How to Find the Perfect Coffee Grinder for Your Home
If you want to serve the freshest and most flavorful coffee, you will need a coffee grinder.
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
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