We have all had this trouble at home once. You have bought coffee beans at your local supermarket, you put the grind setting on the coffee grinder that is available at the supermarket to medium/ fine and let it do its work.
You are wondering if you can regrind the coffee beans. And the answer is: Yes, you can, and I will explain how to regrind your coffee and hopefully save you from throwing out a bag of coffee beans.
Let me start this article off by going over which coffee grinder you can use; further down, I will teach you how to regrind your coffee beans at home. I will also be giving some tips on what to do with your ground coffee beans.
Which coffee grinder can you use for regrinding your coffee?
Once you get home and want to make yourself a nice cup of coffee, you notice the grind size is not what you put the grinder to. You now have a bag of coarsely grounded coffee at home, and you don’t know what to do with it.
If you want to regrind your coffee beans, you want to make sure you are using the best coffee grinder you have at home or can use at your supermarket.
You can choose between the electric grinder and the manual (or hand) grinder. Although the outcome may differ slightly, it can be done.
I will explain how to grind your pre-ground coffee beans while using an eclectic coffee grinder you might have at home, or you can use it at your supermarket. I will also cover how to correctly use your hand grinder to ground the pre-ground coffee even finer.
Let me start by explaining how to use an electric grinder first; I will then explain how to use the hand grinder.
Using an electric grinder
If you have an electric coffee grinder at home and want to use this grinder to regrind your coffee beans, make sure to feed the coffee grinder with your pre-ground coffee beans slowly.
As electric coffee grinders tend to get pretty hot while grinder coffee beans, you want to make sure not to drop all your pre-ground coffee beans at once. Adding a handful or spoonful of pre-ground coffee beans to your grinder will help make the final ground coffee as fine as it can get.
Once you drop all of your pre-ground coffee beans in at once, the beans will form up in a pile, which will press down on each other.
If you slowly drop the beans into the coffee grinder, all the beans are essentially the “last beans,” which will have all the space it needs to get through the machine. This means that the ground coffee coming out of the machine will be even finer than initially expected.
If you are using a coffee grinder at the supermarket, set it to the finest setting it can go to. Slowly feed the machine with the pre-ground coffee and let it do its thing.
When your supermarket is closed, or you don’t have a supermarket near you, which provides a coffee grinder. You can also use a hand coffee grinder.
Letting your arms work; using a manual grinder
When using a manual (or hand) grinder to grind your pre-ground coffee, you are in for a treat. Although it will take some time to grind the coffee beans, the grinder process doesn’t involve as much power as grinding whole coffee beans. This is because the coffee has already been made a little bit finer than using the whole beans.
If you are ready to grind the pre-ground coffee, make sure to test the grind size on your hand grinder. You can adjust the grind size of your hand grinder easier if there is nothing in the grinder.
If you would like to buy the same coffee grinder that I’m using in this article, I suggest clicking here. This will bring you to Amazon; check it out! It’s an excellent manual coffee grinder.
I suggest adding a teaspoon full of pre-ground coffee beans to your grinder, then grinding on the finest setting you can put your hand grinding on.
If the coffee coming out is somewhat coarse, you can easily adjust the grind size without going through so much trouble.
Once you have adjusted your hand grinder, you are ready to grind all of your pre-ground coffee beans. Start slowly, adding a little bit of coffee at a time.
Slowly turn the handle on your coffee grinder, making sure to give every coffee bean the chance to get properly ground. If you start to grind really fast, you are pushing the coffee beans through the grinder so fast, and it will result in an uneven ground coffee.
How to regrind your coffee beans
If you are used to making an espresso at home and really need one, you might want to consider regrinding that coarsely ground coffee into a fine grind using the coffee bean bag you have lying around. Although it is not ideal, it might work for you.
Let me start by saying that the finished product (being your espresso) might not taste as you like. The coffee beans slowly start losing their flavor as they leave the coffee roaster.
The loss of flavor will be enhanced when the coffee is pre-ground and put in the little bags you can find at your supermarket. The coffee flavor will lose its flavor even faster when ground. This is why your espresso will likely not taste as you had hoped for.
If you need that espresso, follow these simple steps to make the best of an already bad situation.
Start by choosing your grinder. I suggest using a hand burr grinder as this will work best for this technique. As you can easily determine the grinding speed because you are in control of the coffee grinder.
After you have made a choice on which coffee grinder to use, drop the pre-ground coffee beans in your grinder.
Slowly start grinding the pre-ground coffee beans, a bit at a time. Make sure not to grind too fast; this can cause little pieces of coffee to get stuck in the nooks and crannies in your coffee grinder.
Once you have finish regrinding your coffee beans, you can start making your espresso! You can even consider brewing an iced espresso or iced Americano.
Brewing tip: Check out this iced recipe here or this iced Americano recipe!
Tips for brewing coffee
If you don’t have a coffee grinder at home to grind your coffee beans, and the store you buy and grind your coffee beans is closed. And you desire a cup of joe late at night; then I have some tips for you to brew coffee with the ground coffee you do have.
Making cold brew coffee at home
Say you are stuck with a bag of really coarse ground coffee at home, and you have no way to regrind the coffee right now. You can also make use of my cold brew coffee recipe.
This recipe will need coarsely ground coffee beans to make a delicious cold brew coffee at home!
Ideally, you want to wait for at least 12 hours to drink this cold brew coffee to let the coffee beans steep in the water. This will bring out a unique coffee flavor, and you will enjoy it thoroughly.
Brewing a nice French press coffee
If you have a somewhat medium/ coarse coffee grind, you can also make coffee using a French press. This will give you a nice strong cup of coffee you are going to enjoy.
While the French press might not be something you have lying around the house, you might have Chemex at home. Or any other pour-over coffee brewer.
While it might not be an ideal coffee grind, you can make pour-over coffee while using a medium/ coarse coffee grind.
Conclusion
Although regrinding your coffee beans is not ideal, it can be done. I have tried to explain how to regrind your coffee as best as possible, so you can still make that coffee you really needed.
While you might have wanted to make that espresso, you could also opt to try a new technique of making coffee. This will expand your coffee horizon and will make you even more interested in coffee!
I hope to see you back on my blog soon, if you’d like to learn more about home brewing coffee, you can check out the articles listed below.
Have you ever tried regrinding your ground coffee beans before? Let me know by leaving a comment down below. If you have any other questions regarding coffee, you can also contact me directly by pressing the “Contact Me” button at the top!
2 Comments
Really helpful article.! I googled this exact question expecting all sorts of harsh ‘NO! are you mad?’ comments from coffee aficionados. For sure the flavour won’t be the same but at least I won’t keep ending with a weak sour cup from under extraction. 👍
Hey Lyn,
It’s so great to hear that this article is helpful to you. I hope you’ll keep making great coffee at home!
-Jeffrey