Coffee Grinders

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.

Just 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 goal is uniformity.

Coffee grinders start at around $20 and you can pay hundreds or even thousands for a serious grinding machine. 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 needs to be a worthy grinder.

At entry extent, coffee grinders will either be the manual or electric burr grinding machine or the electric blade coffee mill.

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 Mill

The electric blade coffee mill, 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 utilizing the same principals as a branded bean grinder would.

Burr Mill Vs Blade Grinder

The burr coffee mill controls the grind size by setting the distance between the burrs (abrasive surfaces). This method gives the user more control and is more capable of producing a consistent grind than the choppiness of the propeller blades in a blade mill.
 

Blade Vs Burr Coffee mill 1

Burr grinders improve coffee extraction by ensuring all the coffee particles are extracted evenly.

The manual burr grinders are a perfect camping/travel companion and will give your arms a good exercise 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 made my share of stovetops utilizing this method 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 kinds of grinders are not really consistent in grinding a uniform profile and some won't give you the range of grind profiles required for different styles of extraction.

Needed 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 article here: Coffee Grinders .