Dial in your grind: a visual guide

Every brewing problem you can taste — sour, bitter, hollow, harsh — is easier to fix once you stop treating grind size as a set-and- forget dial. Coffee changes as it ages, water changes with the kettle, and every new bag lands somewhere slightly different. The grinder is how you steer.

Start from a known recipe

Fix every variable except the grind. Same dose, same water, same pour pattern. For a flat-bottom dripper we start at a 1:16 ratio — 20 g of coffee, 320 g of water just off the boil — and a total brew time near 2:50.

Taste, then move one step

Brew, sip, and put the result in one of three buckets:

• Sour, thin, salty — under-extracted. Grind one step finer.
• Bitter, drying, hollow finish — over-extracted. Grind one step coarser.
• Sweet with a clear finish — you are done. Write the setting on the bag.

Move one variable, one step, one brew at a time. Two changes at once tell you nothing.

Reference settings

Numbers differ between grinders, but the spacing between brew methods is remarkably consistent:

Typical grind spacing by brew method

Method	Grind	Feels like
French press	Coarse	Sea salt
Flat-bottom dripper	Medium	Table sugar
Cone dripper	Medium-fine	Fine sand
Espresso	Fine	Powdered, holds a clump

When the coffee changes, re-dial

A fresh bag needs a few days of rest and then usually one step finer than the roast it replaced. Our light roasts, like Bloom Signal, extract slower — start them half a step finer than a medium roast and work from there.