Pour Over Grind Size — How to Find It and Why It Matters
Getting a brew that's sweet and balanced starts with one thing above everything else: grind size. It’s one of the most fundamental variables in brewing, and yet it’s also one of the most misunderstood. In this post, we’ll break down exactly how pour over grind size works, why it affects more than just strength, and how to systematically dial it in.
What grind size for pour over? (Quick Answer)
For most pour over brewers like the V60, the ideal grind size is medium to medium-coarse, similar to coarse sand. But the exact pour over grind size depends on the coffee, the filter, and your recipe.
- Too coarse → fast brew, sour, thin
- Too fine → slow brew, bitter, dry
- Right grind → balanced, sweet, clean
Why Does Grind Size Matter?
Grind size determines the size of the coffee particles after grinding, which in turn has a direct impact on not just the strength of your brew, but the flavor itself.
The range goes from coarse (larger particles) to fine (smaller particles), and a simple analogy helps make sense of it: imagine two cones sitting side by side: one filled with large stones, the other filled with fine beach sand. If you pour water over both, which one lets water through faster? The stones, of course. The sand takes much longer.
Coffee works exactly the same way. A coarser grind lets water flow through faster. A finer grind slows it down. And that flow rate determines how long the water is in contact with the coffee, which matters a lot.
The Three Flavor Compounds You're Balancing
Ground coffee contains hundreds of different compounds that each contribute to the flavor in your cup, and they don't dissolve at the same rate. To make sense of this, it helps to think in terms of flavor perception rather than strict chemistry, because in reality, most of what we taste in coffee is technically acidic at a molecular level. But from a sensory standpoint, the flavors separate out in a useful way:
Acidity: the bright, sharp, fruity notes, comes through first, needing very little contact time to show up in the cup.
Sweetness takes a bit longer to dissolve and requires slightly more contact time to fully express itself.
Bitterness is last, it needs the longest contact time to emerge.
When brewing pour over coffee, the goal is to balance all three flavor experiences. That balance is achieved through grind size.
When brewing pour over coffee, the goal is to balance all three flavor experiences. Grind too coarse and the water moves through too quickly, you'll only extract those first sharp acidic flavors, with no sweetness or body to support them. That's under-extraction. Grind too fine and the water sits too long with the coffee, bitterness, astringency and dryness take over. That's over-extraction. The right grind size lands you in the middle: a smooth, rounded cup where all three are in balance.
How to Find the Right Pour Over Grind Size: A Practical Method
The only real way to find the right grind is to brew, taste, and analyze. Is it sweet and smooth? Dry and bitter? Sharp and sour? Here's the method we use, it's straightforward and removes most of the guesswork.
Step 1: Find your starting point. Most grinders have recommended grind size ranges for each brew method. Find the recommendation for your grinder and identify the midpoint. On the Kinu M47 Phoenix,the hand grinder of our choice at Nordic Brew Lab, the recommended range for a V60 is 2.0–4.5, which puts the midpoint at around 2.7.
Step 2: Brew two cups side by side. Take that midpoint and brew two brews simultaneously: one slightly finer, one slightly coarser. In this example, that’s 2.5 and 3.0. Use the exact same recipe for both, this is important. We recommend our standard Nordic Brew Lab V60 recipe:
18g coffee / 300g water
0:00 — 60g (total: 60g)
0:30 — 60g (total: 120g)
1:00 — 60g (total: 180g)
1:30 — 120g (total: 300g)
Total brew time: 2:10–2:40 (we're using FAST filters from Sibarist which result in a faster drawdown.)
Step 3: Let them cool, then taste. This step is where people rush — don’t. Coffee reveals a lot more about its balance when it cools down. Tasting side by side makes it significantly easier to spot differences; doing one cup at a time means your palate gets used to the flavors, making it harder to identify what needs to be adjusted.
Step 4: Take notes and adjust. Write down which you preferred and why. In our example, the 3.0 grind was noticeably better, more pleasant mouthfeel, no drying aftertaste. But it had a slightly sharp acidity, which is a sign you're close to the sweet spot but just a touch too coarse. The next move: try 2.8 and see if the sharp acidity resolves while keeping that smooth mouthfeel.
Keep going from there, one small adjustment at a time, and you'll nail it before you know it. Just make sure you keep all variables the same and adjust the grind size only.
Not All Coffees Behave the Same
Here’s something that trips up a lot of home brewers: the correct pour over grind size isn’t fixed for a given recipe, it changes depending on the coffee you're brewing.
Factors like altitude, processing method, and roast level all affect how quickly flavors dissolve in water. The underlying reason comes down to bean density and how it affects fine particles during grinding.
When you grind coffee, the result is never perfectly uniform, you'll have very fine particles (called fines), particles close to your target size, and some larger ones (boulders). The fines are what most significantly control how fast or slow water moves through the bed.
A denser bean produces more fines when ground, which means longer contact time at any given grind setting. A less dense bean produces fewer fines, and drains faster.
A practical example: Brewing a natural processed Brazilian and a washed Ethiopian on the same grind size, you'll almost certainly get a much longer brew time with the Ethiopian, it’s typically much denser and produces more fines. To compensate, washed Ethiopians often need to be ground significantly coarser than you might expect.
So here, the Brazilian coffee would most likely taste balanced, while the Ethiopian coffee would’ve been over-extracted, tasting dry, bitter and astringent.
So don’t be alarmed if you find yourself using what feels like an “extreme” grind setting compared to what you'd normally use. That’s not a problem, that’s part of reading the coffee correctly.
Key Rules to Keep in Mind
There’s no one “correct” grind size for a coffee, only a correct grind size relative to that coffee, that recipe, and that grinder. Change any variable in your brew recipe and the grind will likely need to change too.
Smaller doses (9–15g) need a finer grind compared to larger doses (15–30g).
If your brew is choking, water stalls and stops flowing, it means that your grind is too fine. Go coarser.
Fewer pours = finer grind. More pours = coarser grind. The number of pours in your recipe directly affects how the grind behaves.
Heavily fermented and naturally processed coffees tend to extract faster than washed coffees. If your brew drains quickly but still tastes balanced, trust the cup, don’t change anything just because it seemed to be the “wrong” brew time.
Don’t obsess over brew time. Brew time is a side effect of the right grind size. Focus on grind and taste, the time will follow.
The more coffees you dial in, the faster it goes. You’ll start building an internal reference for what grind range works for your setup, your recipes, and the types of coffees you tend to brew. And once that compass is calibrated, finding the sweet spot becomes a lot less trial and error, and a lot more intuition backed by experience.
Using a grinder with precise, stepless adjustment makes this process significantly more accurate. If you're curious about what we use at Nordic Brew Lab, read our deep dive on the Kinu M47 Phoenix →
If you're struggling with pour-overs at home and would like a simple soultion, that still matches the same quality and techniques as pour-over coffee, the xBloom studio might be for you. The xBloom studio is a pour-over machine, scale and grinder that all work together in one harmonious workflow, and it's up to you to decide how simple or advanced the process should be. Discover more about xBloom Studio here.