Most people spend a lot of time selecting their coffee brewing equipment before buying a grinder, making it the most underappreciated piece of home barista equipment. Considering that you’re here, reading this piece, and that you’re obviously seeking for the finest coffee grinders, it is safe to assume that you are aware of the significance of the coffee grinder.
When I initially became interested in the hobby of a home barista, I did this. I devoted a lot of time to finding the best espresso grinder for the money I had available (about nothing at the time), but I didn’t give buying a grinder much attention. Fortunately, as I’ll explain in a moment, the grinder I got ended up being a fantastic choice.
Years later, however, I have come to fully appreciate how crucial the coffee grinder is, and having tried several coffee grinders, I also have a lot of experience with them. As a result, when I discuss the finest coffee grinders, I mostly speak from experience and not just theory.
several kinds of coffee grinders
Blade grinders, which actually should be called “choppers” because blades don’t grind, are available at the very entry-level. But I digress. Although I’m not a fan of these, I’ve included them because they’re the cheapest, a lot of people buy them, and I believe grinding your own coffee beans—even with one of these—is typically a better option than purchasing pre-ground coffee. However, I think they’re difficult to use, noisy, and primarily because they chop rather than grind.
But keep in mind that while I do believe that grinding your own beans is always preferable to pre-ground (and a thousand times preferable to instant), I believe that investing a few more pounds on a burr grinder would be a sensible decision.
The “grinding wheel” grinders will be our next stop. There are a few grinders here, all of a similar design and price range, and they share a few characteristics.
1. The price is really low.
2. The makers refer to them as “grinding wheels” because of their strange, blunt burrs.
Again, I’m not a huge fan of these for reasons I’ll discuss when we get to this section, but I’ve included them nonetheless because they’re affordable, they’re very popular, and I believe using one of these is an improvement over using a chopper and unquestionably an improvement over using pre-ground.
We’ll move on to the entry-level burr grinders as our next kind of coffee grinder. There are really quite a number of them, they’re all fairly similar, they feature good (often stainless steel, conical) burrs, and they typically cost between £80 and £200. Most of these grinders are actually suitable for the majority of brewing processes. But, there are a few outliers.
The Best Coffee Grinder Blades
Thus, I’ll start off in the pits with the cheap blade coffee “grinders” ;-). Because they contain blades, these devices aren’t actually “grinders,” thus how can they grind? They create inconsistent grinds, lots of fines and plenty of larger pieces, and there is no method to change the grind size; the only thing you can manage is how long you “grind” for. They don’t perform well in terms of particle homogeneity.
Therefore if you can, skip this step and go on right away. Nevertheles, if your budget won’t allow it and you must get one of the less expensive blade grinders, read on.
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This blade grinder isn’t horrible by any means; in fact, I’d say it’s one of the finest of a bad lot ;-). Contrary to some of them (and yes, I’ve had the displeasure of using blade grinders), you just need to twist out the metal cup portion to dump the grinds into your brewer or portafilter.
If I’m being really honest, some of the marketing copy makes me shake my head. For instance, it says that this works for Americano, espresso, and cappuccino.
Manual grinders need you to grind coffee by hand if there is no electric power source available.
