A Beginner's Guide to Coffee Grinders

welcome to today's video which is a

beginner

's

guide

to

coffee

grinders

because there are many different

coffee

grinders

which one is right for you which one meets your needs which one is the best value for money now what we are going to do today is cover a little bit of theory at the beginning about how to grind coffee, properly understanding what's going on, why it's worth worrying about, why it's worth spending money on some equipment to do it and then in the second half we'll talk about all. of these grinders here and talk about the features you get, what happens when you spend more money and I hope that in the end you feel well equipped to purchase a coffee grinder that meets your needs and has even better tasting coffee every morning.

The quick thing is that I'm not necessarily going to recommend specific models or review specific models in this video where I talked about grinders before. There will be links in the description. You can see the ones where I've made several different videos. Particular grinders today, these are representative grinders of different technologies or different features just to explain what happens when you spend more money, but let's start with the theory, let's start with what happens when we grind coffee, why we grind coffee in the first place. Now, a whole coffee bean is a wonderful thing, but it is not good tasting coffee.

Water can't reach all the flavor because it can only reach the outside of the grain, so if you put whole grains in hot water. There will be some flavor coming out of the water, but not really much, so we grind it and grind it into small pieces because what we're primarily concerned about is exposing sort of more surface area and the finer you grind something, the more surface area you have and the more easy it will be for the water to get in, dissolve the flavor, put it in your cup of coffee and you will have a better and more delicious cup in the end, now one of the big cells you will have What we hear about a coffee grinder is that freshness is in actually a really key aspect of grinding coffee and that's true, when you crush the coffee you expose the entire surface and that means everything you've exposed can start to go rancid and there are three ways. in which coffee goes rancid, the first thing and for me the saddest thing is the idea that those flavors are simply lost, what is called they float volatilely in the atmosphere and those flavors and aromas essentially fade away, you smell them for a minute and then you won't be able to drink them later, so the older the coffee is, the more flavor it essentially loses into the air and into the atmosphere.

The second thing that happens is that you have what are called sort of Stalinist reactions where different compounds combine with each other and start to create new flavors that are often not particularly pleasant, so after a while your coffee will taste considerably worse and it will be less interesting and then the third thing is rust and that will happen. Some of the fats and oils within the coffee will oxidize and essentially begin to turn rancid. It doesn't have a great smell or taste. Rancid oil and rancid oil in all its forms smells a little fishy and that's true with coffee, so it's very old, very rancid coffee.

It's not something I would recommend and the best way to avoid all of those things is to simply break the coffee bean into pieces when you want to brew it immediately and then brew it that way you capture a lot more flavor and have less loss of quality. It's a better time now, every once in a while on the internet you'll see something that says that pre-ground coffee from a very, very good commercial grinder will make better coffee in many cases than freshly ground coffee from a very cheap coffee grinder and that's An interesting test and study was done, I think it ignores some of the other reasons to buy a coffee grinder, which we'll get to in a second, but really what shouldn't be underestimated is the pleasure of grinding coffee at the time.

It's a huge release of smell which is fantastic, that moment of grinding your coffee, whether first thing in the morning or in the afternoon, is a pleasure not to be missed, so from that perspective alone it is worth having a grinder of coffee and if you have a pepper grinder. of any kind, then you owe it to yourself to have a coffee grinder too, if you drink coffee now, the second thing that is talked about a lot is called grind uniformity and that is the idea that when you grind coffee, the ideal is that the small pieces that you make should all be the same size because when you come to prepare them then prepare them in a coffee cup, the more uniform the size, the better they will give up their flavor in a more uniform way and that makes sense in anything in the kitchen if you're trying to cook some potatoes, if you cook a small piece of potato and a whole potato, they will cook at very different rates and probably won't cook well together.

The same goes for ground coffee, if you're trying to make coffee. If you mix a bunch of small coffee chunks together with a bunch of very large coffee chunks, you'll get a lot of flavor from the small chunks and not much from the others, which can result in a very unbalanced, unpleasant cup of coffee. Small chunks can add some bitterness, those giant chunks can add some acidity and those two things combined are not how I want to start my day, so as we talk to grinders, you'll hear me reference this idea of ​​grind uniformity and It is important that you help. you make better tasting coffee if the pieces are very similar in size you will have less unbalanced and less unpleasant cups of coffee more delicious cups of coffee now the third aspect of coffee grinders that is very important in coffee grinding that is very important is the control of the grind size The ideal grind size for espresso is very different from the ideal grind size for something like a French press, for example, with espresso you want a lot of very fine small pieces because you are going to extract that coffee very little liquid to prepare.

It's very strong with a French press, you may want to grind it a little coarser, so being able to control the grind size is actually very important, especially in espresso, but we'll touch on that a little later, so that's it. . Key information to think about as we look at these different mills will help us understand why you might want to spend a little more money here or there, but before we get into that, there's a quick ad for this video sponsor that is Skillshare Skillshare is an online learning community filled with thousands of classes for creative and curious people like you and me.

