13 Oct 2026
Here is a complaint we hear often. Someone buys a kilo of beans that tasted excellent at their local cafe, takes it home, and the cup is bitter, or thin, or sour. Same bag, same roast date, completely different coffee.
It is almost never the beans. Two things change the cup more than anything else: how finely the coffee is ground, and how long the water is allowed to sit against it. Get those two in balance and most coffee tastes the way it was meant to.
Why grind size matters so much
Water pulls flavour out of coffee, and it works from the outside in. Grinding breaks the bean into thousands of pieces, which massively increases the surface the water can reach. The finer the grind, the more surface, the faster the extraction.
That gives you a simple trade. Fast methods need a fine grind, because the water only has seconds to work. Slow methods need a coarse grind, or the water will keep pulling long after it has taken the good part and start on the bitter compounds behind it.
Fine, for espresso
Ground almost as fine as table salt. An espresso machine forces water through the bed at around nine bars of pressure in twenty five to thirty seconds, so the coffee has to be fine enough to hold that pressure back and still give everything up in that short window.
Too coarse and the water races through, giving you a pale, sour, watery shot. Too fine and it chokes, dripping out thick and bitter.
Medium, for paper filter
About the texture of sand. In a V60, Chemex or batch brewer, gravity does the work instead of pressure, so the water needs two to three minutes to draw the flavour out on its way through.
This is the grind most people get wrong at home, usually by going too fine because the coffee tastes weak. Weak coffee is usually an underdose, not an undergrind. Add coffee before you touch the grinder.
Coarse, for plunger and cold brew
Like coarse sea salt. In a plunger the grounds sit in the water for four minutes, and in cold brew for twelve hours or more. There is nothing to rush, so the grind stays big and the extraction stays slow and even.
Grind a plunger too fine and two things go wrong at once: the coffee over-extracts and turns harsh, and the fine particles slip past the mesh so the last mouthful is silt.
How to fix a cup by taste
You do not need a refractometer. The two faults have opposite flavours, and once you can name them you can correct them in one go.
- Sour, thin, finishes too quickly. Under-extracted. Grind finer, or slow the brew down.
- Bitter, dry, lingers unpleasantly. Over-extracted. Grind coarser, or shorten the brew.
Change one thing at a time, and change it properly rather than by a hair. Small adjustments are hard to taste.
What to ask for when you order
Every Di Lorenzo coffee can be ground to order. On the product page, pick the grind that matches your equipment rather than the one that sounds familiar.
- Espresso machine at home or in a cafe: fine
- Hario V60, Chemex, pour over: medium
- Plunger, French press, cold brew: coarse
- Stovetop Moka pot: fine to medium, closer to fine
If you own more than one brewer, buy whole beans and grind as you go. A burr grinder is the single piece of equipment that changes a home setup most, more than the machine.
One last thing: ground coffee goes stale faster
A whole bean protects its own insides. Once ground, that protection is gone and the aromatics start leaving within minutes. Ground coffee is perfectly good for a week or two if it is stored properly, which means airtight, dark, at room temperature, and never in the fridge.
An Airscape container pushes the air out as you close it, which is the only part of storage most people skip. Whole beans in an Airscape will hold their character for weeks.
Start with a blend that is forgiving across methods. The Premium Quality Blend is the one our wholesale cafes run, and it takes a wide range of grinds without falling apart.
