Which Coffee Grinder? Here are the basics…
A coffee grinder is an essential part of any coffee lovers set up. If you want the best tasting coffee you need to make sure that you have a grinder. When you use a grinder you are able to use freshly roasted beans to make your coffee. The fresher your coffee beans are the better your coffee will taste. If you have been using pre-ground coffee beans up until now, you don’t know what you are missing!
Buying a Coffee Grinder
When you start shopping you’ll find that there are many different coffee grinder choices. These include the hand mill, the blade coffee grinders, and the burr coffee grinders. The hand mill is one that requires you to actually grind the coffee beans by hand. This is not something that most people choose to do because there are easier methods of having the beans ground to a usable consistency in a much shorter period of time. If you like the idea of a hand mill you can always purchase one for those times when you have a bit more time and energy and you would like to grind your beans the traditional way.
The blade grinder is another common type of coffee grinder. This is the most commonly used type of grinder, though may not be the best. The design of this type of grinder is effective for grinding but because of the friction of the blade moving through the beans many of the beans may actually end up burned. Also, this method isn’t known for providing the most consistent grounds, meaning some of the grounds will be much more course than other parts of the grounds. You can liken this style of grinder to a blender crushing ice; some of the pieces of the ice are much bigger than others and the overall result is just not all that consistent.
Another type of coffee grinder is the burr grinder. There are two different types of burr grinders, which are the flat wheel and the conical with the conical variety being thought of as the best type that you can buy. In the burr grinders the beans are ground more slowly than in a blade grinder and then gravity pulls the ground up coffee beans into a hopper and then brewed into coffee. This method eliminates the burning of the coffee beans as well as ensures that the grounds are more consistently ground. The only drawback of this type of grinder is that it requires more cleaning, which does take some time, but if you are dedicated to coffee that tastes great every time this is the grinder that you want.
Coffee Machines
