9 Best Coarse Ground Coffee Brands in 2022

Most coffee grounds are not made for French press or cold brew coffee. The medium-ground and fine-ground coffees in your grocery store are designed for drip coffee and espresso. If you try to use them to make French press coffee, the result will be bitter and filled with grounds that escaped through the filter.

So where do you find the best coarse ground coffee brands? Right here in this article, of course! Prepare to discover some amazing single-origin coffees, blends, and even flavored coffees that are perfect for French press, cold brew, and percolated coffee. Enjoy!

Quick Take: Best Coarse Ground Coffee Brands

Why Does Grind Size Matter?

If your coffee is too acidic, bitter, or sour, it usually means that you are over-extracting or under-extracting your beans. Grind size is one of the best ways to control how coffee is extracted (along with brew time, water temperature, and coffee-to-water ratio).

Finer coffee grounds have more exposed surface area, so the hot water can more quickly extract that coffee goodness from them. A coarser grind requires a longer extraction time.

Coarse grinds aren’t better or worse in general. The right grind size depends on your coffee brewing method. You can tweak your grind size if you grind your own coffee beans (more on that later). If you buy pre-ground coffee, just stick to the size recommended for your brewing method.

If your grounds are too coarse, you’ll under-extract, which leads to bitter coffee. If your grounds are too fine, you’ll over-extract, and your coffee will be sour or acidic. In the middle of those extremes, you get sweet, complex coffee that has just the right balance of sugars, acids, and oils.

What is Coarse Ground Coffee Used for?

Coarse ground coffee is used for three major types of coffee makers: percolators, French presses, and cold brew coffee makers. Other coffee brewing methods, like drip coffee brewers and espresso machines, require a finer grind.

Coarsely ground coffee is, well, coarser than the grounds used in those other methods. The particles in coarse grounds should be the texture of coarse salt.

You’ll sometimes also find extra coarse coffee grounds, especially if you buy coffee that is labeled as cold brew ground. These extra coarse grounds are closer to the size of ground peppercorns. You can use them for cold brew, but they aren’t as good for French press or percolator coffee.

Best Coarse Ground Coffee Brands

Best coarse ground coffee brand: Stone Street Coffee Cold Brew Coffee

Most coffee brands only sell ground coffee that is medium-ground for drip coffee or fine-ground for espresso. Stone Street is a rare exception, with several coarse-ground coffees to choose from. They sell their grounds as coffee for cold brew, but they work equally well with a French press or percolator.

Their single-origin, ethically sourced Colombian Supremo is particularly great for cold brew. Their specially selected beans and dark-roasting process ensure a bold, flavorful coffee that overcomes some of the flavor muting that happens with cold brew. Importantly, it’s small-batch roasted to ensure that you get the grounds at the peak of freshness.

Stone Street’s other offerings include a single-origin peaberry coffee from Tanzania and a delicious Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. If you prefer flavored coffees, they have several options including raspberry chocolate, blueberry cobbler, and cinnamon swirl.

Best French press coffee grounds: Primos Coffee Co. French press specialty coffee

Primos’ coffee is as smooth and subtle as Stone Street’s is bold. It’s a low-acid coffee with a medium body. The flavor is sweet with gentle notes of citrus. French press brewing creates rich, heavy coffee, so the subtlety of Primos is a perfect counter-balancing force.

Every step from farm to cup is important to Primos. Their family-owned coffee farm in Nicaragua sustainably produces shade-grown, premium Arabica beans in micro-lots. The beans are strictly high grown, hand-harvested, naturally dried, and small-batch roasted.

That’s a lot of care and specification going into perfecting these medium-roasted beans. Every step of that process helps to make Primos one of the best coffees for French press.

Best flavored coffee grounds: Inspired Coffee Co. Snickerdoodle Flavored coffee

It’s hard to find flavored coffees that are actually good. Most brands flavor their lower-quality beans, so you end up with terrible coffee poorly disguised by hints of vanilla or hazelnut. 

Inspired Coffee uses single-origin, 100% Arabica Colombian Supremo beans. Their beans are small-batch roasted for freshness, and their resealable bags help you keep your coffee fresh even after you open the bag. In short, they do everything they can to bring you quality flavored coffees.

Their snickerdoodle is my top recommendation because of its vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar taste. They also offer French vanilla, caramel, mocha, salted caramel, hazelnut, and southern pecan. If you want to try them all, you could just pick up their sampler pack. 

Best organic coarse ground coffee: Bizzy Organic Cold Brew Coffee

There are a few organic coarse ground coffees, but none are quite as delicious and sustainable as Bizzy. They ethically source their 100% USDA organic coffee from Nicaragua, Peru, and Guatemala coffee beans. After medium-roasting, the resulting blend is sweet and incredibly smooth, with notes of hazelnut and caramel.

Bizzy is all about cold brew coffee, but you can definitely use their beans for French press or percolator coffee instead. If smooth and sweet isn’t your style, their other blends range from light and bright to dark and bold. It shouldn’t be too hard to find one you’ll love.

