Our list mainly includes cone grinders, because of their affordability compared to flat grinders. In a cone grinder, coffee beans are ground between two burrs to grind and grind the beans. That means you’re grinding more evenly than with a traditional blade sharpener, and most blade grinders can be much finer than the best possible blade grinders — which means you’ll be equipped suitable for grinding your own beans to make espresso at home.
Flat grinders are similar, but they are usually more expensive. In it, ridges are placed on top of each other and beans will pass through them as they grind. This means that the action of the grinder will push the grounds out of one end (instead of relying on gravity like cone grinders, so less fines get trapped in your burrs) and the beans. spend more time in contact with the ledge. This results in a more regular grind overall. In general, though, for home brewers, cone blenders are fine – even if they require more maintenance and don’t lead to the right scale from small to micrometers.
TIRED: Blade Grinder
The Krups Model $14 you see this is a perfectly fine blade grinder. It does its job as intended. Blade blenders are built more like a blender, with a blade that rotates around like a food blender. The problem is that the blade does not produce uniform results. Some of your coffee will be fine at the bottom and at the top you will have beans that are too large for a French press. The result is an inconsistent, unpredictable beer. These grinders are cheap, and yes, using fresh beans in a blade grinder is much better than buying pre-ground coffee. (You can learn how to shake the beans to grind them a bit. Watch the video of world barista champion James Hoffmann for more details.) hack blade grinder.) But if you can afford it, we highly recommend one of the burr grinder options we’ve listed.
EXPIRE: Cusinart Supreme Grind
It may be a burr grinder, but members of our review team bought and tested this Cuisinart model at least three times because of its cheap price. It’s huge, grinds unevenly like we’d like, and the motor kicks in on all of our units (which we’ve bought between different units over the years) after a month or two. We recommend using the $100+ models for electric burr sharpening.
