee scales, anyway? These scales seem to share the same lag or latency issue with the Hario scales and with most of the other cheaper coffee scales, which possibly isn't a massive issue for pourover or other manual brew methods but would be a pain for espresso. Most people that weigh coffee for home use won’t need to weigh more than say 100-200g at any one time in increments of 0.1 grams and so that’s a good starting point when choosing your coffee scales.