To make Your Dream Coffee at home, you will need to master the coffee grind size every single time. This will ensure you get the best flavors out of your coffee beans and will get you that delicious cup of joe!
I will tell you everything you need to know to grind those coffee beans the way you want. I’ll start by showing you every coffee grind size you could think of and telling you a bit about all of them.
After that, I will give you some brewing information. This will help you try out all the grind sizes I have mentioned in this article. But first, grab yourself a nice cup of joe and start reading away.
Why is it so important to use the correct grind size?
Coffee beans need the correct grind size to extract all of their delicious flavors. If you grind your coffee beans the wrong way, you might end up with a cup of coffee that just doesn’t taste the best.
When hot water runs through or steeps with the ground coffee beans, you will extract all the coffee beans’ flavors. To help the process of doing so, you need to grind your coffee beans the right way.
An example of water running through coffee beans is by using pour over techniques like the Chemex or Hario V60.
Steeping the coffee means that you add water and ground coffee beans to a coffee brewer like a French press. You can learn more about these brewing techniques by clicking the links; these will take you to brewing guides.
When the coffee beans are broken into little particles, the coffee beans’ surface area increases, which means that the amount of time needed to extract all the necessary flavors decreases.
Think of it like this: if you have small coffee particles, they will need less time to get the most out of the coffee beans. When there are bigger coffee particles in a coarse grind, the time to extract the same delicious flavors will take a bit longer.
To compare, if you leave fine and coarsely ground coffee beans in their own French press and steep them for 4 minutes, the flavor profile will be completely different from each other.
Are you wondering what the taste difference is? I suggest you try this experiment at home, so you get an idea of the immense difference in taste between the two coffees. You’ll find taste notes that differ from sweet to sour and bitter tones.
This is why all brewing techniques require a different coffee grind size, improving the overall flavor. I will get into the different coffee brewing techniques you can try with the coffee grind size chart.
My coffee tastes sour, how do I fix it?
Whenever you feel like your coffee tastes a bit sour, you have over-extracted your coffee. This happens when you have ground your coffee beans too fine. The water will extract too much of the coffee flavors, including the sour notes you want to avoid extracting.
You can fix this by adjusting your coffee grind to get a coarser coffee grind. If you have been grinding away for a while using the “wrong” grind size and you now have a big batch of finely ground coffee beans, there is still no need to panic.
Should this happen, you need to lower the amount of extraction time accordingly. If your coffee tastes too sour, lower the amount of time your coffee is steeping with the water.
Note that this will not be the best way to handle this, and it will still not give you the best result. Say you are using a French press at home right now and are left with a bunch of too finely ground coffee beans. You might want to consider using a pour over technique to get rid of the coffee beans.
You will still get that amazing tasting cup of coffee you have been craving all day, but your coffee will just be made using a different coffee brewing technique.
My coffee tastes bitter, what do I do?
If your coffee tastes bitter and there isn’t much room for the subtle flavors to come through, you have been grinding your coffee beans too coarsely.
Don’t worry. This should be an easy fix as well. However, this will take some time to master. When I started out grinding my coffee beans at home, many cups of coffee tasted either bitter, sour, or anywhere in between.
All I’m saying is, don’t sweat it and just keep on grinding. To fix the coarsely ground coffee beans, you have to turn the wheel to adjust the grind size on your hand grinder. When using an electric coffee grinder, turn the grind size button.
Whether you are using a burr hand grinder or an electric coffee grinder, it should work the same way. I use both the hand grinder and the electric kind at home. Both are amazing and deliver a great coffee grind whenever I need it.
If you have a hand grinder, adjust the grind size by turning the little knob to the finer side. If you have an electric coffee grinder, you have to adjust yourself, follow the same steps, and turn the grind size to the finer side.
The electric coffee grinder I have at home needs a bit of pressing on the top of the grinder. This way, I can press and hold for as long as I want to achieve any grind size I would like. Generally speaking, I press for 10 seconds to get a French press grind size and 15 seconds for a pour over coffee grind.
The different coffees you can make using the grind size chart
To explain the different coffee grinds out there, I will first explain which coffee grinds are most commonly used. Although there are many ways to grind coffee beans, the 5 most commonly referred to as coffee grinds are listed below:
- Extra Coarse Grind
- Coarse Grind
- Medium-Fine Grind
- Fine Grind
- Extra Fine
If you want to have a quick overview of the difference in coffee grind sizes, please have a look below:
Explaining which coffee grind is used for every coffee brewing technique
I know there are many more grind sizes in between, but these 5 are most important for you to learn and, even better, master. Once you master these 5 coffee grind sizes, you are set for life. You will now be able to make Your Dream Coffee at home, every day using the very best grind size for your cup of joe.
