Brewing
Every brew method on one grind scale
September 12, 2026
- In short
- Grind size, ratio and temperature are usually published one method at a time, which hides how far apart they are. Set side by side, the methods span a twentyfold range of particle size — and where any one of them sits is decided almost entirely by how long the water is in contact with it.
Grind charts are published one method at a time, which is the least useful way to read them. Put all 20 methods this site covers on a single scale and the first thing you notice is the distance: from Turkish at 70 µm to Cold Brew at 1400 µm, about a 20-fold range.
That is not a spectrum of preference. It is a spectrum of contact time, and once you see it that way the ordering stops looking arbitrary.
The whole set
Particle size is the window we publish for each method; the ratio is coffee to water unless the method's own page says otherwise; temperature is the water going in.
| Method | Family | Grind (µm) | Ratio | Water |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Espresso | Pressure | 200–300 | 1:2 * | 93 °C |
| Moka Pot | Pressure | 300–400 | 1:10 | 96 °C |
| Pour Over (V60) | Pour-over | 450–650 | 1:16 | 94 °C |
| Chemex | Pour-over | 700–900 | 1:16 | 94 °C |
| AeroPress | Immersion | 400–700 | 1:14 | 85 °C |
| French Press | Immersion | 900–1200 | 1:15 | 95 °C |
| Cold Brew | Immersion | 1000–1400 | 1:10 | 20 °C |
| Drip / Batch | Pour-over | 600–800 | 1:16 | 94 °C |
| Turkish | Boiled | 70–150 | 1:10 | from cold |
| Siphon | Immersion | 500–700 | 1:15 | 93 °C |
| Cold Drip | Pour-over | 700–900 | 1:10 | 20 °C |
| Percolator | Immersion | 900–1200 | 1:15 | 96 °C |
| Cuccumella | Pour-over | 500–700 | 1:11 | 100 °C |
| Kaapi Filter | Pour-over | 450–650 | 1:5 | 92 °C |
| Jebena | Boiled | 500–700 | 1:10 | 100 °C |
| Chorreador | Pour-over | 450–650 | 1:16 | 94 °C |
| Dallah | Boiled | 200–400 | 1:20 | 95 °C |
| Cafe de Olla | Boiled | 800–1000 | 1:20 | 95 °C |
| Prestina | Immersion | 500–700 | 1:16 | 90 °C |
| Vietnamese Phin | Pour-over | 800–1000 | 1:6 | 95 °C |
* Ratio is dose to liquid out, not dose to water in. See below.
Contact time decides the grind
Extraction is a race between water and surface area. Grinding finer makes more surface, so the same water pulls more out of the bed in the same time — which means a method with very little time has to grind fine, and a method with hours to spare must not.
Espresso has around twenty-five seconds and compensates with pressure and a bed of dust. Cold brew has most of a day and no heat at all, so it takes the coarsest grind on the table; grind it fine and the long steep over-extracts into something muddy and bitter rather than something strong. Everything else sits between those two poles roughly in order of how long the water lingers.
The corollary is the useful part: if a brew tastes thin, the honest first move is usually a finer grind rather than more coffee, and if it tastes harsh, coarser before cooler. Grind is the variable with the most leverage because it is the one changing surface area.
Four families, and what actually separates them
4 families cover the set, and the split is about how the water is made to move through the bed rather than about the equipment:
- Pressure (2) — Espresso and Moka Pot.
- Pour-over (8) — Pour Over (V60), Chemex, Drip / Batch, Cold Drip, Cuccumella, Kaapi Filter, Chorreador, and Vietnamese Phin.
- Immersion (6) — AeroPress, French Press, Cold Brew, Siphon, Percolator, and Prestina.
- Boiled (4) — Turkish, Jebena, Dallah, and Cafe de Olla.
Immersion methods hold the grounds in the water for a fixed time and then separate them, so the brew is even and forgiving and the grind can be coarse. Pour-over passes fresh water through continuously, which extracts harder for the same grind and punishes an uneven bed. Pressure methods substitute force for time. Boiled methods keep the grounds in the cup or the pot to the end, which is why they either grind to powder that stays suspended or accept a sediment layer as part of the drink.
The ratios are not one scale
Ratios in the table run from about 1:2 to 1:20, and that range is wider than it really is, because the numbers are not all measuring the same thing.
An espresso ratio is dose to liquid in the cup. Every other ratio here is dose to water poured in, and some of that water never comes back — a paper filter and a wet bed keep a surprising amount. Comparing an espresso's 1:2 to a pour-over's 1:16 as if they were the same measurement makes espresso look concentrated by a factor it does not really have.
The second wrinkle is the concentrates. A method that is meant to be diluted before drinking has no business being compared, as brewed, to one you drink as it comes. Its ratio describes what goes in the jug, not what ends up in the cup.
What the table flattens
A window is not a setting. Every range here is where the method usually works, not a target, and the useful half of the range depends on your beans, your water and how the grinder in front of you actually behaves. Two grinders set to the same nominal number will not produce the same bed.
Temperature is thinner than it looks too. One column cannot express a brew that begins cold and climbs to near boiling, and the table simply says so rather than inventing a figure to fill the cell. The same is true of any method where the water cools materially during the brew, which is most of them.
And the table says nothing about what a method tastes like. It describes the mechanics that put the coffee in the cup; whether you want the clarity of a paper filter or the body of a metal one is a question about you. Each method's own page is where that argument belongs.