50 mm Grinding Burrs

Cheap coffee grinders use blades to grind the coffee beans, but they will not grind your coffee evenly. In order to get your coffee ground in a consistently even size, you need to use a burr grinder such as the Gaggia MDF grinder. This grinder uses 50 mm grinding burrs to give your coffee an even and consistent ground size. Burr grinders are not prone to overheat like blade grinders sometimes do, so you will not get the burnt taste that you sometimes get when trying to get a fine grind for espresso out of a blade grinder.

The grind really is the most important factor in making a great espresso, and the steel burrs used in the Gaggia MDF burr grinder are semi-commercial grade burrs that are capable of producing the extremely fine and even grind necessary to make a fabulous cup of espresso. They provide a uniform grind to produce coffee that will blow your mind every time.

39 Grind Settings

With 39 different grind settings, the Gaggia burr grinder provides the perfect grind for any type of coffee. With a little experimentation, you’ll be able to find the right setting for your favorite coffee beans. Once you’ve found the right setting, you’ll be able to grind your coffee perfectly every time. Each variety of beans grinds differently though, so if you use more than one type you’ll have to find the right setting for each one.

When grinding coffee beans for espresso, you need to get the grind just right. If it is too fine, you will get coffee dust in your cup, and if it is too coarse, the water pressure will not be right. Once you have the grind right, you’ll find that the Gaggia 8002 MDF burr grinder makes a significant difference in the taste of your espresso. If you thought you made good espresso before with your blade grinder, you’ll be surprised at the difference. The Gaggia 8002 grinder allows you to make what would have been a good cup of coffee into an extraordinary coffee drinking experience.

Even if you’ve been making espresso for years, you probably haven’t been able to duplicate the flavor and crema that you get from a coffee shop if you’re using a blade grinder. The Gaggia MDF coffee grinder will help you change that. People who own the Gaggia MDF often rave about the crema they achieve when making espresso using coffee beans ground with this Gaggia coffee grinder.

120-watt Motor

The MDF Gaggia coffee grinder has a motor that is strong enough for commercial operations. Consumers seem to be fairly evenly split about whether it is quiet or loud. This probably has to do with the person’s expectations. You can expect any coffee grinder to make some noise, but Gaggia coffee grinders compare favorably with other brands in the noise department. If you find that it is too loud, you might want to add rubber feet to the bottom of your Gaggia grinder or place it on a non-slip rubber mat.

Plastic Housing

The Gaggia MDF burr coffee grinder has a plastic housing that is resistant to damage from impact. Like all items made of plastic, the housing may crack or break under pressure. However, only one Gaggia MDF grinder review out of the many reviews on Amazon.com mentions anything about the plastic breaking, so this is unlikely to be a problem with normal home use.

Capacity

The Gaggia MDF burr grinder with doser has a hopper that can hold up to 10 ounces of coffee beans at a time. The container that holds the grinds for dosing has a capacity of 8 ounces.

Running the Grinder

This Gaggia espresso grinder is easy to use. You just turn it on, and it grinds your coffee beans. The machine will keep grinding as long as you keep the power on, so you’ll need to turn it off once you have enough grinds. Unfortunately, you can’t see how much has been ground so you have to develop a feel for how long you need to grind in order to have enough. This machine does not have a timer.

Gaggia MDF Burr Grinder Doser

The doser on the Gaggia MDF burr grinder is the subject of many complaints by reviewers. If you do not fill the dosing compartment completely with grinds, then you will not get the right amount of coffee in each dose. This can be a problem for those who only want to grind what they need in order to preserve the freshness of the beans. One solution to this problem is to measure the coffee beans before you grind them, and then pull the doser handle until the doser is empty..

The filter holder beneath the doser is designed to hold an espresso filter, but there is nothing underneath to catch the grounds if you are using the grinder for regular coffee or French press. You can remedy this by finding a small bowl to place beneath the filter holder arms. However, you will probably end up with a bit of a mess on the countertop from the grounds that don’t make it into the bowl.

