If you love freshly crafted coffee, and you want to brew the perfect coffee you can at home, you need either a manual grinder or an electric burr coffee grinder. This isn’t an optional piece of tool for the home Barista, it’s literally as essential as the coffee brewer or machine itself.
I’d even go so far as to say that, if you’re not going to grind your own coffee beans, there’s little point in trying to brew speciality coffee at home. This is definitely true with Espresso coffee, in my modest opinion.
There’s just no way you can get decent impacts with Espresso coffee with pre-ground coffee unless you’re incredibly lucky and the pre-ground coffee you buy happens to be ground to the ideal grind for your machine, and there’s a slim chance of that.
Yes, some domestic espresso machines come with pressured portafilters, which are designed to make it easier to use pre-ground coffee, nevertheless still – regardless of how you’re brewing your coffee, you’re going to get the best overall experience by grinding your coffee beans freshly.
Also, it’s important to discover that pressurized portafilters are shipped with entry-level espresso coffee machines truly because they’re so much easier to utilize. They’re not necessarily going to provide the best-tasting espresso coffee.
I tested this in the video below (before I was introduced to something called a shaver) with the exact same coffee, one bag of whole beans and another bag of the exact same coffee beans pre-ground (both from Blue Coffee Box), and as you’ll see if you watch the video, I could discriminate.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to decide which is the best manual grinder for you, you’re probably not planning on utilizing pre-ground coffee.
While we’re talking about taste, it’s important to also point out that the quality and the freshness of the coffee beans in fact matters. It amazes me when I hear from people who have spent large sums of money replacing tool to try to get better coffee but haven’t thought to extremely buy better quality, more freshly roasted coffee beans.
Try my coffee beans from The Coffeeworks, all really high quality coffee beans, and all freshly roasted – delivered with a roasted on date, so you’ll understand you’re not guzzling coffee that was roasted months ago.
Use discount code CBNC25 for 25% off your first order at Coffeeworks
Why Manual Coffee Grinders?
I don’t utilize manual coffee grinders much these days, purely due to the fact that I suffer from RSI with both wrists. Typing, playing drums, playing guitar, making rude gestures at other motorists on the way to the studio, all take their toll.
Nevertheless if you don’t suffer from problems with your wrists, there are a few reasons that a manual hand grinder may be ideal for you.
Price.
Manual coffee grinders start at around £10-20. Electric coffee grinders start rather a little higher than this.
By the way, if you see that there are electric coffee grinders for a similar price, or maybe £20-£3o, these are not coffee grinders.
These things have blades. Blades don’t grind, they chop, slice and obliterate. This isn’t what we want to do to coffee beans if we want nice tasting coffee.
For more on electric burr grinders:
Perfect Electric Burr Coffee Grinders
Portability.
Good luck trying to take an electric coffee grinder hiking ;-).
Another reason for having a manual coffee grinder is that they’re obviously a lot more portable than powered grinders, and you can grind anywhere, with no electricity required, which brews them the obvious preference for grinding coffee off-grid.
For camping trips, hiking, cycling, fishing, days out on the beach, and so on, all you need is a manual grinding machine and a source of hot water, and you have the luxury of being able to freshly brew lovely coffee via an equally portable brewer, such as Aeropress, Oomph, Nanopresso, etc.
Shot Quality.
As well as more bang for your buck in terms of the quality you can get at the same price point for hand coffee grinders vs powered grinders, there are the majority of home Baristas who consider electric grinders to be a case of compromising quality for practicality.
This is partially down to the degree of quality you can get with manual vs electric, i.e. you’re not investing in a motor and other components, you’re investing 100% in the mechanics of the coffee mill, meaning you ought to be getting better burrs, and other mechanical components.
It’s likewise partly down to grinding speed and the coffee beans not being heated by excessive grinding speed, which is something that the more expensive electric grinders have features to combat, such as being geared down.
Noise, or lack of.