You can then explore new skills, deepen your existing passions, or challenge yourself creatively like I've been doing recently. I really enjoyed Andy. The j pizza class has been covering things about finding your style and discovering your own kind of creative identity as someone who does creative work. It's really important and helpful to challenge your thinking and challenge what you're doing if you want to do better work in the future. and at less than ten dollars a month, Skillshare is incredibly affordable and gives you access to every class on the platform. If you're curious, click the link below, the first thousand to use it will get a free trial. from Skillshare Premium thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video, so let's start with these 10 grinders in front of me, let's start from the beginning with the cheapest grinder on offer, which is this one, it's a blade grinder and you can get them for about 20 pounds.

They're very cheap, they're very simple things, you have a little motor and it's connected to some rotating blades in here and when you turn on the grinder, they spin very, very fast and essentially those blades are not very sharp. From simply crushing the coffee into small pieces the more you use it the finer the coffee will be, but the problem with this is that you don't really have any significant control over the large size, actually having the same grind size every time is quite complicated and having a uniform grind size is extremely unlikely. This type of act of violence of simply crushing the coffee beans instead of chopping them creates a lot of very fine pieces that can add a lot of cloudiness, bitterness, and a kind of dullness to your cup. of coffee in the morning, I'm not saying you can't enjoy coffee made with a blade grinder and there are some tricks you can also do to improve the quality of your output which are linked here if you're really enjoying coffee with blade grinders now.

You could enjoy your coffee much more with a better grinder that offers a little more control and consistency. If you have one of these and are upgrading, don't throw it away, they are a fantastic spice. It's useful to have grinders on hand, but grinding coffee is a little frustrating, so we moved from the so-called blade grinders to the rest of these, which are called burr grinders, so within these you have two cutting discs, one of they turn against them. the other and controlling the distance between the two controls the size of the pieces when they finally come out of the grinder into the collection container below where you're going to take them and then pour them into your coffee maker or whatever you're going to drink.

Do it with them, this is a classic type of basic manual grinder, it's relatively cheap, it weighs around 40 pounds and a lot of people choose to start their grinding journey here with one of these because it's not a big investment and that's true. You will have some control of the ground configuration in something like this, you can control the distance of the birds. This is a conical burr grinder, so you have sort of a cone-shaped main burr that rotates inside this thing. Conical burrs are popular in many. Grinders have a larger cutting surface, which helps you grind more coffee per shift, which is helpful.

This is in contrast to so-called flat burr grinders, where you have two discs or rings of cutting teeth, one rotating against the other. control mechanism, you simply space them further apart for a coarser grind or closer together for a finer grind. Now cheaper manual burrs and grinders tend to be made of ceramic. This is a cheaper material to produce. They don't cut as cleanly, so their grind uniformity isn't as good as a metal burr, but as a staple they work fine. What you also tend to see on cheaper bird grinders is a bit of wobble in the bottom bar while grinding because it is not stabilized very well. because they're trying to keep costs down, that's also going to result in a less consistent cup of coffee, so if you're looking at going from, say, £40 to £100, you're going to have the same basic technology that you're going to use. the job here you're turning you're working to grind the coffee between those burrs now here you go from a plastic construction to a metal construction and you go from ceramic burrs to metal burrs so it's a big jump in quality to go from £40 to Save £100 now with the previous grinder and this grinder and the next one too.

They are what are called stepped grinders where you adjust the grind here at the bottom in fixed amounts. This is a kind of step that clicks into place and is a controlled movement. that means you have pretty good control over the size of the terrain, but not infinite control in a way and we'll talk about continuous grinders later, but for the purposes here, the steps work very well, they're repeatable, it's useful to have this. It will do a better job of grinding coffee than the 40 pound grinder. Buy a good amount, in fact, not needing a motor.

By making you do the hard work, you can invest a little more in other things, like bur quality, and get better results. less money, the downside of course is that you have to grind the coffee every time every morning and if you're grinding a lot of coffee that can take a while and it's hard work. Grinding coffee is relatively physical, which can change with more expensive grinders. or larger grinders, but ultimately hand grinding is something you have to enjoy doing as you go from 100 pounds to something much more expensive in the world of manual grinders, generally you get an increase in build again , it better feel solid.

They are great materials but you are actually going to pay for better grind uniformity and that is what more expensive manual grinders generally offer and at this price the grind that comes from this is very very good and you can grind effectively for espresso with an expensive hand. Grinding is very hard work, but you can do it or you can grind pretty well for filter coffee, so that's what you've spent with manual grinders, going from something pretty cheap, cheaper materials, cheaper burr construction, less uniformity and that's what increases as you go. I've been up and up, so there are many reasons to have a manual grinder.