1. Extra coarse grind (cold brew grind)
The extra coarse grind size is used for making cold brew coffee. The grind size is really coarse, and you can clearly see big chunks of coffee beans in the grind size.
2. Coarse grind (French press grind)
This coffee grind is used when making French press coffee. The structure of the coffee beans is comparable to the extra coarse grind. This grind does have smaller coffee bean pieces in it, which come closer to medium grind size.
3. Medium- fine grind (pour over grind)
In this coffee grind, the bigger chunks of coffee beans are gone. There are smaller pieces present in the coffee grind, but you can still see a bit of structure in it. This grind size is most commonly used for a pour over brewing technique.
4. Fine grind (espresso grind)
This is where the fun starts. When grinding the coffee beans for an espresso grind, you can clearly feel that you are finely grinding your coffee beans. The structure of the coffee beans feels like fine sea salt.
The fine grind size is mostly used when brewing espressos with the AeroPress, Moka pot, or espresso machine.
5. Extra fine grind (Turkish coffee grind)
If you feel like you need a strong cup of coffee, I suggest you try a Turkish coffee when you’ve got the chance. This coffee grind is super fine, and there isn’t much structure left in the coffee beans.
The coffee beans have been ground so fine that the Turkish coffee is served with the ground coffee still inside the drink. The coffee should rest a bit so that the ground coffee can sink to the bottom. It is not recommended to drink the last bit for this reason.
Which coffee grinder can you use to grind your own coffee?
As I have mentioned before, you are free to use any coffee grinder you have at home. Both the burr hand coffee grinder and a small electric coffee grinder will be able to grind your coffee beans the way you want.
Although I mostly use the hand grinder at home, the electric coffee grinder comes in handy when I need to make a larger amount of coffee than just one cup.
Let’s put it this way; an equal coffee grind will be achieved using a burr grinder. Any electric coffee grinder is just really convenient at times when you don’t feel like hand grinding a ton of coffee beans for the whole family, or you just have a lazy Sunday.
I am using a Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill burr coffee grinder at home, which is really nice and easy to use. You can buy the same one by clicking here.
The coffee grinder can hold about 35-40 grams of coffee, which is more than enough to brew two cups of coffee with. Whenever I need to make more than two cups, I use the electric coffee grinder.
Can I ask my coffee roaster to grind my coffee beans?
Your coffee roaster will be more than happy to help you grind your coffee beans. If you still feel that grinding your own coffee beans takes too much time, or you can’t get the grind size right, you can always ask your coffee roaster to do this for you.
Most coffee roasters have a very good quality electric coffee grinder. They can change the coffee grinder to grind multiple sizes, so feel free to ask for any of the above-mentioned coffee grind sizes.
This will also give you a better feel of the different coffee grind sizes I have explained in this article. You will now be able to feel the ground coffee, and it should be even easier for you to get the correct grind size the next time you will grind your coffee beans at home.
How long can you store ground coffee beans for?
You can store your coffee beans for a pretty great amount of time. Coffee beans can be stored for up to 2 years when properly sealed off. If you want to get the best quality and taste, I suggest finishing your batch of coffee beans within 8 weeks.
After about 8 weeks, the coffee beans slowly start losing some of their delicious flavors. I usually buy a few coffee bean bags at once, with 250 grams worth of coffee beans in each bag. I mostly finish 3 to 4 bags of coffee beans within this time frame.
By the time I finish the coffee beans, I go to my favorite coffee roaster and buy a fresh batch of coffee beans for the upcoming weeks.
How do I correctly store my ground coffee beans?
The key to correctly storing your ground coffee beans is storing them in little resealable jars or the resealable bag they might come in.
If you just bought a bigger batch of ground coffee beans at your local roaster, it might be worth it to ask for a vacuum seal on your coffee beans.
By vacuum sealing the ground coffee beans, all the oxygen is pulled out of the bag, and it will take ages before the coffee beans start to lose their flavor.
Did you buy a smaller amount of coffee beans? Just store them in small resealable jars, like the one I have here:
The jar will look nice in your kitchen, filled up with ground coffee beans. Do make sure not to put the jar in direct sunlight, as this will speed up the loss of flavor in your coffee beans.
What about whole coffee beans?
The same applies to whole coffee beans; they are best kept in a tight, resealable container and out of direct sunlight.
Whole coffee beans do keep fresher for a longer period of time. Because they are still compact, there will be less oxygen getting in the coffee beans, which ultimately results in flavor loss.
If you want to learn more about correctly and safely storing your coffee beans at home, check out this article I wrote about it.
Conclusion
This was a fun article to write. The amount of work that goes into getting that perfect grind size each time is quite a lot. But remember, the better you grind your coffee beans, the better your coffee will taste.
Will you give the grind size chart a try? 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!
If you want to learn more about coffee beans, I’ve listed a few articles down below that might be of interest to you.
