Burr grinders another option for fresh-grinding coffee

Coffee grinding part II: burr is the best.

Last week we touched upon two of the three basic methods for fresh-grinding coffee: crushing and chopping. Crushing is done most commonly with mortar and pestle and can produce a very fine, powdery grind used most often in brewing Turkish coffee. Crushing is a time consuming task not very practical for busy mornings. Chopping is the method employed by most home coffee grinders, and uses a whirling metal blade similar to that of an electric blender. This is a perfectly suitable method for home brewing, and if everything else is up to snuff (you’re using good quality beans, have good water, grind right before brewing) you should get a good cup of coffee.

However, it’s not uncommon for people to purchase a pound of coffee beans from their favorite coffee shop only to return and complain “It’s good at home, but not as good as when you make it here. What am I doing wrong?” Well, they’re probably not doing anything “wrong.” Certainly part of the added enjoyment you perceive in coffee shop coffee is in the coffee shop itself. Just as hotdogs taste better at the ballpark, so too coffee tastes better at your favorite café. But it’s also fairly certain that the equipment the coffee shop is using is a good deal “better” than what most home kitchens have on their counters. One of the most important pieces of equipment in either environment is the grinder. Any coffee shop worth its salt uses the third method of grinding alluded to above: burr grinding.

Burr grinders use either two rotating discs or cone-shaped elements, and have a serrated blade-like surface that mostly cuts and slices the coffee beans as opposed to the chopping done by a whirling blade unit. The ground coffee particles are thus much more uniform in size and shape, which makes for a more consistent extraction of coffee flavors when brewed. There is also less filter clogging from the finer particles that are inevitably produced with whirling blade grinders, again resulting in more even extraction during brewing.

Conical element burr grinders are preferable to the disc type as they are less prone to clogging. They generally rotate at a slower speed, therefore producing less heat than the disc type. Heating coffee while grinding may adversely affect its taste when brewed. But burr grinders, using either discs or conical elements, are much preferable to whirling blade grinders. Fortunately, some good quality home burr grinders are available at finer kitchen appliance stores. Jura-Capresso, a company that specializes in coffee appliances for the home, makes a very good burr grinder that sells for under $100.

It is important to match the grind with the method of brewing as well, and burr grinders allow more flexibility and precision in this area than whirling blade grinders. Blade grinders generally limit you to three basic grinds: coarse, medium and fine. Most home drip brewers will call for a medium grind, while the French press method will favor a course grind. Getting different grinds from a blade grinder is a function of time, that is, it depends on how long you hold the button down that keeps the blade in motion. With a good burr grinder it is the proximity of the grinding/cutting elements to one another that determines the fineness of the grind. You can adjust this manually on the grinder to get a precise and consistent grind for whatever particular brewing method (or even specific filter) you prefer, time after time.

I confess that I’ve used just about every method of grinding and brewing imaginable, from crushing beans with a rock while camping and tossing them into a kettle of water steaming over a campfire to using the highest quality precision equipment in our shop. I’ve enjoyed making every single cup. However, for day-to-day coffee drinking, I want the very best cup I can make each and every day. Proper grinding is one key to getting that perfect cup.