If you’re an early riser, or I needs to say, if you’re an earlier riser than the people you live with – grinding with an electric burr grinding machine first thing in the morning might not make you extremely popular. Grinding coffee with a hand mill is a much quieter affair, and is unlikely to wake anyone up.
Unless you drop your manual grinder on your bare foot and scream extremely rude words at the top of your lungs. I’ve never done that, I did once wake up with my hand over my face even though, screamed, and pushed it away with the other hand… 😉
I’m beginning with the budget manual coffee grinders
There will be some folk reading this, more serious home baristas, who have no interest in the extremely cheapest manual coffee grinders.
If this includes you, actually scroll down a little and you’ll get to the premium home barista manual burr coffee grinders.
A quick note about cost.
Just keep in mind that when you spend more on a manual grinder, you’re usually paying for better coffee, quicker coffee and a more enjoyable experience.
If you want a cheap manual grinding machine for occasional work with and generally for coarse grinding for cafetiere for example, no problem.
The first coffee grinder in this article will probably be fine for you if this is the case, and this is probably why it’s the perfect selling manual coffee grinder on Amazon, as so most people simply want a cheap coffee mill for occasional use.
If you’re wanting to grind finer even though, and particularly if you want to grind for espresso coffee or even finer for Turkish then you may want to consider investing a bit more, especially if you’re going to be utilizing this grinder regularly.
If it’s only occasional utilize, and especially if you’re grinding fairly coarse, going for a cheaper coffee mill might make more sense.
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This is one of the best selling manual coffee grinders on Amazon UK, and it’s easy to see why.
I have no idea how they’ve managed to make a burr grinder this cheap, however they have, and it sells like hotcakes. That’s a in truth weird saying. Why would you want to buy a hot cake? Anyway, I digress.
Size & Weight:
8.64 x 18 cm. 530g
Beans Capacity:
Approx 50g, and the glass jar will hold approx 100g of ground coffee.
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations
There have been a couple of sellers selling a slightly different version of this, I’m uncertain if it’s the exact same grinder, but whatever the case, it’s clearly an “echo” of the famous Hario Skerton plus, which I’ll speak about shortly – nevertheless given the reviews, it does seem to be a good copy, sorry, I mean “echo” ;-).
If you’re grinding for Cafetiere, drip, or even Aeropress since these days people are tending to grind quite a little coarser for Aeropress, a coffee mill like this needs to be fine.
If you’re wanting to grind much finer, for example for espresso coffee, I can tell you from experience that unless you start messing around with hacks/mods, you won’t be able to get fine enough, or dial in precisely enough, with a grinder like this.
To be honest, I don’t understand how they can possibly make this mill so cheap, but they do, so if you were looking for an incredibly low cost coffee grinder, this may be for you.
It’s likewise worth pointing out here that my friends at Shop Coffee in Cambridge, sell a similar manual coffee grinder, for this and others, see:
Manual Coffee Grinders at Shop Coffee
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This is an really inexpensive manual hand grinding machine. It’s extremely popular, as you can see by the huge number of Amazon reviews and answered questions.
Size & Weight:
17.5 x 4.8cm. 281.23 Grams
Beans Capacity:
30g
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations
This is an very cheap manual coffee mill, and while it has masses of reviews, several of them really positive as you can see by the high overall score, I think you do need to be realistic with your expectations if you’re buying a coffee mill at this type of price point.
It’s unlikely you’re going to get a manual coffee grinder of this design much cheaper than this, and for the money, I think it’s fine, but really keep in mind that with a small manual grinder like this with small burrs, it will take longer to grind your coffee.
Also, keep in mind that the finer you’re grinding, the longer it’ll take, so if you’re going to be utilizing a manual coffee mill to grind coffee as finely as is possible, you may be spending rather a little of time grinding, especially with one of the cheapest manual grinders like this, with smaller burrs.
If you’re grinding more coarse for things like Aeropress, filter, or cafetiere, then you may be OK – but if you’re considering manually grinding for espresso coffee, keep in mind that a little mill like this is likely to take upwards of 3-5 minutes to grind enough for a double shot, depending on dose and how fine you need to grind for your machine and the particular bean.
