Gird your wallets gentlemen, the time has come for us to talk about grinders.
No single investment in your coffee ritual (outside of the purchase of fresh roasted, ethically-sourced coffees) will have greater impact than the quality of your grinder. Those $9 “coffee mill” whirly-blade grinders just chop your coffee into a dusty mess, cursing you with a bitter brew and forever keeping you in coffee purgatory.
What you want , what you need, what you must have to enter the gates of coffee heaven is a burr grinder. A proper burr grinder works the coffee between two metal burrs whose adjustable gap determines the final particle size which is relatively uniform. Whether you’re making drip coffee, cowboy coffee, or espresso coffee, a burr grinder is an essential upgrade that will elevate your brew quality by an order of magnitude.
The sad fact is that (not unlike the vast number of underpowered drip machines) the landscape for consumer grinders is a wasteland. The big companies that normally supply us with the cheap toasters and kitchen appliances that lard our landfills have failed to produce much worth noting in the category of good coffee grinding. I’ll recommend a few across the price spectrum after the jump.
The perfect home grinder has yet to be built but the ones listed below can give you good game. I’ll cover a few more high end grinders when we dig into espresso (where the rules shift and these grinders can fall short).
One bit of good advice with all these grinders is to not leave any coffee in the hopper. Measure out only the amount of beans you need for brewing and grind them through. Your remaining coffee will stay fresher in its airtight package and you wont risk having old coffee gumming up your works.
The cheap-o
I’m hesitant to recommend anything in this category except for the fact that its still a noticeable upgrade from the whirly blade. You’re on your own digging up links, but DeLonghi, Black and Decker, Krups and Cuisinart all produce flat burr grinders in the sub $50 range. They will undoubtedly break your heart in time, but having a fling with the $20 burr grinder you find on sale at Amazon might well be a suitable gateway drug to moving up to more serious gear.
The sub-$100
My barista friend and frequent co-conspirator Kyle has had one of these Capresso Infinity
The tank
Heavy and attractive, the Kitchenaid Pro Line
The contender
The Baratza Virtuoso
The old school
The Zassenhaus hand crank mills are awesome, giving you a workout as you prepare your fix. The perfect holiday gift for your luddite friends who still demand good coffee. They can be had for well under $100 when you can find them (Zass pimp Tom at SweetMarias.com has the definitive catalog but is terminally out of stock). Be sure to avoid the ones that are purely decorative.
The roughing it
Survival in the wilderness just got easier. With the compact, durable, lightweight GSI JavaGrind hand crank grinder, fresh roasted beans, and your 7″ Rambo knife you’ve got all you need flee to the woods and leave this wretched society to its ugly fate. Fit a cup or a GSI presspot onto the bottom and give your banana buffing arm a new workout. At $20 it’s the best grinder value on the planet.
You know, these are great articles, I really like coffee, though I don’t really know anything about it.
Despite the fact that I live across the street from the Monadnock Intelligentsia and I do frequent it, I still like to make home brewed coffee.
Though here is my problem. I buy the good stuff, fresh beans over at Intelligentsia and have them grind it for a drip coffee maker (though I do have a Bodum press that I like). The problem is that there are two different levels of coffee at home. There is the times that I do have fresh ground coffee form Intelligentsia and I pop it in the coffee machine (the Jasper Morrison one from dwr.com that is arguably more for looks than coffee). This is as good as it gets. But the giant step to having professional quality grinders, professional espresso machines, perfectly tuned french presses, the right beans ground the right way. It all seems a bit, je ne sais, difficult for morning coffee.
The question that follows this is…is my coffee made from fresh or week old beans in a standard coffee machine THAT much worse than having a professional Barista do it. Obviously when I want my double shot of espresso (my favorite, a habit I picked up living in europe) or a latte, I have to go out and get it, but what about my morning coffee, or afternoon coffee, or too lazy to go it coffee.
That being said, why is Starbucks taste so bad in comparison to the Intelligentsia and Lavazza (which I like, I don’t know if it is really that “good”)
I love coffee and learning more about it. I agree that burr grinders are way better, but the whirly blades get used because they’re easily accessible and easy to understand. “What, get this one? What’s the difference? A dolla? I’ll take it!”
