Your bag of super-fresh fresh beans have just arrived…the next step is to make sure your grind setting is just right to suit your brew method.
Here’s a quick guide:
In descending order, where 6 is the coarsest grind:
6. Cafetiere – Coarse grind otherwise you’ll struggle to push the thing down and your coffee will over-extract.
5. Permanent Filter (metal type/filter machine) – Medium Fine
4. Paper Filter (pour over) – ‘Filter Fine’ – also suits longer Aeropress brews, the finer grind controls gravity and allows time for extraction.
3. Moka/Stovetop – Make the pressure work to get the best from your pot
2. Aeropress – Finer ground for short brews…press harder!
1. Espresso Machine – The finest day to day grind, though you’ll need to tweak it to fine tune results from your machine.
0. Turkish – so fine it’s like like talc, just right for an Ibrik.
It’s useful to understand that the finer the grind, the more effort is needed to force the water through the coffee. Hence the syringe style of the Aeropress or the Pump mechanism on an Espresso machine, also the faster the brew. Whilst a Cafetiere may need to brew for around 3 minutes, an espresso runs through in a very efficient 25 seconds or so. The anomaly is the Turkish Brew, but since you digest some of those grounds, they need to be minuscule.