If I were you, I’d consider just investing a little bit more cash into a mill and going for one of the other grinders you’ll find in this post, which starts at only £7 more than this one.
If you’re looking for a portable grinding machine, and you’re not looking at spending any more than the region of £20-£30 (and there in truth are benefits to be had by sinking a bit more cash into a manual coffee mill by the way, you’re not just paying for style or branding) my personal recommendation would be the Hario Mini Coffee grinder Slim Plus, which you’ll find a little further down this post.
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This is probably among the a lot of famous hand coffee grinders, it’s been around a long time and is primarily well regarded one of the speciality coffee community, as a ideal manual grinding machine for the money.
I have this grinding machine, it was my first ever grinding machine.
I still have it, it still works absolutely fine though I abused it by attaching a cordless drill to the top of it to turn it into an electric grinding machine, as I was getting fed up of grinding coffee beans manually ;-).
Size & Weight:
40.6 x 27.9 x 33 cm
567g
Beans Capacity:
Around 50g (however the glass jar will fit around 100g of ground coffee)
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
With this grinding machine, these observations are from use combined with research study, as I very have this hand coffee mill, this was the first manual grinding machine I ever bought.
The first thing to say is that I think it’s really well built and high quality for the low cost, and it grinds well for the money.
I used this for a range of different brew processes before I got my Sage Smart Mill Pro, including for Espresso coffee – OK I wasn’t able to perfectly dial in, however it was fine as a starting point.
The instructions were in Japanese, there were no English instructions, which I remember finding a little bit odd, but I don’t tend to RTFM anyway, a quick look on YouTube provided me with all the info needed.
As it comes, out of the box, Skerton is fantastic for a fairly wide range of grind sizes, but if you’re in reality into your cafetiere brewing you may want to look at the modifications you can make to this coffee grinder to allow you to achieve a more consistent grind size at a courser setting, such as the blue horse upgrade kit.
The grind size adjustments are big, it’s not great for fine-tuning. As I said, I did initially work with this for espresso, nevertheless I couldn’t in truth dial in – in my opinion, you’ll be OK with this grinder if you’re using pressurized baskets, if you’re utilizing traditional baskets, though, you’d be better off with a coffee mill which will go finer and which has the ability to more finely tune the grind size.
There’s a mod you can do for this, even though, which is to swap out the adjustment cog for an m8 nut in order to make it stepless. For more on this, see this review on coffeegeek.com.
There are no points of reference either when it comes to grind settings, however you can mod this too by just drawing a line on the shaft and the adjustment cog.
Likewise, you could cut a marker down the nut at the zero position, if you mod it for stepless, and put a series of numbers around the shaft, to give you some points of reference when it comes to grinding again after taking it apart to clean, or dialling in for a different brew method.
The glass grinds pot is ideal, actually sturdy, it’s unlikely you’ll break it even by dropping it, and it comes with a lid too so it doubles as coffee storage.
By the way, the drill mod is in truth straightforward if you want to use the Skerton as an electric mill on the budget of a manual mill, see the video below, however I wouldn’t suggest you work with the high-speed setting he does in the video.
I used this hack mainly to save my wrists, as I’m prone to RSI with both of my wrists. I didn’t go mad on the speed like this guy does in the video, because I’d be concerned it would wreck the burrs and likewise produce a poor grind, as this mill isn’t brewed to grind this quickly.
I’d in fact suggest leaving the deal with on when modding it with the drill mod so you can keep an eye on how fast you’re going.
On the whole, I think the Hario Skerton is probably one of the perfect low cost manual grinders, but you’ll probably want to mod it if you’re using it for espresso, especially if you want to use it with standard baskets.
I think with a little bit of time watching good old YouTube & a bit of tinkering, the Hario Skerton is a fantastic manual grinder for the cash, and is capable of far more than it was probably initially designed for.