If you are using a different brand of espresso machine, you may find that the filter holder on the Gaggia 8002 MDF Burr Grinder with doser is not compatible with your espresso filters. The espresso machines that have been mentioned in Gaggia MDF reviews that have filters that don’t fit in the holder are Saeco Magic, Delonghi, Starbucks machine, and Krups.

Other Considerations

The Gaggia MDF grinder is reasonably compact, measuring 14″ x 14″ x 20″. This is great if you have limited counter space. One drawback is that it must be disassembled for cleaning. It has a one-year warranty.

The Gaggia Burr Grinder is not without its problems, the most significant of which are the poorly designed doser and filter holder. However, most users agree that the quality of the grind produced by the Gaggia coffee grinder is exceptional. Unless you want to shell out a lot more money for the Rancilio Rocky or Mazzer Mini, the Gaggia 8002 grinder is your best choice for creating fabulous espressos with the rich foam that comes only from perfectly ground and prepared coffee beans.

Some companies have one person (usually a receptionist) whose responsibility it is to make coffee in the morning and clean the pot in the afternoon, while others rotate that responsibility among various employees. Whoever does it, no one wants a cup of joe that tastes bland or bitter. In order to get the best cup, the machine that makes it needs to be clean and of top quality.

Is your company ready for a new office coffee maker?

You can tell if it’s time to buy a new office coffee maker when you notice that the product coming out of it is barely drinkable. People will start complaining that it tastes terrible, even when laden with a ton of cream and sugar, and many of them may just start going to Starbucks in the morning before work, which could cause them to show up late.

If you try cleaning the machine thoroughly, inside and out, and still get an inferior or downright disgusting taste from your java, then you know it’s time to purchase a new machine.

But which kind of office coffee maker is best for your company? You want something that’s cost effective (after all, it’s a recession out there!), but that produces a quality cup. There’s really no need to go for some kind of fancy French press version or pod machine. All you really need is a typical drip version that’s brand new, clean, and comes with a good warranty.

Companies have been using these for years, and they still typically produce the best results for the least amount of money. You just need to realize that with the frequent use a machine in a business environment gets, there will inevitably be a build-up of residue that will be hard to clean off. So buying a new machine every few years is going to be a necessity.

You just don’t have to spend a fortune to keep your employees well-caffeinated and happy.

photo credit: vieux bandit

Most of the people start their day with a cup of coffee, and so everyone prefers to have their own personalized coffee tumbler. Many would even want to carry them around along with them. The insulated travel coffee tumblers that commuters love to carry around can keep any beverage hot or cold for hours. A leak proof and and easy to hold thermos coffee tumbler is a popular coffee accessory.

One can get to choose from a wide variety of these tumblers. There are available in so many designs, shapes, sizes and materials. Each country has a special ethnic kind of tumbler, for example a stainless steel tumbler is the most popular used in the southern parts of India. But no tumbler is good enough until you fill it up with nice hot coffee.

With everyone using these tumblers for coffee there is a huge audiences for commercial or personalized tumblers. Most coffee tumblers have enough space product advertising. Sometimes these tumblers with advertisements on it are given away freely for the advertising value it’s got. Many companies are now making customized coffee tumblers for their particular brand of store like that of Starbucks or Nestle.

Coffee tumblers can specially designed for establishments and hotels in many places so that they can entice customers. Many companies also use the custom made coffee tumblers as gifts or a hand out to their employees. Customized coffee mugs make a wonderful gift idea.

With the advent of technology now it’s made a simple procedure to customize the exterior of the tumbler by ourselves. These tumblers when made with a special material can then be decorated later on with various cuttings from their scrap book and finally making a super personalized tumbler. Now there are ready made stickers and transfer that even a child can use on a white plain ceramic coffee tumbler.

The best way to gift someone with a coffee tumbler is by customizing with their picture on the white ceramic tumbler or mug. You can also make use of the porcelain paint markers to create simple designs on the surface.

The advantages of using your own grinder are:

• You can prepare just the amount of grounds that you need immediately.
• You can experiment with different grinds to find the one you like best.
• You can be sure that the coffee you grind at home will always be fresher than packaged coffee grounds.