For Lou, Starbucks coffee tastes so bad because they do not use fresh beans. They order in bulk, roast in bulk, and stock up. If you get freshly roasted beans from Intelligentsia, your beans are pretty good for at least a week and acceptable for about 4-6 days after that. If you were to keep your beans for a couple weeks more, you would tell the difference. Coffee, not espressos, taste better from a coffee shop because they have that much more control over the water quality/purity, temperature and exact grinds weight than we at home do. But is there that much of a difference? Not in the sleepy morning, lazy afternoons, if you know what you’re doing.
For the sake of morning coffee, getting a better grinder, a burr grinder, makes a difference. And it requires much less work on your part to not over-grind the beans. I am one of those poor saps that has a whirly grinder because I’m too poor to pay for the grinder I want, but I have to have SOMETHING because I can’t drink the swill that passes for coffee from Folgers or pre-ground year old coffee from my local grocery store. I can’t use their in store grinder because I don’t want my breakfast blend to taste like mocha nut and the difference between fresh coffee and the aforementioned coffee is worth even the whirly blade.
Lou,
There is a bit of up front hard work in optimizing your home coffee situation - calibrating your grind and building the small habits that give you consistency. I think honestly after one good trial and error session with a new grinder and pour over chemex or french press you’d have a routine by the third morning. By week two you’d be brewig coffee in your sleep.
The fact that you’re buying beans from Intelli (where I’m proud to work) means you’re deeply ahead of the game already, starting with the right ingredients. I’d take a month old bag of pre-ground Intelli beans over anything I’d ever find in a grocery store bulk bin.
I’m going to try not to rag on Sbux but the three main reasons your Intelli stuff is better is 1) its just a few days out of the roaster, 2) its roasted in small batches under the watchful gaze of experienced roasters on vintage equipment, and 3) Intelli is one of a very small group of companies willing to pay farmers high prices for green coffee and they bring in some of the best in the world (a big reason why I’ve signed on to work for them).
That’s it. I’m convinced that I should not only use my whirly blade for and only for chopping herbs, but that I should also immediately switch to drinking tea like some kind of poncey Brit fop. My coffee obviously sucks the rocks, and I’m shamed, shamed beyond the ability to brew anything but watery and bitter sludge. I’ve gotten to the point where I drink it cold and a day old, thinking, “well, at least it works”.
Of course, I also put vanilla soy milk and this stuff called Tasty Trim in it, so it never had a chance to begin with.
The “Espresso is Essential” crowd out there would argue that nothing less than a Mazzer Mini will do. Most of us aren’t going to wander out and drop $400 on a coffee maker let alone the grinder. Personally, I’d like to second your barista’s choice of the Capresso Infinity. Nice machine; about the right price.
While it is true that I own a Capresso and use it in my home, I often put off my early morning coffee cravings ’til I hit Intelli Secret HQ so I can brew my first cup using the Virtuoso. It is a much better machine, and so long as it remains in working order I will always defer to it in the kitchen.
If only I had the extra 200 bones, I would throw down for it in a heartbeat…
Throw away your whirlybird grinders or use them for spices. Too inconsistent, you end up with “boulders” and “dust”. Provides a very inconsistent brew, sometimes under strength and sometimes over strength even with the same amount of beans and same amount of grind time.
Bodum also makes a very good grinder that is right around $100. They have a range of similar looking models that are all $60-$100. The differences are very minor; can’t tell if the guts are different, but the controls vary slightly. I went with the $100 one after seeing it in use at a friend’s for a few months. Well worth it. Not quiet, though! The Bodum store in the Meatpacking district has them all.
I can also recommend the Krupps burr style grinders - they have controls on both the fineness of the grind and the amount of beans ground on a per cup basis.
I also suggest that you go as fine as your filter will allow without making the coffee muddy and tune the amount of coffee in the filter to your brewer. If you have dry grounds in the filter after a brew - you are using too much!
Tonx, did you ever try adjusting the burr settings in the Kitchenaid for a proper espresso grind?
Kyle, Add $200 and why not just buy the Mazzer Mini? The Capresso is reasonably priced and works well as long as you aren’t completely mechanically challenged (yes, the plastic pieces need to be treated like cheap plastic pieces) and don’t feel the need to handle the appliance like Godzilla; its conical burr grinder yields a nice even regular grind for about $150. That’s 15 lbs of good coffee or so; a reasonable luxury for anyone that’s willing to give up “the Sleazy Mermaid” for something better.
