Why Can't Fine Powder Be Used in Pour-Over Coffee? Why Should Fine Powder Be Sifted When Making Pour-Over Coffee?

The Impact of Fine Coffee Grounds on Pour-Over Brewing

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When coffee grounds are finer, the substances within the coffee powder are more easily extracted. Besides good flavors, the bitterness of caffeine and astringent tastes will also be released. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee suggests that you try to avoid using too fine grounds for pour-over coffee.

When chatting with friends about fine grounds, many of my friends really turn pale at the mention of them. As soon as they hear about fine grounds, they think of over-extraction. However, there are also those who have a special fondness for fine grounds, such as Matt Perger's fine grounds stirring method. What exactly are fine grounds?

Types of Coffee Grind Sizes

We generally divide coffee grind sizes into the following categories:

1. Extra Fine Grind. This is generally as fine as powdered sugar, mostly used for making espresso or Turkish coffee.

2. Fine, Medium-Fine, and Medium-Coarse Grind. Using white sugar as a benchmark, this range has quite wide applications! Pour-over, Aeropress, siphon, etc., will have different grind sizes according to different roasting levels and brewing methods.

3. Coarse Grind. Like coarse sugar, mostly used for French press extraction.

Fine Grounds

Some people define fine grounds as particles smaller than a certain size (for example, 50 micrometers). Recently, others believe that fine grounds represent a specific region of the particle distribution curve, but in reality, fine grounds have irregular shapes and rarely present regular spherical forms.

The Impact of Fine Grounds on Pour-Over Coffee

Remember we talked about extraction in our previous public account article? One of the factors affecting extraction is grind size. The finer the grind, the more easily coffee grounds accumulate on the filter paper, creating greater extraction resistance, resulting in slower flow rate and longer extraction time. The extraction rate of substances contained in coffee is higher, and the brewed coffee is more intense; the coarser the grind, the larger the gaps in the grounds layer, with less coffee grounds in contact with hot water, weaker extraction resistance, faster coffee dripping speed, lower extraction rate, so the coffee flavor is also lighter.

The fear of fine grounds largely stems from excessive fine grounds blocking the drainage holes, causing coffee liquid to be unable to flow through, thus leading to excessive extraction of substances from the coffee grounds, making the coffee taste noticeably bitter, with miscellaneous flavors and astringency. But do we really need to treat fine grounds like ferocious beasts?

Taking [Panama Elida] as an example, I separately brewed pots with sifted grounds and unsifted grounds to compare the differences!

① Rich acidity on entry, with citrus and green citrus notes, slightly nutty in the middle section, sweetness of preserved fruit and caramel, tea-like finish, overall feeling balanced and gentle.

② Rich fermentation aroma, citrus flavor on entry, sweet and sour vibration, obvious juice-like feeling, roasted almonds in the middle section, caramel sweetness, slightly grapefruit peel in the finish, no tea-like feeling, slightly higher balance than ①, rich and varied flavor layers.

In my opinion, fine grounds are not as scary as ferocious beasts! Although due to the presence of fine grounds, water has excessive surface contact with coffee grounds, and fine grounds will优先 extract too many unnecessary impurities, even bringing out bitterness. Of course, evenly ground coffee powder is very important, after all, only with uniform grinding can extraction be uniform. However, this does not mean that fine grounds are undesirable. After all, appropriate fine grounds can bring more layers of flavor to a cup of coffee. Of course, if too many fine grounds have seriously affected your brewing, I suggest changing your grinder, after all, a good grinder is very important~

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473