The disadvantages are:

• You have the added expense of buying a coffee grinder, but keep in mind that it is a one time expenditure.
• You will need to take a little extra time to grind your own beans.
• You may find the whole grinding process a bit noisy and messy.

Basically there are three types of grinders: crusher, blade, and burr.

Crushers use the brute force method: mashing the beans a bit like an old-fashioned mortar and pestle. The resulting grounds are far from uniform size. Avoid the crusher style grinder if you can.

Blade grinders are really choppers not grinders. The blade whirls through the beans slicing them into smaller and smaller sections until the beans are the size of small grains of sand. Alas the grains are too big and hardly uniform in size.

Since the granules are uneven the amount of oils released when brewed is unpredictable. The slicing process generate excess heat which can affect the aroma and flavor of the coffee grounds.

Burr grinders are the best choice for home use. The plates of the burr grinders grind the beans into a uniformly small  granule. The better burr grinders make it possible to adjust size of the coffee grains and control the grinding speed.

Burr grinders make it possible to ‘fine tune’ the size of grounds for the desired brew. Some brewing methods require a finer grind in order to achieve the best results. Controlling the grinder speed keeps the warming to a minimum.

When shopping for a home coffee grinder look for one that is easy to clean, solidly constructed, and relatively quiet. The grinder should come with removable upper burrs and a cleaning brush.

A few other controls make grinding your own beans a lot easier; a timer switch and automatic shutoff control are nice additions. If you want to monitor the whole process visually, avoid dark plastic or glass. The color of the grounds can be an indicator of the fineness of the grind.

Read reviews and spend a little time comparing machines and you will find a machine that produces the grind you prefer in your own kitchen.

If you like the convenience of shopping online, Amazon offers a variety of coffee grinders in a wide range of prices.

Updated July 14, 2009

Large coffee makers can brew thirty or more cups of coffee at once. This can be a huge benefit when you do a lot of entertaining in your home or for a business in saving time in having to brew a multiple of pots. Here are some great tips that will help consumers and business owners in deciding on purchasing the perfect large coffee maker.

Features: One of the first things that you should consider when you purchase a large coffee maker is the features that will benefit your home or business.

1. Coffee level indicator offers an easy way to tell when the coffee is getting low and you need to make more.
2. Freshness indicator lets you know how long the coffee has been brewed and so you check to see when folks being to get a stale cup of coffee.
3. Adjustable warming feature will keep the coffee at just the right temperature
4. Cup trip handle make one hand dispensing easy.

Consumers should consider all these different features and decide which ones they need or don’t need when they are ready to purchase their large coffee maker.

Budget: Consider how much you want to spend when you make your purchase and shop around for the best deal. There are many different choices when it comes to large coffee makers and several different price ranges.

Brewing Capacity: Since the large coffee makers can brew anywhere from thirty cups to one hundred cups, consider which one would best suit your needs before you purchase one. A thirty cup coffee maker might be just perfect for your home when you have a dinner party or guests over. However, a business may need a hundred cup coffee maker to keep their customers happy and the coffee easily flowing.

Brand: Do some investigating and decide which brand is the best one for you. Read reviews of consumer that have purchased each brand. There are many different brand names of large coffee makers out there. DeLonghi, Hamilton Beach, West Bend, Bunn, Krups and Saeco are just few brands that are listed on the market. The top selling large capacity coffee makers on Amazon are:

• West Bend 58030 12-30 Automatic Party Perk
• West Bend 58002 12-42 Cup Automatic Party Perk
• West Bend 33600 100-Cup Commercial Coffee Urn
• Hamilton Beach 40515 42-Cup Coffee Urn, Silver
• DeLonghi DCU500T 50-Cup-Capacity Stainless-Steel Coffee Urn

Large coffee makers can help trim the cost of providing coffee by brewing more efficiently, saving electricity, and cutting down on the amount of time people spend making repeated pots of coffee. Isn’t it time you considered buying one for your home or business?