Felicita Parallel Electronic Coffee Scale, 160x212x35mm, Black

Product Information

If you get it wrong by just a few percent then it can make a big impact on the overall flavour and a very common mistake that a lot of people fall for is the “scoop” or spoon method of measuring out your coffee. I still own these scales, it's been a couple of years now, and they're still going strong, they get a lot of use by my son, he takes them in his van with him for brewing mainly with his V60, and the fact that my son has been anywhere near them and they're still in one piece is really an achievement ;-), the average lifetime of his smartphones screens is about 3 minutes! They're really sturdy scales, and the battery life is great, very dependable brew scales. The good stuff.

Japan-based Felicita is a specialist producer of high-end coffee equipment, mainly scales although they also make a temp control kettle. Although, you could of course go for rechargeable batteries. My issue with these is that I'm terrible when it comes to losing battery chargers ;-), I've given up buying anything with rechargeable batteries as I'm convinced we have some kind of alien living in the house that survives only from consuming battery chargers! So I prefer to use devices that simply have a charging port on them – yes, this little alien eats them too, but I've usually got one of them somewhere for charging something else, that I can use. Accurate, rapid & reactive, Felicita scales would make a vital impact from your appreciation of coffee weighing to another level!This is Felicita's espresso scale, and it's an impressive-looking little thing, with a look of the (even more expensive) Acaia Lunar, I have even seen some talk of this being a “clone”, and I can see what they mean, although it's a slightly different shape, it is very similar looking, and the manual for this is almost identical to the manual for the Lunar. The good stuff.

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. In fact, the only thing that gives away the fact that this is some kind of a device is the charging port, and this is also the point of reference to show you where the invisible on button is. With the charging port on the top right, if you press the empty surface on the bottom right, this thing comes to life, and then it's clear that you haven't been sold a square lump of plastic, it is actually a set of 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. If you use scales then you remove all of that uncertainty. If you don't use scales, the resulting coffee is going to vary in taste from one cup to the next. 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.Doesn't have an auto timer function, which is only a bad thing if this is a function you're looking for in a set of brew scales. The Incline is one of Felicita’s two filter brewing scales (although it does suit espresso brewing, to a degree). Whilst the Arc can be used for filter coffee, it is a little too small for many brewing vessels. That said, the Incline may also be on the small side if you’re brewing a full size Chemex (for example); the Parallel is more suited to this. So you can use kitchen scales if you want to but using proper coffee scales will make your coffee experience better. Tend to struggle with latency, also known as lag, meaning it can take a second or two for the weight to update. Over the past year, however, new scales from Felicita have been spotted in more and more shops, and we’ve been given an opportunity to review their offering in detail.