Why (Grind) Size Matters

July 31, 2017 0 Comments

So there you are with your freshly roasted coffee beans, your new burr grinder, and your favorite mug. But suddenly, you panic; "Why does my grinder have 15+ grind settings on it?! Espresso Grind, Drip Grind, French Press Grind, and all those other grinds in-between... what does it all mean?!"

There are a handful of factors that can mess up the taste of your incredible coffee once you've gotten it home: type of water used, grinder type, grind size, water temperature, storage, just to name a few.  Here we'll take a look at grind size...

The main idea behind grind size is based on how long your coffee is in contact with water during the brewing process.

The Rocky Road: Coarse Grind

A larger grind size is typical for a longer brew such as a french or coffee press. This longer brewing time (usually about four minutes) in partnership with the larger surface area of the coarse grind, allows the water more time & space from which to extract all of the goodness out of the coffee. 

The Finer Things: Espresso

For an espresso, you're looking at about 20-30 seconds of water to coffee exposure plus the addition of pressure with which to extract out all of the lovely coffee flavors.  With just those few seconds, you need a very fine grind to let that water flow through quickly, while simultaneously capturing all of the yummy goodness.

Middle-of-the-Grind-Spectrum: Drip et al

You usually use a drip coffee maker for larger groups of people or a larger volume of coffee at one time for yourself! You may have a conical filter or flat-bottom filter. Either way, you've got a relatively broad bed of grounds with water coming in contact through a spray head fitting. We're talking volume here, folks. This is where there is a lot more tweaking and playing around with tuning your grind...the middle of the road is a wide place, where really, it's a matter of personal taste.  A couple things that might help:

• coffee tasting like grass? Not enough extraction, try a finer grind
• coffee tasting bitter or astringent? Maybe you're extracting too much of what you don't want.  Try dialing your grind size back a bit, making a little larger. 

Once you've got yours dialed, write it down! Or better yet, write it ON your grinder!  Happy grinding :-)

 

 

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