There’s a wide range of grinders available, particularly at the lower end of the market. It’s an area in which a small amount of time and money invested will have a significant impact on the taste of your coffee (the other major one is owning a set of scales).
It might not be immediately obvious why it’s important to grind your own coffee - after all, people have been pre-grinding coffee for ages and enjoying it just fine. To understand this, you need to know two things:
- High-quality coffee tastes good because of a combination of complex aromatic and flavour compounds – a result of how the coffee was grown, processed and roasted. A barista’s aim is to get these flavours and scents into the cup in as unadulterated a state as possible. The coffee’s aroma in particular is quite volatile and will degrade/escape quickly when exposed to the air.
- A coffee bean is made up of a dense cell structure: thousands of tiny pockets meshed together (mostly made up of cellulose) that, in a roasted bean, hold in those aromatic qualities and keep them intact for us. As soon as we grind the coffee, this protection is lost and everything starts to float away. This is why pre-ground coffee often tastes flat and boring compared to freshly ground beans.
Which grinder?
There is a vast range of price and quality in the grinder market, from $20 repurposed spice grinders on supermarket shelves all the way up to large, $3000+ grinders for use in cafes. The main thing you want from your grinder is what’s called an “even particle distribution”, which means all of the ground bits of coffee are more or less the same size, without too many large “boulders” or powdery “fines” thrown in. Uneven distribution will lead to unevenly extracted coffee – think unbalanced coffees with lots of sourness and bitterness.
Beyond evenness, we’re also looking for consistent control over the grind size. Very fine control is essential for espresso; for filter coffee a little more space between the settings is fine. Most grinders are sold as either espresso or filter grinders, and only a few will actually do a good job at both, so do your research if you want something versatile.
Blade Grinders
Anything that grinds coffee with a single, spinning blade is called a “blade grinder” and usually does a terrible job of grinding coffee! The main problem is that there’s no control over the grind size – you get what you get and it’s usually pretty uneven. The resulting coffee will have some big, chunky bits of bean that won’t brew properly and lots of fine, powdery coffee that will quickly overextract and make your cup of coffee taste super bitter. These grinders also tend to heat up the coffee, which is bad news, too. Blade grinders do have one redeeming feature: they’re cheap! The quality is so low, however, that you won’t see much improvement over using pre-ground coffee – it will just be bad in a different way. In the words of US coffee professional Nick Cho, throw it out!
Burr Grinders
The other style of grinder – and the type we recommend – is a burr grinder: two burrs that move against each other to grind coffee to a specific size. Burr grinders offer two key benefits: the resulting coffee is much more consistent in size, and there is control over the grind size itself. The distance between the burrs can be adjusted, giving you either coarser or finer coffee, depending on the needs of the barista. Small changes are generally used to change the extraction of a given coffee, while larger changes are made to suit different brewing devices.
Hand Grinders
The most affordable burr grinders available are generally hand-cranked ones. Savings from not including a motor mean you can get a well-made grinder with a good burr-set for not much money. Something like this stainless steel Porlex will out-grind anything in the sub-$200 electric grinder range. Hand grinders have the added benefit of being portable and make great travel grinders, whether you’re off on a camping trip or hotel stay, or want something compact for the office.
There are actually quite a few similar grinders available, but we love the Porlex for two reasons. One – it’s really well put together with a sleek, stainless steel body and a spring-loaded burr set, which improves its grind consistency. Two – it’s the perfect size to slip inside the Aeropress, creating a perfect travel combo.
Electric Grinders
While grinding your coffee by hand is, well, handy and easy, many people decide to upgrade to an electric grinder. (Often the motivation for this comes from having friends over, and not wanting to take the time to grind individual batches of coffee for every person!) Once you step up to an electric burr grinder, there’s a wide array of quality and price available. There are three key areas to look at here: burr quality, ease-of-use and overall construction.
Our top picks, after comparing many of the available grinders, are the Baratza Encore Grinder and the Breville Smart Grinder. The Baratza Encore uses a steel conical burr set, is well-made and comes with a two-year warranty. It is an excellent grinder for filter coffees – this grinder simply out-brewed anything else in its price bracket! Of course, you can spend even more money on a grinder if you like, but the law of diminishing returns starts to kick in pretty hard at this point. In our view, the Baratza (and grinders like it) represent a great value/quality sweet spot.
For espresso coffee, we recommend the Breville Smart Grinder, pictured below. We’ve used the Smart Grinder in our homes for many years, and they have stood the test of time. This grinder comes with removable grinding cradles for dosing directly into 50-54mm and 58mm espresso portafilters, which will suit most domestic espresso machines. As a bonus, it also comes with a container to grind plunger or pour over coffee into, which prevents coffee spillage and also magnetically locks into place. What we love about this grinder is its versatility (there are more than 60 unique settings you can choose from), and that it’s easy to use and clean.
If you’re unsure about which grinder is right for your needs, we’d be more than happy to help! Pop into one of our shops to chat to a staff member, or get in touch.
