Coffee Grinders

July 13, 2013

It has been said that a good grinder can do as much to make (or wreck) a great cup of coffee as anything else.

You want a burr grinder. Ceramic burrs are highly regarded, but you will pay for them.

Grinders

One essay suggested that if you have a budget for an expresso machine, you would divide it in half and spend half of it on the grinder, and half on the machine. So you could spend $500 and get a $200 grinder and a $300 machine for example. If you had a $1000 budget, spend $450 on the grinder and $550 on the machine. The best machine will do poorly with badly ground coffee.

Blade Grinder

I have long been using a Braun blade grinder, and was surprised to learn that these are not well regarded.

It pretty much boils down to this. You need to grind uniformly sized coffee to have any control over the process. Finer coffee requires shorter extraction times. Too long of an extraction time yields bitterness. With a mix of coarse and fine coffee you cannot pick a time suited to either. If you do what most people would, you pick a time suited for the coarser material, and then get bitter stuff from the fines.

I have been using finer that recommended coffee, ground in a blade grinder, and putting up with sludge and bitterness. Now I have a burr grinder, and my blade grinders are retired.

Cuisinart burr grinders

Cuisinart burr grinders are affordable, noisy, and widely hated.

Breville "Smart Grinder" BCG800XL

This is a very well rated machine for $200 and it is what I ordered back in 2013. I has been grinding away for 9 years now and seems to still be going strong. The current model is the BCG820BSS, which looks very much the same, but who knows what changes have been made.

You can read and learn a lot about these online. At one time you had to request a "shim kit" and install the shims to get this grinder to grind fine enough for decent expresso. The word is that sometime (in early 2012) they began shipping machines that do not require the shims. Some think that they have shifted things so that while it now grinds finer for expresso, it won't grind as coarse at the other end. Fine grinds and dark oily beans can clump up and jam the machine. (So just avoid those nasty dark oily beans). Some people say that it won't grind coarse enough for good press coffee, but others say you can just shorten your extraction time a bit, which is what I did.
See this link:

One fellow suggests that at the coarsest setting, the grind may not be a uniform as when set a few notches finer. Better to be consistent and slightly finer and then adjust your extraction time.

Baratza Vario

This grinder sells for $450 and is very well regarded. The only thing negative I have read about it is that it uses a belt drive and one user had trouble with it. The price scared me away, but it is reported to do an excellent job on everything from expresso to drip. It has ceramic burrs. Customer service from Baratza is reported to be superb.

Baratza Virtuoso

This grinder sells for $220. It is a good alternative to the Breville, and from a very well regarded company. Probably the main reason I didn't buy it was that with a 20 percent off coupon from Bed, Bath, and Beyond I could get the Breville for $160 and reviews on this and the Breville were neck and neck.

Other grinders

These are candidates for further study. The last two are clearly professional level machines.

Hand crank grinders

There are a lot of these and apparently they can do a very very good job. It typically takes as long to grind the beans as to bring your water to a boil. Some say it is therapeutic, but not for a person with arthritis.

One well regarded hand grinder is the "Orphan Espresso Pharos", which sells for about $250. It uses really big conical burrs:

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's coffee pages / tom@mmto.org