It can be said that this area is where you fine tune your engine, developing your hand as you work through a gamut of grind sizes from fine to coarse, discovering which one is right for you. All the while recalling the flavour, mouth feel and satisfaction in anticipation of that first sip.
Basically like fresh beans, good tool and a loving hand make all the difference to the finished product, so too does the grind. Eventually, whatever the grind profile you prefer, the end purpose is uniformity.
Coffee grinders start at around $20 and you can pay hundreds or even thousands for a serious mill. If you haven’t outlaid thousands for a commercial machine or buried money into a barista course however you do have surplus cash to invest in this everyday ritual, your next worthwhile investment should be a worthy mill.
At entry level, coffee grinders will either be the manual or electric burr coffee mill or the electric blade coffee grinder.
Bur Grinder
A burr grinding machine, grinds the coffee beans between two revolving abrasive surfaces. The distance between the two abrasive surfaces is set by the user and determines the size of the grind. When the distance is larger, the grind will be coarser (larger granules) and when the two abrasive surfaces are set close together, the grind will be fine (smaller granules).
Blade Coffee mill
The electric blade grinding machine, uses high speed spinning blades to slice through the coffee. You may well have an example in your pantry already. If you own a bar mixer, stick blender or spice mill there’s a good chance it’s an electric blade coffee grinder. These are all using the same principals as a branded bean coffee grinder would.
Burr Coffee grinder Vs Blade Coffee grinder
The burr mill controls the grind size by setting the distance between the burrs (abrasive surfaces). This recipe offers the user more control and is more capable of producing a consistent grind than the choppiness of the propeller blades in a blade coffee mill.
Burr grinders enhance coffee extraction by ensuring all the coffee particles are extracted equally.
The manual burr grinders are a ideal camping/travel companion and will give your arms a good workout if nothing else. It’s likewise a back-up for when you have a caffeine urge in a power outage.
A purist might say ‘a Ninja with a Samurai sword would do a better job on your beans than a blade grinder’. That said, I have brewed my share of stovetops utilizing this recipe and have lived happily through the occasion.
The blade coffee mill tends to hack at your beans as the blades rotate at high speed. The user controls the grind size by the amount of time the blade chops away at the beans. These kinds of grinders are not really consistent in grinding a uniform profile and some won't give you the range of grind profiles necessary for different styles of extraction.
Necessary tools for styling coffee
This post was worth syndicating, all the credit goes to Moka Head, a website that takes Moka Pot coffee seriously. Check the original post here: Coffee Grinders .
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