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Another coffee mill from Japanese coffee device manufacturer Hario, the Mini Coffee grinder Slim Plus is a popular pairing with Aeropress, due to its more compact stature and lighter weight than it’s larger sibling the Hario Skerton.
Size & Weight:
40.6 x 27.9 x 33 cm. 567g
Beans Capacity:
24g
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
This grinding machine is similar to its bigger sibling the Hario Skerton, but a little bit smaller and lighter.
It does appear to have one main advantage over the Skerton, even though, as well as portability, which is the ease of adjusting grind size, and the ease of getting back to a particular grind. So if you’re wanting to brew for various brew methods, this might be a good preference for you.
The mini grinder has spring loaded burrs, which gives it a slight edge over the Skerton, especially at more coarse grind settings. The Hario Skerton Pro has spring loaded burrs too and looks cool, nevertheless it’s a few quid more.
Remember, although, no grinding machine will troubleshoot the error of utilizing poor quality coffee beans – and now here’s another totally shameless plug for my own coffee :-).
Use discount code CBNC25 for 25% off your first order at Coffeeworks
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Size & Weight:
Approx 18 × 7.5 × 11 cm. 350g.
Beans Capacity:
25g grinding capacity, 60g capacity in the storage container.
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations:
Clearly a similar-looking manual coffee mill to the Hario Mini Grinding machine Plus, above, however at a significantly lower price, I’d be interested in this little coffee grinder if I were looking for a manual mill on a budget.
Generally speaking, I think you get what you pay for. The Mini Grinding machine Plus is about a tenner more, but it does weigh quite a bit more which does give the impression that the build quality is likely to be more robust with the Hario.
If you’re on an really tight budget, even though, or if you don’t want to spend much on a manual mill as you’re only going to be utilizing it for a few days on a trip for example, and you don’t know when you’ll be using it again, then I can understand the idea of spending as little as you can. Personally, I’ve got into the habit over the years of not buying the cheapest preference, regardless of what it is that I’m buying.
If I’m looking for a particular product, and I can see there are well-established brands that have paid a fortune to develop that brand, and buying the branded product means paying a higher price as I’m also paying for their advertising costs, I’ll look at less expensive brands too – but I’ve come to realize over the years that sometimes saving a few quid doesn’t always make sense and that the old saying “buy right or buy twice” is really really good advice.
This is also why I like buying from Amazon though, if I do buy something and quickly realize I’ve brewed a blunder, it’s so easy to return it and correct that mistake!
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Size & Weight:
17 x 5 cm. 450 Grams
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs:
Stainless steel 38mm burrs
My Observations:
This is literally a actually nice looking hand grinder, and it’s one of a few relatively low-cost hand grinders (more to come below) which appear to be based on (at least when it comes to looks) the really popular (and not so inexpensive…) Comandante hand grinders.
It has 38mm steel burrs, the same size burrs as you’ll get in the likes of the Sage Smart Grinding machine Pro, and the same size as some other popular hand grinders including the Brewed by Knock Aergrind, and literally 1mm smaller than the burrs found in the Comandante grinders.
I actually like the look of the wooden knob, that’s probably more comfortable than using some of the hand grinders with small plastic knobs.
I also in reality like the look of the little travel case this grinding machine neatly slots into. For the cost, this isn’t a bad shout at all in my humble opinion.
If you like this type of Comandante style design of hand grinding machine, holster your debit card for now, as there are a couple more for literally a few quid extra a bit further on in this best hand grinders post that has, even more, going for them, for not all that much more cash.
Click here to see other available colours
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Size & Weight:
16 x 5.2 cm. 430 Grams
Burrs
Stainless steel 38mm burrs
Beans Capacity:
25g
My Observations
This is another among the relatively low cost coffee grinders which appear to be based on the Comandante, at least in design.
38mm steel burrs again, 5g more single grind capacity than the Normcore.
The manufacturer claims that they’ve minimised fines and improved grind uniformity with burr blades (or teeth) in 55-58HRC hardness in 5-axis CNC machining. Likewise, they’ve made grinding easier & smoother with the bearings fitted.