Wandering Bear Extra Strong Organic Coffee

 Wandering Bean’s extra strong cold brew coffee is USDA organic and small-batch roasted. They use a combination of Arabica and Robusta beans, which introduces extra flavor and makes this a slightly higher caffeine coffee than the 100% Arabica options we’ve discussed thus far.

The dark roast brings out a chocolatey flavor and a full body that really shines for cold brew. This one might be a bit much for French press, though. If you really like rich flavors and heavy bodies, give it a go. Otherwise, I’d go for something more balanced instead. 

Stone Cold Jo Cold Brew Coarse Ground Organic Coffee

Stone Cold Jo offers USDA organic, Fair Trade certified grounds that are low in acidity and very smooth. They directly source their specialty-grade Arabica beans and use an artisanal roasting process to maintain their high-quality standards. 

Their coffee is dark-roasted for a smooth flavor with hints of chocolate, grape, caramel, and toffee. 

Cold Brew Lab Organic Dark Roast Colombian Supremo Coffee

Warning: This one is an extra coarse grind. It should only be used for cold brew, not French press coffee.

Singular devotion is the only way to become the best at what you do. Cold Brew Lab only makes cold brew coffee, and they make it incredibly well. To start with, they use an extra coarse grind that just isn’t suitable for any other brewing method but is perfect for cold brew.

Their beans are USDA organic-certified, 100% specialty grade Arabica. They use only Colombian Supremo, the most beloved premium Colombian coffee beans.

From there, things get really cool.

Cold Brew Lab uses a combination of medium-roasted and dark-roasted coffee beans. Yes, you read that right: they apparently couldn’t land on just one roast level. Some would call that indecisive, but they clearly knew what they were doing. The unique mixture is both smooth and bold, and it’s very flavorful.

If you are looking for something with even more flavor, you could try their mocha, coconut, hazelnut, pumpkin spice, or Tahitian vanilla flavored coffees. 

The Chosen Bean Specialty Coffee

 The Chosen Bean is a blend of some of my favorite coffee origins. They use Guatemalan and Mexican coffee beans, two countries known for their premium, organic coffees. They also include Ethiopian coffee beans, known for their bright, complex flavors. Last but certainly not least, they include Sumatran coffee beans, the secret ingredient that give Starbucks espresso its earthy tones. 

Like Cold Brew Labs, The Chosen Bean uses a mixture of roasts. This time, it’s medium-light roasted beans mixed with medium-dark roasted beans.

Between the mixture of beans and roasting methods, what you get is a sweet, earthy coffee that has nutty, chocolatey notes and hints of orange, spice, cocoa, sugar, and berries. That complex profile is absolutely delicious for cold brew, French press, or percolator coffee.

Gevalia Special Reserve Costa Rica single origin coffee

Costa Rican coffee beans are some of my absolute favorites, but it is so hard to find coarse-ground Costa Rican coffee. Gevalia delivered, though, with this delicious single-origin coffee. As with all Costa Rican coffees, it’s 100% Arabica, so you get that sweet, delicate flavor without the bitterness that Robusta brings.

Gevalia’s Costa Rican grounds are medium-dark roasted, and they have fruit and citrus tones and a medium body. The company also has single-origin, coarse-ground coffees from Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, and Kenya if you are looking for something a little different.

Grinding Your Own Coarse Coffee Grounds

Pre-ground coffee is convenient, but it doesn’t stay fresh. The peak freshness period for coarsely ground coffee is longer than for medium or finely ground coffee, but you should still be using it the day you open the package to get the maximum flavor from your beans.

Properly stored whole bean coffee, on the other hand, can stay at peak freshness for a few weeks. That gives you much more time to enjoy the sweeter, more complex notes before staleness makes the beans bitter or flavorless. 

Another advantage of grinding your own coffee beans is that you can choose the grind size. A good burr grinder will usually give you dozens of settings to choose from, so you can really level up your home barista game. 

Choosing a grinder

Any of the best French press coffee grinders will offer all the features and settings you need for grinding coarse ground coffee. I’d recommend starting with something like the Oxo burr grinder since it is an easy-to-use option that is quite cheap for a mid-range burr grinder. You could also consider a small coffee grinder or a manual grinder if space is a factor.

Just don’t go with a blade grinder, especially for coarse ground coffee. Blade grinders don’t create uniform particle sizes, so you’ll end up with lots of tinier particles in your coarse grind. Those small particles will mess with the coffee extraction, adding extra bitterness to your brew. They’ll also get through French press filters and some cold brew filters, leaving residue in your coffee.

Whatever grinder you buy, remember that you should be grinding the beans immediately before you use them to maintain their freshness. Most countertop grinders let you easily select an amount (usually by grind time), so you should quickly be able to figure out how much you need to grind at a time.

Final Verdict

If you are a fan of cold brew coffee, French press coffee, or percolated coffee, you need to get your hands on some of these amazing coarse grounds. Using the wrong grind size will ruin your cup of coffee. Sadly, most brands only sell drip grinds and espresso grinds, both of which are too fine for cold brewing or French press.

Whether you are enjoying French press espresso or nitro cold brew — or even French press cold brew — these beans are all excellent options for your next brew.