Is the Kruve Coffee Sifter Necessary?

The new product under the name “Kruve” is essentially a bunch of sifters you can use to sift your coffee grounds so that you can weed out any too coarse or too fine particles from entering your brew.

Why did this product come about?

If you have your own coffee grinder, you may notice to varying degrees depending on how nice your grinder is, that you won’t have a perfectly uniform batch of grounds. You will sometimes have what the coffee community calls “fines” which are those very tiny dust-like particles that a grinder will spit out even when you have it set on a much coarser setting. The inverse of this is also typical in which you will have a small degree of much coarser grounds come out of your grinder than what you had it set on. While typically most of your grounds will be the size you want them to be, you will indeed have some that aren’t which will contribute to varying characteristics in taste within your final brew.

Another thing you may notice if you grind your own beans and if you have tried to read brewing tutorials is that the tutorials will say things like: “grind your coffee to the size of sea salt” or “the size of sand”. While those can be helpful markers for figuring out a general grind size for you to brew with, those markers are not nearly as precise as you may need to be depending on the coffee that you are working with. Even the slightest change in grind size can make a vast difference in the final brew of a cup of coffee. Also worth noting, these markers can sometime’s be difficult for someone who may live in Europe where the typical size of sea salt is much different from North American sea salt.

To address these problems, the inventors put up a Kickstarter and drilled out some prototypes and eventually settled on a final product to help this situation.

How does it work?

You can order either a 6-pack of sifters, or a 12-pack of sifters from them. Basically, all you do is grab the right size sifters that you need depending on your intended grind size, and then you sift it through 3-sifters. The top sifter will weed out your coarse grounds, the middle sifter will hold all the grounds that are the size for your brew, and the bottom sifter will contain all of the grounds that are too fine to brew.

Does it actually make a difference in the taste of your brew?

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Due to the great variance at which different sized particles extract, when you have a cup of coffee brewed with a mixture of different sized particles, then you will have some grounds that have extracted properly, some that are over-extracted, and then some that are under-extracted. This produces a weird mix in your cup that can be avoided with the Kruve.

Now depending on how nice your grinder is, this could obviously have varying degrees of usefulness. However, even very expensive grinders will still let out some fines here and there which would make this of use to someone who cares enough to have an expensive grinder in the first place.

Maybe you don’t personally believe me…Test it for yourself.

Grab your grinder and grind some coffee very coarse, some coffee medium, and some coffee fine. Now brew a cup with only the medium grounds, and another cup that is the mix of the three. Do you notice a difference? If so, that is what happens every time you brew on a smaller-level…and it can be avoided now!

Where can I get one?

Kruve has a website where they sell this product…however…they are totally sold out right now!

So my recommendation is that you buy each size individually. These are the size sifters that I would recommend to start with:

Tip: If you primarily brew pour-overs, start with the 200-600um range ones. If you primarily brew french press, start with the 600-1000um range ones.

Let me hear from ya: Have you used the Kruve? If so, what has been your experience? If not, do you personally think it sounds necessary? Let me know below!