Is your morning cup of coffee consistently too weak or too strong?
Maybe you’ve tried adding an extra scoop to the brew basket or using a bit less, but it still didn’t give you that “just right” cup. While adding more or cutting back on the amount of coffee will certainly make coffee stronger or weaker, the problem might not be the amount of coffee. It could be something else entirely—grind size.
No matter your preferred method, what actually happens in your morning brew is essentially the same: water passes through ground coffee beans to extract flavors. The grind size of the beans is an important variable in this equation.
COFFEE SCIENCE 101
Let’s dive in for a closer look at the coffee bean.
Coffee beans are primarily composed of cellulose, a wood-like substance that is not dissolvable in water. But contained in the bean are a number of chemicals and compounds that dissolve in water and end up in your cup. The cellulose is what is left behind in your filter and is thrown out.
Seems pretty straight forward, right? But there is more to brewing a great cup of coffee than just dumping hot water over some ground up coffee beans. As it turns out, not all the compounds contained in a coffee bean taste good. The challenge becomes maximizing the extraction of the desirable elements, while minimizing the extraction of the less desirable flavors.
EXTRACTING BEST FLAVOR
How can you extract the best flavor?
By controlling the amount of time the water is in contact with the coffee grounds.
If the water passes through the grounds too quickly, the result is under extraction and your coffee will be weak and have a flavor often described as sour. A lot of the “good stuff” is still in the grounds you are going to throw out.
If the water passes through the grounds too slowly the result is over extraction. Yes, you got the desirable flavors out of the grounds, but you also wind up with some of the less desirable ones, too. An over extracted cup of coffee is going to be very strong and will taste bitter and harsh.
How do you control the flow of water through the grounds? Grind size.
GRIND SIZE
The larger the size of the coffee particles the faster the water will pass through. Smaller particles take longer for the water to pass through.
If your coffee is weak, instead of adding more coffee the next time you brew a cup, try a finer grind to increase the brew time and extract more flavor from the grounds.
If your coffee is strong and bitter, use a courser grind and shorten the brewing time. You’ll get all the desirable flavors contained in the grounds, but the extraction will stop before the less desirable compounds are dissolved.
It may take a little experimentation to find your perfect grind size, but the results will be worth the effort when you taste that “just right” cup of coffee.