If your coffee tastes thin and sour, or heavy and bitter, the beans are usually not the problem. The grind is. It controls how fast water pulls flavour out of the coffee, and every brewer needs a different setting.
The rule behind it
The longer water sits with the coffee, the coarser the grind needs to be. A French press steeps for four minutes, so it wants coarse. Espresso passes water through in under thirty seconds, so it wants fine. Everything else sits between those two.
Match it to your brewer
- French press - coarse, like coarse sea salt
- Pour-over, V60 or a drip machine - medium, like table salt
- Moka pot - fine-medium, a little finer than table salt
- Espresso machine - fine, like icing sugar
- Cold brew - the coarsest you can manage
Reading the cup
Sour, sharp and watery means the water moved through too quickly and the coffee is under-extracted. Grind finer. Bitter, drying and hollow means it sat too long and over-extracted. Grind coarser. Change one thing at a time and taste after each change.
Adjust the grind before you adjust anything else. It is free, and it is the biggest lever you have.
Grinding at home
A burr grinder produces even particles. A blade grinder smashes beans into a mix of dust and boulders, and the dust over-extracts while the boulders barely give anything up. If you are buying one piece of equipment this year, make it a burr grinder rather than a new brewer.
If you do not have one, order your coffee ready-ground and tell us which brewer you use. We grind to order, so it is fresh when it leaves us - but ground coffee stales faster than whole bean, so buy smaller and more often.