So this mill appears to talk the talk. I’ve not tried it, so I can’t confirm it walks the walk, however it has some great reviews.
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The Porlex Mini is an exceptionally popular mill, particularly among coffee loving nomads, or really Aeropress owners who like to brew coffee when they’re out & about.
The mini in fact fits inside the Aeropress, meaning you can pack it that way, which comes in handy for space saving when you’re out and about with it (though it’s not the only manual grinder with this feature).
Size & Weight:
15 x 9.2 x 5.4 cm. 310 Grams
Burrs
Ceramic
Beans Capacity:
20g
My Observations
The Porlex Mini is a in fact popular mill one of Aeropress users, it’s been around rather some time, and even though I’ve never had one, my opinion of these grinders, based purely on reputation, is that they’re well built and long lasting grinders for the price, and that the newer version is made to last longer, being made to avoid an issue which could happen after a while with the original version – rounding off of the handle mount.
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The bigger sibling of the Porlex mini II, the tall is capable of grinding 30g in one go vs 20g with the mini.
Size & Weight:
19.5 x 8.6 x 5.3 cm. 400 Grams
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
There’s not a great deal to say about the Porlex mini vs the Porlex tall, other than the tall is taller 😉 and that it can grind more in one go.
The grind capacity of the mini is 20g vs 30g for the tall. The tall is the same diameter as the mini, so it will still fit in the Aeropress, nevertheless it’s 5.5cm taller.
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Size & Weight:
13.86cm x 4.6cm. 385g
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs
420-grade stainless steel, 38mm.
My Observations
The Q2, as its bigger brother the JX series that I’ll discuss shortly, is an extremely smart looking hand coffee grinder!
With stainless burrs, and an Aluminium alloy body, we’re getting into some good quality materials with this coffee mill, and again a similar design at least visually to the Comandante.
This coffee grinder has 30 grind adjustments, and a dual bearing shaft, and is designed to be very quickly & just taken apart for cleaning.
If you’re fairly serious about your coffee, but not rather serious enough to spend over double the cost on the aforementioned Comandante grinding machine, I do think the Q2 and the JX (coming up shortly) are grinders that you ought to consider.
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This is another coffee grinder extremely popular paired with the Aeropress as with the Porlex Mini.
The aergrind by Knock, invented by Peter Kilpatrick, was launched via an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign in March 2017 and has had many praise by users.
Knock started off with their hugely popular grinding machine, Hausgrind, and then brought out a portable hand grinder called the Feldgrind, which is also really popular.
Peter then decided a better, more portable hand grinder was necessary to pair with Aeropress, and aergrind was born.
Size & Weight:
13.6cm x 4.6cm. 330g
Beans Capacity:
30g
Burrs
38mm Specially rewarded Nerost Black Steel
My Observations
I’ve got this coffee mill, as I said earlier I don’t work with manual grinders much, definitely not due to the reality that I’m lazy, honest guv, however I’ve struggled with my wrists for years.
I’m a drummer, as I explained earlier, and I play guitar (badly), I type a lot, obviously, and I used to do kickboxing too, I think it all got a little too much for my wrists. They’re not too bad these days however I do have to watch it, I feel the RSI starting to flare up again occasionally.
But I’ve used this grinding machine, as I wanted to get hold of one and have a go with it, given that it’s among the really small number of things coffee-related been manufactured in the UK, I thought it would be rude of me not to try it.
It did take me ages to get hold of one, as Brewed by Knock are a victim of their own success, I think the majority of the time they struggle to meet the demand, which is a good problem to have, I suppose.
It’s clearly an really well brewed manual coffee grinder. It’s fairly quick, it’s one of the nicer manual grinders to utilize in terms of how it feels in the hand when grinding, and it’s easy to dial in the grind. It’ll go fine enough for espresso coffee too, I’ve managed to choke a Sage Bambino Plus with it, so that’s an incredibly fine grind.
