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 device 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 intention is uniformity.
Coffee grinders start at around $20 and you can pay hundreds or even thousands for a serious coffee grinder. If you haven’t outlaid thousands for a commercial machine or buried money into a barista course but you do have surplus cash to invest in this day to day ritual, your next worthwhile investment needs to be a worthy grinding machine.
At entry level, coffee grinders will either be the manual or electric burr grinder or the electric blade grinding machine.
Bur Mill
A burr mill, 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 grinder, 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 grinding machine there’s a good chance it’s an electric blade coffee mill. These are all utilizing the same principals as a branded bean mill would.
Burr Coffee mill Vs Blade Mill
The burr grinder controls the grind size by setting the distance between the burrs (abrasive surfaces). This technique gives the user more control and is more capable of producing a consistent grind than the choppiness of the propeller blades in a blade coffee grinder.
Burr grinders enhance coffee extraction by ensuring all the coffee particles are extracted equally.
The manual burr grinders are a excellent camping/travel companion and will give your arms a good exercise if nothing else. It’s also 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 using this recipe and have lived happily through the occasion.
The blade coffee grinder 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 types 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.
Required tools for styling coffee
This article 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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