How to Brew Mexican Coffee: Ratio, Grind and Method

If you've ever wondered how to make mexican coffee with cinnamon the way it's brewed in kitchens across Mexico, the honest answer is: gently, with time, and without overthinking it. The traditional method — café de olla — simmers coarsely ground coffee with cinnamon and unrefined sugar in a clay or steel pot, and it's a completely different experience from a quick drip brew. But most of us aren't simmering coffee in a clay olla on a weeknight, so this guide covers both that traditional route and the everyday methods — French press and pour-over — that suit these beans just as well.

How to Make Mexican Coffee With Cinnamon: The Café de Olla Method

Start with coarsely ground coffee, closer to what you'd use for a French press than for drip. In a small pot, combine water, a cinnamon stick, and a piece of piloncillo or a spoonful of brown sugar if you don't have it on hand. Bring it just to a simmer — not a rolling boil, which can scorch the sugar and turn the cinnamon bitter — and let the spices steep for a few minutes so the water actually smells like cinnamon before the coffee goes in.

Add the grounds, pull the pot off direct heat, and let it steep for four to five minutes, stirring once or twice. Strain through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth into your cups. The result is sweeter, spicier and a touch heavier-bodied than a plain brew, which is exactly the point — it's meant to be a warming, dessert-adjacent cup rather than a clean, bright one. If your beans already carry the chocolate-and-nut character common to Mexican-grown coffee, the cinnamon and sugar won't fight that; they'll round it out.

How to Use a French Press for a Cleaner, Everyday Cup

When you don't want the ceremony of café de olla, a French press is the closest everyday equivalent — full body, no paper filter soaking up oils, and a forgiving method for a coarse grind. Add your grounds to the empty carafe, pour in water just off the boil, and give it a single stir to make sure everything's saturated. Let it steep four minutes, then press slowly and pour right away so the coffee doesn't keep steeping against the grounds at the bottom.

A solid french press coffee ratio to start from is 1:15 — one gram of coffee to fifteen grams of water — and you can push it to 1:12 if you like a heavier, more concentrated cup, or ease back toward 1:17 for something lighter. Knowing how to make french press coffee well really comes down to two things: a consistently coarse grind, so you're not fighting sediment in the cup, and a steep time you actually stick to instead of eyeballing it. If your grounds are too fine, expect a muddy, over-extracted cup; too coarse, and it'll taste thin no matter how long you steep it.

How do you use a French press if you've only ever had drip coffee at home? Treat the four-minute steep as non-negotiable and resist the urge to press early — most of the flavour balance happens in the last minute, once the grounds have fully hydrated. Adjust your french press ratio slightly with each batch until you land on the strength you actually reach for every morning, since "correct" here is really just "what you'll keep making."

Pour-Over: For a Brighter, Cleaner Version of the Same Beans

Pour over coffee shows off a completely different side of this origin — the citrus and lighter fruit notes that a French press's heavier body can mute. Use a medium grind, roughly the texture of table salt, and a 1:16 ratio as a starting point. Bloom the grounds with a small amount of water first, about double the coffee's weight, and let that sit for thirty seconds so the coffee degasses before you pour the rest. Then pour in slow, steady circles, aiming to finish the full brew in around three minutes.

Some people call it "pour-over," others describe it as slowly working to brew over coffee grounds a little at a time rather than dumping water in all at once — either phrasing gets at the same idea. The method rewards patience and a decent kettle with some control over flow rate, but you don't need anything fancy to get a genuinely good result; a basic plastic dripper works fine as long as your grind and timing are consistent.

Getting the Grind Right

Grind size is the single biggest lever you have, and it's the one people skip most often. Too fine for your method and you'll over-extract into bitterness; too coarse and the coffee tastes sour and thin no matter how good the beans are. If you're using pre-ground coffee, match the bag to your brew method at purchase — we grind to order for French press, drip, pour-over or espresso, so you're not stuck adjusting a mismatched grind at home. Our grind guide breaks down exactly what each method needs if you want the specifics beyond what's here.

Dialing In Your Ratio

Every ratio above is a starting point, not a rule carved in stone — your kettle, your water, and your own taste all nudge the "correct" number around. What matters more than hitting an exact figure is being consistent enough, batch to batch, that you can actually tell when a change in grind or beans shifted the flavour. Our coffee-to-water ratio chart lays out starting points for every common method side by side, so you're not doing the math from memory each time.

Choosing Beans That Are Worth the Effort

None of this technique matters much if the beans underneath it are stale or generic. Fresh, roasted-to-order coffee gives you more room to actually taste the difference a ratio or grind adjustment makes — with tired beans, every method just tastes muted. If Mexican-origin coffee is what drew you here, our Mexican coffee collection is roasted in small batches in Toronto and shipped within 24 hours, with the roast date printed right on the bag. Shipping is free across Canada on orders over $50, and bags come in 227g or 454g, so you can pick up enough to actually dial in your ratio over a few pots rather than running out after two cups.

Bringing It All Together

Whether you end up simmering a pot of café de olla on a Sunday morning or pulling a quick French press before work, the fundamentals stay the same: fresh beans, a grind matched to the method, and a ratio you adjust in small steps rather than guessing from scratch each time. Try the traditional cinnamon method once for the experience, then fall back on French press or pour-over for the rest of the week — both do this origin justice. If you want to browse beyond this one origin while you're at it, our full coffee selection covers everything we currently have roasting.