I think if you’re looking for a portable hand coffee mill for work with with the Aeropress (the handle slips off and fits in the rubber sleeve) I do think the Aergrind is a good option for the dosh.
Aeropress Review
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Size & Weight:
15.8cm x 5.7cm. 650g
Beans Capacity:
35g
Burrs
304-Grade Stainless steel, 48mm.
My Observations
This is the smaller of two manual grinders in this range, the JX. The Jx Pro is below, and that one is worth looking at especially if you’re looking for a manual mill for espresso.
With 48mm steel burrs, this is a serious hand mill. This is the same size burrs as the OE Lido, an very highly regarded and much more expensive manual grinding machine.
As its slightly smaller brother the Q2, it’s brewed from decent materials, stainless steel, Alumnium alloy & the wooden deal with – and with the deal with design & the big burrs, this is going to grind coffee quite a little quicker than the majority of the other manual grinders spoken about on this page.
Basically have a read through some of the Amazon reviews, including the one from an engineer who has owned five other manual grinders. This guy rates this as the best manual mill by far, and refers to effortless and fast grinding.
Most the other Amazon reviews are along similar lines, primarily praise for the build quality and for how easy and fast to grind it is.
If you do a bit of scientific research study about this grinder – or don’t bother, as I’ve already done it for you 🙂 – you’ll mainly end up with the impression that this is a heck of most manual grinding machine for the price, given that it’s literally over half the price of the Comandante C40.
Dave Corby’s review of this grinding machine, below, is well worth a watch. He’s reviewed this one, and the pro version, and if you’re not familiar with Dave Corby, he’s an expert on coffee grinders and espresso machines, manufacturers consult with him when they’re developing stuff, and rely on his expertise to tell them how to make their products work better, so this is a guy whose opinion is worth listening to.
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Size & Weight:
18cm x 5.7cm. 780g
Beans Capacity:
35g
Burrs
304-Grade Stainless steel, 48mm.
My Observations
So this is the “pro” version of the JX, above. The pro is a bit taller, 18cm tall vs 15.8 tall – and the grind adjustment on the pro is on the top vs the JX with the adjustment underneith.
The main difference, even though, is that the pro has double the grind adjustments, meaning that it literally has half step adjustments allowing you to more finely modify the grind.
The JX has grind adjustments at 25 microns per click, while it’s 12.5 per click for the Pro, so this will just allow you to finely tune more when dialing in. If you’re looking for a manual coffee mill for pourover, for example, you’re possibly not going to be as interested in this finer adjustment.
This is a meaty mill, as Dave Corbey puts it in his YouTube review. At 780g, you wouldn’t want to drop it on your foot! ;-).
Perfect Manual Coffee Grinders in the UK – Conclusion
So there we have it, what I believe to be the perfect manual coffee grinders right now, from the extremely cheapest up to some of the perfect premium or “prosumer” manual coffee grinders.
There are a couple of other grinders that I’d like to include here.
Among them is the Comandante C40. I make references to this grinder, however I’m not including it at the moment as it seems to be extremely scarcely available in the UK literally now, and the only listing I can find for it on Amazon appears to be a UK seller trying to charge over double the RRP.
Another is the Orphan Espresso coffee Lido grinders. As with the Comandante, these grinders are very popular one of the more serious home baristas.
However I can’t find anyone in the UK with stock, and I don’t want to annoy people by telling them about this excellent coffee grinder that they can’t get from anywhere.
If this changes with either or both of the above, I’ll add these grinders to this article in the future.
Before I sign off although, I’ll just address a few common questions about manual coffee grinders.
How do you modify manual coffee grinders?
This will depend on the particular grinder, they’ll all have some form of adjustment, whether that’s basically an adjustment nut or wheel & whether there are numbered adjustments will depend on which mill you’ve got. What you’ll need to do first is find your zero position, in other words, find the point at which the burrs are as close together as they’ll possibly go. If your mill has markings from fine to course, in the form of sized dots or numbers, you’ll understand this immediately – if not you’ll actually have to do some experimenting to figure out where the zero point is.
