Grind Size
By Anna Curtis
At Lee-on-the-Solent Coffee Company, we offer three grind sizes as well as whole beans. Although we do recommend buying whole beans to grind at home for the very best coffee, we understand this is not always possible, and you will still get a delicious cup of coffee with pre-ground coffee.
Let’s discuss our three grind sizes to see which one would be the best for you.
We offer coarse, fine or medium grind. Coarse is recommended if you are using a French press, also known as a cafetière. In this brewing method, the coffee sits a lot longer in your hot water than in other brewing methods, making it much closer to an infusion of coffee, whereas in other brewing methods the water passes through the coffee. For this, a coarse grind works well as the water extracts its flavour from the coffee grounds as it rests. The coarse coffee ground also is less likely to pass through the metal filter and sit in your cup, invading the silky texture as you enjoy your delicious coffee. (We hate it when this happens, and a coarse grind will help you avoid it!)
For a moka pot or espresso machine, we recommend the fine grind. This is because the espresso is created by water passing through the coffee under immense pressure in a short space of time. The fine grind creates almost a tension for the water to pass through. This gives the distinctive strong, intense flavour of the espresso. If you grind your own beans, this is something you can play around with to get the flavour you prefer – the finer the grind, the slower the brew, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on your taste and on the beans you have got. For those of you ordering finely pre-ground beans, we have ground them as finely as our taste buds tell us would make a good espresso.
Our medium grind is the one that we suggest for filter coffee, V60 and Aeropress. Actually, you could differentiate the grind size further for these three methods, but we cannot mass produce an infinite number of grind sizes – and besides, a lot of it is simply down to taste. The way I would grind at home for the V60 is a bit coarser than for the Aeropress, but the difference is slight. We wanted to keep it simple by grouping these together as “medium grind”. However, we know that your own personal taste may prefer a different grind for each.
We acknowledge we all drink coffee for different reasons. In fact, sometimes within a single day I can drink it with quite different intentions. Convenience and that necessary caffeine fix can mean choosing a brewing method that doesn’t require a lot of thought, just add a splash of milk and go. In these cases a pre-ground coffee can speed that process up even further. Then at other times I may want to take my time and have a more relaxed, meditative brew. For these moments, a lot more thought can go into grind size, water quality, measure of coffee and ratio to water. I will weigh and time each element, with the music playing, and slowly watching each moment, similar to a creative cooking session when there is time and space to be present in the moment, away from the hustle and bustle of life. I also enjoy making coffee for other people, and knowing the reason behind the grind sizes enables me to choose the best method to give to the other person. I get a lot of joy seeing someone enjoy a drink I have made them. That may sound unusual to others, but having worked as a barista and a barmaid at various points of my life, I guess that joy in me grew from somewhere.
The best way to learn to make a good coffee is to keep making coffee. Try it, change something, try again, and decide what works best for you. Maybe you like a V60 made with coarse coffee, just because you like it, then go for it! Don’t worry if the experts might not recommend it – it’s your coffee for you to enjoy.