Is that GSI JavaGrind for realz? It looks like the obvious choice! It doesn’t take up much space and using it’ll make me look like some sort of coffee bad-ass. Any reviews?
Jonathan -
The Javagrind is the real deal. Adjustable ceramic burrs, folds up reasonably compact, weighs very little. I bought one as an impulse purchase at REI and it was just kind of a novelty in my kitchen - but at Burning Man this year I used it every day, getting a pretty good work out grinding enough beans to do coffee for all my campmates. It got easier after the first couple days.
Wow, Tonx reads this blog too!
I can’t wait to get my hands on a good burr grinder. I have some suggestions on my Christmas list for my family.
Thanks for listing the info in such a nice fashion for everyone!
No need to spring for the Mazzer for normal coffee needs. The Mazzer is ideal for espresso and it excels at producing a very consistent espresso grind but is major over kill for regular grind coffee. A good quality burr grinder can be had for $100-150… don’t waste your money unless you also have a quality espresso machine, but then again, if you do you probably already own (or want) a Mazzer.
Want to learn more than you thought you ever needed to know about coffee, go to CoffeeGeek.
http://www.coffeegeek.com
Carlos - we haven’t tried pulling shots off the KitchenAid but its been pretty clear this last week just examining the grounds and from watching the brewing on a Chemex that the KA is putting out more fines than a similar grind on the Virtuoso. The difference in burr quality is really dramatic. I think if you wanted a dual purposes brewed/espresso grinder in the under $200 class you can’t do much better than the Virtuoso, in spite of its ergonomic shortcomings.
I have the DeLonghi mentioned above in the “cheapy” category and I have to admit that I really do like it quite a bit, especially for what I paid (~$60). Of course it does have it’s drawbacks, but I’ve been using it for almost 2 years now and getting good ground coffee out of it. I use it for a drip machine, so nothing too demanding. I’ll agree that it’s a great “gateway” gadget especially considering the reasonable entry fee. :)
Covert7 - I had a delonghi that I paid $29 for that served me really well for a year. I’m just a little timid about recommending them (or any in that price range) too strongly as friends seem to have had mixed results. I think if you’re gentle enough with them they’re a really good value. Its very frustrating to coffee evangelists that there isn’t a knockout performer yet in that lower price range.
I hear ya man. I’m waiting on the thing to break at some point so I can justify spending a touch more and getting something a bit beefier. But honestly it does a fine job for me making one or two cups daily and the occasional time (like this past weekend) where I’ve got to make more for parties or groups.
I bought that KitchenAid grinder a few months ago and was struck with buyer’s remorse pretty soon afterwards. I keep telling myself that I am going to call them up and see if something can’t be done to sharpen up those burrs but I never seem to have the time…I’ve found that if I actually tighten the grind I get less fines, funny huh? My theory is that it wobbles less…Anyhow, it’s a big disappointment to me because I see so much potential with the overall design of the thing, especially the straight path through the grinder aspect. You can have a different coffee each time with negligible “cross contamination” (which was a major reason I bought it in the first place).
Humberto - that sucks to hear. I’ve bought three of these in the last year (long story) and I still find the first one I bought produced the cleanest grind. I keep wondering if there are any third party commercial burrs that can be adapted to this grinder. I’m sending email today to a burr expert I know to get his thoughts.
What grinder is the opening picture from?
that is an 83mm conical burr from the 3-phase 220v Mazzer Robur - the monster truck of espresso grinders.
i wandered and wondered in the wilderness until if found the javagrind. the electric machines were soulless, the many hand crank mills i tried were either soley decorative or impossible to grind to espresso needs. (i still think there must be a good one out there, but i haven’t found it. i want the grinding mechanism of the javagrind in a more conventional hand crank package.)
the javagrind is the perfect mate for my piston espresso machine. it has an excellent grinding set, spring loaded and made of ceramic not metal. it is possible, with this, to grind way too fine.
it is a bit excentric. without a catcher it requires a bit of dexterity to hold it and grind at the same time. its hopper could be steeper, it requires a shake to get the last few beans to the burr. the handle lifts off as part of its storage option, but if you grasp the handle to lift, you get the handle sans grinder.
Hey Tonx, did you hear back from the burr expert?
hand crank mills are the best but you have to find some good quality mills that dont screw up your coffee beans.