This video shows you how to modify the Hario Skerton manual grinding machine, and you’ll probably find it’s the same on similar style manual grinders:
The video below shows you how to troubleshoot the Made By Knock aergrind, and this will likewise show you how to modify their other manual grinders:
This video will show you how to troubleshoot the 1Z Presso JX & JX Pro
What is the best manual mill?
Hopefully, by this point, you’ve got a much better idea of which manual grinder might be the best for you, however perfect is a subjective thing – there isn’t a “best” as such.
I in fact think that when people are searching for something this way, generically searching for what is the perfect <whatever>, it shows that they’re probably not at a point that they fully know exactly what it is they’re looking for. For example, let’s say you’re looking to buy a car – would you search for the perfect car? I don’t think you would, due to the truth that you probably know enough about cars and what you want from them to allow you to search for far more specific things.
If you’re searching for the perfect portable manual coffee mill for Aeropress for example, that to me says you literally understand what you’re looking for – and that’s a quite simple question to address, the made by Knock Aergrind above or the Porlex mini ii are primarily regarded as among the perfect portable hand grinders for Aeropress.
If you’re searching for the best manual grinding machine for espresso, again this is a much more detailed matter so it’s easier to respond to. When it comes to espresso coffee what I’d be looking at is the size of the burrs (the larger the burr size suggests the less time you’ll be grinding for, as finer espresso grinding takes longer), the number of grind settings (to allow you to more finely tune the grind, which is more important for espresso), and I’d be looking for video reviews from people who’re showing the grinder being used for espresso coffee, like the video above showing Dave Corbey pulling a shot he’s literally surprised by, with the 1ZPresso JX Pro.
If what you’re literally after is the best cheap manual mill, meaning that you’re just looking at the best bang for your buck, then the first few grinders I talk about above may be exactly what you’re after, nevertheless I would advise that you figure out first, exactly what you need from the coffee mill as well as affordability.
For example, if you’re wanting the cheapest choice possible however you’re wanting a super fine grind, fast grinding (so bigger burrs), and fine tuning, you may be expecting too much from a hand grinding machine at the money you’re looking at spending, so you may need to attack the piggy bank.
How to clean a manual mill?
In my simple opinion, as long as you don’t use anything wet – like water, which is usually fairly wet… you can’t literally go wrong. With some manual grinders, it’s simply a case of taking them to their most coarse setting and providing the burrs a brush, although with a lot of you can take them apart easily and give the burrs a truly good clean – literally make sure you keep a note of how it goes back together and make sure you don’t lose any bits!
I did this with among my electric coffee grinders, recently – primarily because I’m a complete pillock. I took my Niche Zero apart to clean it, took the burrs out, and then I tipped it upside down into the compost and slapped it on the backside, to knock as lots of of the bits out before I continued cleaning it. I forgot I’d done that, and then spent about an hour scratching my head & wondering what had happened to the springs, which were now in the really early stages of biodegrading ;-). Don’t fret, I retrieved them.
The one no-no is water, please don’t dunk your coffee mill in water or put it in the dishwasher. If you have a Google for your brand or a similar brand, you’ll find loads of videos on YouTube showing you how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble manual coffee grinders, like this one on the Timemore C2:
How long does it take to grind utilizing a manual coffee grinder?
How long is a piece of string? Ha! ;-). The answer to that, by the way, is half its length times two. Joking apart, this will depend, primarily on how much coffee you want to grind, how fine or coarse you want to grind it, and the size of the burrs.
Grinding coarse for espresso or large batch filter brewing for example will take the least amount of time per gram, while grinding fine for espresso coffee will take a lot longer. Dave Corbey shares in his video review of the 1ZPresso JX Pro that it took him about 30 seconds to grind 17 grams for a double shot of espresso coffee. It took me just over a minute to grind 18g utilizing the Crafted by Knock Aergrind for espresso. How long it’ll take with other grinders will depend on the size of the burrs, how much you’re grinding and how finely you’re grinding.
