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Back to the daily grind, coffee grinding that is.  The number of people who understand the variations in coffee grinding is surprisingly low.  So here’s a crash course on the basics of coffee grinding and why the consistency of the grind is so important. 

For starters, your “perfect cup” of coffee highly relies on how your coffee is brewed and correspondingly, your brewing method is interrelated to the fineness or coarseness of your coffee grind.  Brewing methods include your average “Mr. Coffee” auto drips, French presses and espresso machines among many.  The general grinding consistencies are coarse, medium and fine, although there are mid-level grinds, such as medium-fine and super-fine, etc.  Different brewing machines expose the ground coffee beans to heated water for varying amounts of time and you must therefore “match up” the brewing technique with the coarseness of your grind.  For example, a French press requires a coarse grind secondary to sediment and design, whereas the usual auto drip coffee machines work best with a medium to fine grind.  The more the coffee bean is ground (i.e., fineness) the more surface area is exposed to the hot water.  Keep this in mind, as this is just one of the elements in coffee grinding that dictates the consistency vs. brewing method relationship. 

The following is a short description of each grind which may help in your coffee grinding endeavors:  A coarse grind is chunky with obvious fragments, kind of like potting soil; a medium grind is similar to rough sand; a fine grind is smoother still and has a texture comparable to salt or sugar; a super-fine grind is very much like powdered sugar or flour with maybe a slight bit of grit still felt; a Turkish grind, one step past super-fine, is as near to a flour consistency as you can get. 

Coffee grinding methods include the usual blade grinding and burr grinding machines which you can purchase through multiple outlets.  If you want to try coffee grinding without these machines, you can try chopping, pounding and even roller grinding.  Some suggestions that have been thrown out there about how to “do-it-yourself” include crushing the coffee beans with a hammer, using a rolling pin and even mortar and pestle.  A simple blender goes a long way in coffee grinding as well, although you will not be able to achieve a fine or super-fine grind with most blenders. 

Given a little bit of time and experience (or should I say “experiments”) your coffee grinding knowledge will translate well into your coffee cup.  With the unending “do-it-yourself” tactics and/or coffee grinding machines, we’ll leave it up to you to decide exactly how you want to grind your coffee bean.  Here’s to each cup getting better and better!

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Many people believe that the brewing process affects the outcome of caffeine content in your coffee. For instance the longer you brew a pot of coffee, the higher the caffeine content in a regular cup. That’s why many people like to let coffee sit and percolate, they believe it increases the caffeine and makes the coffee ‘stronger’. That is where the old saying ‘coffee you can stand a spoon up in’ comes from… longer brewing= more caffeine, but practically sludge-like coffee!
And that is why many people mistakenly think espresso has less caffeine than a regular cup of coffee, because brewing time is much shorter.
In actuality, a serving of espresso is pretty much the equivalent to a strong cup of coffee caffeine wise. But because servings of espresso are very small in comparison to regular coffee, the actual caffeine content per milliliter is actually much higher.
Caffeine is assimilate more quickly when it’s in a concentrated form. Espresso is like concentrated caffeine! If you want actual numbers, there can be anywhere from 77mg up to 185mg in a double shot of espresso. In a cup of coffee, there is roughly 135-150mg of caffeine, depending on the type of bean and your brewing methods.
Many people are confused by the whole espresso and caffeine situation because of the myth regarding the darker roasted coffee beans that are used in making espresso. The idea is that those beans have less caffeine than regularly roasted coffee beans because of the roasting process, but there are no scientific studies so far that support that idea.
One thing that DOES affect the caffeine content of your espresso habit is the type of coffee beans you are using to make it. Robusta coffee beans have double the caffeine content of Arabica coffee beans, so when you brew your Joe with mostly Robusta coffee beans, your caffeine content will be MUCH higher, regardless of whether you’re making coffee or espresso. The bottom line? Espresso can be slightly higher in caffeine content if you do a double shot, but otherwise, it runs pretty neck in neck with a regular cup of coffee.