Coffee Grind Size Chart

Nine bars of pressure through a compacted puck in 25–30 seconds needs a fine, slightly clumping grind — table salt heading toward powder. It's the tightest target on the chart, where a click or two swings a shot from sour to bitter. Under 20 seconds, go finer; choking past 35, go coarser.

A moka pot builds only 1–2 bars, so it wants a grind a step coarser than espresso — fine sand, gritty rather than powdery. Fill the basket level and never tamp; a compressed bed stalls the pot or scorches the brew. Pull it off the heat as soon as the flow turns pale.

The V60's open cone drains fast, so grind size is what really controls contact time. Medium-fine — about the texture of granulated sugar — usually lands a brew near 2:30–3:00. Draining in under two minutes and tasting thin? Go finer. Water pooling on top and tasting drying? Go coarser.

Chemex's thick bonded filter traps oils and fines and slows the flow, so the grind goes coarser than V60 — closer to coarse sea salt. Too fine and the paper clogs into a stalled, bitter bed. Aim for roughly 4–5 minutes on a full carafe.

The most forgiving method here, which is why its range is so wide. Fine with a one-minute steep gives something espresso-adjacent; coarser with a longer steep behaves like a clean immersion brew. If the plunger fights back, coarsen a step — pushing harder adds bitterness, not extraction.

Four minutes of full immersion behind a metal mesh means anything small enough to slip through ends up in your cup. Keep it coarse — rough sea salt. Too fine gives you bitterness and silt at once. Press slowly and decant immediately; coffee left on the bed keeps extracting.

Twelve to twenty-four hours of cold water needs the coarsest grind on the chart — chunky, closer to breadcrumbs than sand. Fine grounds over that long turn harsh and muddy, and make filtering miserable. If it tastes thin, steep longer or add coffee before reaching for a finer setting.

A drip machine's flow rate is fixed, so grind is your main lever. Medium suits most baskets: coarse enough not to overflow, fine enough to extract within a 4–6 minute cycle. Flat-bottom baskets want a touch coarser than cones. Weak and fast? Finer. Bitter or overflowing? Coarser.

The finest grind in coffee — flour, not sand. The grounds are never filtered out; they stay suspended in the cezve and settle in the cup, so they have to extract almost instantly. Most burr grinders can't reach this at all, which is why dedicated Turkish mills exist.

Full immersion near boiling, then a vacuum pulls the brew down through the filter. Medium — a touch coarser than V60 — keeps that drawdown moving; too fine and it stalls, holding coffee on the heat until it turns bitter. Cloth filters tolerate finer, metal wants coarser.

Cold DRIP is percolation, not immersion, which is why it grinds finer than a cold brew jar despite both being cold. Medium-coarse: fine enough that a drop a second has something to extract from on its way past, coarse enough that the bed does not compact and stall over six hours. Too fine and the chamber floods; too coarse and the concentrate comes out watery.

The only brewer here that puts the same water through the same grounds repeatedly, which changes what the grind is for: it has to survive five or six passes without giving up everything it has. Coarse — sea salt, or a touch coarser than a French press. Too fine and the third cycle is already over-extracting, and anything small enough to slip through the basket's holes just circulates in the pot.

Gravity is the only force in this brewer — there is no pressure anywhere in it, which is the whole difference between a cuccumella and the moka pot it gets mistaken for. So the grind is set by what 200 ml can find its way through in three to five minutes with nothing pushing it: medium, like table sugar. Finer than a press because the contact is short; coarser than a moka because nothing is going to force it.

The filter's perforated floor does the holding, and its holes are small — but 30 g still has to give up a concentrated decoction through them in ten to fifteen minutes. Medium-fine, about table salt, which is a drip window rather than an espresso one. Too fine and it takes an hour or simply stops; too coarse and what collects is pale and thin, and it will vanish under the milk it is about to meet.

Nothing filters a jebena. The grounds go into boiling water, the pot comes off the heat, and the tall neck is where they drop out of suspension while it stands — so the grind is set by what will SETTLE in three or four minutes, not by what a filter will hold. Medium, the texture of table sugar. Too fine and the fines never fall, and a pour from a height lands them in the cup; too coarse and a single rise never gets enough out of them.

Cloth filters faster than paper at the same grind — the weave has no fines trapped in it — so the chorreador wants the same medium-fine a V60 does rather than something coarser. Gritty between the fingers, never powdery. Too fine and the sock clogs and stalls; too coarse and 240 g runs through in under two minutes and tastes of nothing.

Qahwa is never filtered — it simmers, the grounds settle, and you pour off the top through a sieve. So the grind is fine but not powder: fine enough to give everything up in five minutes of low heat, coarse enough to drop out of suspension while it rests. Too fine and it never settles, and every cup comes out muddy.

A five-minute steep in a clay pot, poured out through a sieve rather than a filter, so the grind has to be coarse enough to strain cleanly. Medium-coarse — rough sea salt. Too fine and the sieve lets fines through into a gritty cup; too coarse and the spiced, sweetened water never picks up enough coffee.

An immersion brew that finishes under pressure, so the grind sits in the middle and stays there. Medium — table sugar — is coarse enough that the metal filter does not choke when you press, and fine enough that one minute of still infusion gets there. Too fine and the press fights back; too coarse and the cup comes out thin.

How to brew great Vietnamese Phin coffee at home — ratio, grind and step-by-step.