Do you enjoy your coffee? If yes, then you know how important it is to get the right grind. Investing in a quality coffee beans grinder can make all the difference when it comes to getting the most out of your brew. You see, not only does a good coffee beans grinder reduce the time it takes to grind beans, but also it helps bring out different flavors and aromas in your coffee as well. With that being said, we’re here to explain in detail everything you need to know about choosing the best grinder for your home and taste preferences. From budget options to pricier alternatives, we’ll cover everything from manual vs electric, Burr vs blade grinders, and everything in between.
Why It’s Better to Use a Coffee Beans Grinder?
Coffee beans, by nature, begin to lose flavors right after grinding. Therefore, buying ground coffee instead of whole beans coffee, means you are missing an entire world of flavors and aromas that are characteristic only to freshly ground coffee beans. Hence, If you’re serious about brewing the best cup of coffee, and enjoying the freshness and rich flavors, you need to start by investing in a high-quality grinder.
Grinding beans is what extracts the essential oils and flavors from the coffee beans to produce the desired aroma and taste. By grinding beans yourself, you can ensure you’re getting a more concentrated flavor and more flavor intensity. Not to mention, grinding your coffee beans allows you to control the level of grinding, to make sure it fits your taste. Most importantly, grinding your own beans is a great way to know exactly what goes into your coffee. A lot of people don’t know that most commercial coffee beans are roasted, then ground, and then re-roasted again to create the different flavors in coffee. If you want to enjoy the full benefits of coffee beans without any of the unnecessary additives, you have to grind them yourself.
Types of Coffee Grinders
If you’ve ever had your coffee beans ground before, then you’ve likely encountered a blade grinder. Blade grinders use a blade to pulverize the beans into a fine powder. The drawback with blade grinders is that they produce a sheer force to kind of smash the coffee beans, leaving very little room to control the grind size as well as the uniformity of the grinding. This loose grinding doesn’t produce the same flavor intensity as other grinders. In order to get high-quality grinding, a burr grinder is the way to go. As the name suggests, a burr grinder has teeth that crush the beans as they rotate inside. This produces a much more even grind that results in a brew with a much richer flavor.
While blade grinders are the most common type of grinder, we recommend choosing a burr grinder. Although Blade grinders are cheaper, quieter, more compact, and have a longer lifespan. Their grinding is less consistent and controlled, making it impossible to reach quality grinding time after time. Burr grinders are enabling much more control and uniformity over the grinding. These are key factors in producing a fine cup of coffee. Now, most burr grinders use metal burrs, there are cheaper burr grinders that use ceramic burrs, and don’t cut as cleanly as the metallic options. In the debate between hand and electric coffee beans grinders, we suggest you’ll make your choice based on how you plan to use your grinder. Brewing daily? go for the electric grinder. Travel a lot or spend much time outdoors? hand grinder might be more suited.
What Factors do you Need to Consider When Choosing a Grinder?
Grinder type – while blade grinders may be enough for newbies, burr grinders will be the right pick if you look to really upgrade your coffee. This obviously comes with a price, as decent burr grinders start at around $50.
Level of control – Most grinders nowadays come with what we call steps. Each step deducts the grinding level. More steps mean better control.
Material – This won’t only affect the life span of your grinder, but also the uniformity of the grinding. Mostly when it comes to hand grinders, Cheap plastic grinders tend to lose their ability to deliver uniformity over time. This is less common when buying a grinder made of metal.
Coffee type – Espresso lovers will probably be better with a high-quality, electric, burr grinder. This is because of the fine and delicate grinding level needed to produce a good espresso shot. For filter coffees, even a grinder that doesn’t deliver superb results with fine grinding will do.
Ease of use – This one is highly subjective, but you want to make sure the grinder you choose is easy to operate. Additionally, you want to make sure it can fit inside your cabinet.
Price – This should be the last factor you consider when choosing a coffee grinder. However, if you choose poorly, it can have a significant impact on your daily coffee routine.
What is the Best Coffee Grinder?
If we’re being honest, there’s no one perfect grinder that fits all households. As mentioned above, Your grinder needs to first fit your taste in coffee and your lifestyle. However, we reviewed several options and formed a list of the best coffee bean grinders as we see it right here. Though we did our best in covering all aspects, it is important for you to know that most of our team members are fanatic espresso lovers and that may have impacted our judgment.
Conclusion
Choosing the best grinder for your home is a crucial step in the brewing process. Whether you prefer to grind your own beans by hand or opt for an electric option, your grinder will affect how your coffee tastes and smells, so you want to make sure you get it right. A coffee beans grinder is much a question of taste and needs. However, There’s no doubt a grinder has a key role in the coffee routine. Therefore, we recommend that you’ll first define your needs and then follow the ground rules we outlined while dedicating enough funds to invest in a proper coffee beans grinder.