How long do manual grinders last for?
Much longer than electric coffee grinders! Among the ideal things about manual coffee grinders is that they’re very modest, there’s really little in the way of complex parts that may break at any time. With electric grinders, there’s so much more that can go wrong with them, issues with the electrics, issues with the motor, issues with the gearing & so on – and this isn’t the case at all with good old fashioned manual grinders.
Extremely, even though I’ve said a couple of times that I don’t tend to utilize manual grinders – I have loads of them ;-), I truly have a little of a collection of older manual grinders, they date back to the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and a lot of of them still work…
OK, this isn’t to say those hand grinders you buy now are brewed to last rather this long, however really, in some cases, I think they’ll possibly last even longer, as the majority of the original manual grinders were made with wooden housings, that tend to be the weakest link, and several of the a lot of popular manual grinders these days are brewed from metal or hard-wearing plastic.
You may think that all burrs will wear, regardless of whether they’re hand-powered or electric powered, and that’s true, the burrs in manual hand grinders will wear over time – but they’re likely to wear much less than burrs in electric machines, as they’re put under a lot less stress when they’re hand powered.
The hand power vs electric power is among the main reasons manual grinders will last so long, not just because it’s easier on the burrs, nevertheless it’s easier on everything. When something breaks in an electric mill, it’s usually due to the truth that something happens thanks to the power of the motor.
For example, an under roasted bean or a pebble, or a random piece of copper (which caused a little bit of a mess in among my grinders a while back, no idea where that came from!) can jam the burrs, and the power of the motor will force them to keep going, leading to something having to give – often it’s a weak cog that offers, which is basically put in to act similar to a fuse so that this economical part breaks instead of something which would be more costly to replace.
When you’re manually grinding, if something like this occurs, you’re unlikely to have the power to break the mill, and as you’re always single dosing with manual grinders (obviously they don’t have hoppers) you’re far more likely to notice a foreign object in your hand as you’re loading it into the coffee mill anyway.
Why do some manual grinders cost so much more than others?
When you look through the grinders above, you may be confused as to how there can be such a massive difference between the cheapest and the most expensive grinders, and the humble answer to that is, that you get what you pay for.
Again, I think this issue originates from a bit of a lack of understanding or grasp of a particular product, and that’s not a put down of any sort.
Let’s work with cars again as an analogy. Many of us are fully aware of the reality that there is a huge price range when it comes to cars, so most us wouldn’t be surprised to find that you can buy a brand new car for under ten grand, or you could buy one for twenty grand, thirty grand, even a couple of hundred grand if you like.
But when it comes to more specialized products, we’re often just not well versed enough with those products to know why some cost so much more than others. I’ve had a similar thing recently with video and audio device for my YouTube studio.
Nearly all of the gear I’ve purchased over the past year or so while doing my perfect to improve the quality of my videos has given me a similar headache in that there’s usually a massive price range, and I don’t understand enough about that stuff to learn why I might want to spend three or four times the cost on one product vs another.
I think we all appreciate that there is a range of option of materials, and this will impact on the price. You’ll notice that the cheapest grinders above are crafted with the cheapest materials, so that’s one thing – and when it comes to the main body of the coffee mill, this doesn’t basically impact the performance. What you can’t see or feel, even though, is the burrs – and burr quality will make a difference, and these can vary in cost, hugely.
This is the same with electric grinders, some of the more costly electric grinders have burr sets which cost more at wholesale than some of the cheaper electric grinders cost at retail, so this offers an indication as to the huge range available when it comes to burr quality. The better the burrs, the better particle uniformity you’ll get, mainly, and this will lead to better-tasting coffee.
The size of the burrs is part of it, bigger burrs tend to cost more, though size isn’t everything – I once heard someone say. Bigger burrs suggests fewer revolutions necessary, and less time and effort essential when manually grinding coffee beans.
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This post first of all appeared at Coffee Blog – The UK Specialty Coffee Blog – For Lovers of REAL Coffee!