WHAT SETTING (ON MY BARATZA GRINDER) SHOULD I USE FOR A SPECIFIC BREWING METHOD?

There is no easy answer for this important question, as so many variables affect the grind, such as:

  • Burr type – conical or flat
  • Brewing method and specific recipe
  • Type of coffee
  • Level of Roast
  • Freshness of the beans
  • Temperature of brewing water
  • Personal preference

We have done extensive testing on our grinders and have come up with some settings that we feel are great starting points, to get you going with your grinder. The key is to get started and then adjust to your own taste.

In addition, you could ask the Roaster of the beans you purchased, or your local Café, to give you a grind sample for the brew method you plan to use, then reproduce this grind sample on your grinder. Fine tune to get the taste you want. If you cannot get this information from the Roaster or Café, then you need to continue to experiment with your style of coffee and the taste.

Coffee professionals have varying viewpoints about the best grind for different brewing methods. They even vary greatly about the best way to brew using a specific brewing apparatus! Check out www.brewmethods.com to see the many different recipes for each brewing method (20 for the AeroPress alone!).

  Encore Virtuoso+ Sette 30 Sette 270/270Wi Forté/Vario Ceramic Forté/Vario Steel
Espresso 8 8 9 9E 2Q N/A
AeroPress 12 12 13 13E 4M 2M
Hario V60 15 15 16 16E 5M 4M
Automatic Brewer 18 18 25 25E 7M 6M
Chemex 20 20 26 26E 9M 7M
French Press 28 28 N/A N/A 10M 9M

(Updated 8/9/17)

DOES THE GRINDER NEED TO BE RUNNING TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS?

Please adjust the grind setting either with the unit completely empty of coffee, or with the machine running. When adjusting to a finer grind setting, the burrs are drawing closer together. If there are beans in the burrs and the unit is off, the beans are resisting the movement of the burrs. We explain more in this blog.

OTHER RESOURCES TO CHECK OUT ON THE TOPIC OF COFFEE GRINDING:

Seattle Coffee Gear does a video on the difference a roast type has on the outcome of a shot, all ground on the same grind setting: Video: SCG – Switching Roasts and Grinds

We wrote a blog with in-depth information about the basics of grinding for common methods.

HOW DO I CLEAN MY GRINDER?

Please check out this excellent and detailed video and blog from our reseller Prima Coffee, using the Virtuoso grinder. As the video and blog can apply to many other grinder types, we’d like you to give some additional information, specific to Baratza grinders: You can read our detailed blog here.

When using cleaning tablets – we recommend setting your conical (Encore, Virtuoso+) grinder around the setting of #20 and setting the flat burr grinders (Vario and Forte) at a setting of #5. That’s just around the middle of your grind range allowing for a solid cleaning as the pellets are ground to powder. At finer settings we have seen clogging occur and possible mechanical damage. Follow your cleaning cycle with 30-40 gram coffee bean to purge any cleaner left in the grinder.