You may travel a lot. It might be like camping. You might just enjoy all that, but if you're at home. grinding coffee every day then I would recommend investing in an electric coffee grinder and that's where we start so this grinder here is cheaper than this manual grinder it's a little bit more expensive than this grinder here but it's aexcellent way to start the day. you have an electric motor in there and that spins a set of conical burrs and that's what you tend to see in the prices of decent entry level home electric grinders. Now cheaper grinders will have cheaper motors and because grinding coffee is hard work, a cheaper motor will exceed the kind of power needed to grind those beans simply by spinning them faster, which is why you will tend to see cheaper grinders.RPM Faster in their motors, they won't always grind coffee through the burrs faster, but they will generally be a little noisier.

The rotation of the motor generates some noise. If you spin too fast the way you cut coffee, you'll just get a little more noise. In the morning, this grinder, as you usually see at this price, is a stepped grinder, so you have fixed steps and it's not really capable of brewing espresso well. We talk about having a cheaper motor that spins a little faster, but when you're grinding very, very, very fine, you need a lot of power, you need a lot of torque in that motor and the cheaper motors just can't do it, so you tend to see cheaper grinders like this one that are great if you need filter coffee, but aren't great if If you're trying to make espresso, if you look at, say, a dedicated filter grinder that weighs around 125 pounds and goes up to, say, 250 pounds , you will see a variation in the characteristics that is quite interesting.

This grinder was initially designed to hold like a bag of coffee. the hopper here and it has a little timer on the side that you would set and press and grind for a set period of time to dispense the amount of coffee that you wanted, but that's not how many people want a coffee grinder. to work you want what is called a single dose grinder we are going to put what you need and no more in terms of coffee beans for that drink that batch whatever it may be you may want to keep the coffee stored and sealed and not placed in the grinder, It may be that you have more than one coffee at home and want to vary one bean to another.

A grinder like this is designed to be a single dose grinder, it doesn't actually fit that much. coffee here at the top so you only pour what you need instead of having a timer. It has an automatic shut-off that stops the grinder when it is no longer grinding coffee. This grinder like this is a stepped grinder so it has fixed increments by which you can adjust the grind size and this grinder is also a filter only coffee grinder. Its motor is actually designed for filter coffee and not espresso. What I used to see historically was when I needed espresso. a unique espresso style grinder and this is a very good example, it's a small increase in price because you get a more substantial motor and I think this costs around £350 which is a lot of money now that it's actually designed. to be a dedicated espresso grinder and has a slightly more traditional design meaning it has a large hopper on top to again hold a large bag of coffee beans and grind what you need when you need it, many people They choose not to. do it like I said and use them as a single dose, although you'll probably want to replace this hopper with something more appropriate.

What you see when moving from a dedicated filter coffee grinder to a dedicated espresso grinder is not just the grinding ability. It's finer, but you tend to see continuous adjustments right where you control the fineness or the thickness. It's usually just a wheel that you can move as much as you want. Espresso requires very small adjustments in the grind size to have a fairly substantial change in the way the coffee is brewed, so you want to have as much control as possible, that's what you tend to see in an espresso grinder. exclusive. This will grind using time, so press "Go" and it will grind for, say, 9.2 seconds to give you a consistent dose. of coffee, this type of grinder can be purchased in a lot of different configurations from different manufacturers, you will have different motor sizes, different burr sizes, different burst shapes, you already know different types of technologies that control the amount of coffee you It grinds as it grinds, but the basic principle is there: if you're grinding for espresso you need a more powerful motor and that tends to mean you need to spend more money and that's where your money goes now.

These two grinders are emblematic of the more modern approaches to grinders of this type. of grinder has been around for 60 if not 70 years, now these are much newer, as you will see, they are both ground to order, they have no real space to hold much coffee, they can hold a single dose and nothing more, but we are also designed to range from coarser filter grinds to very fine espresso grounds. This is a flat burr grinder and this is a conical burr grinder. This one is a little cheaper. I think it weighs about 400 pounds. This is a bit. more expensive, £500, feature wise they are both very similar, it is ground in a small collection container which can then be used to pour into a pour over or poured directly into a porter filter if you are making espresso, now the difference The Price between the two could come down to the design and construction of these, the materials used or the components used, it could also come down to your approach to things like retention.

Now, retention is not something we've talked about yet, but yeah. something that is actually very important and that you will see discussed in many different grinder reviews. When you put coffee beans in a grinder, they will go into a chamber that contains the cutting discs, the ones that rotate and the ones that push the beans, ideally all of them, but usually not all, there can be between 0.2 grams and 2 grams or even more trapped inside the grinder that the mechanism cannot fully expel now with more traditional designs like this that was not considered a large amount. problem because you know it will be eliminated when you grind the coffee the next time.

The downside is that when you change your grind, you will retain some of the previous grind settings that you would have to delete, which is a bit wasteful and the more you need to purge with a grinder, the more wasteful that grinder will be. Some commercial grinders may require 20 or 30 grams of purge, which is not acceptable, but that's how things were for a long time. More modern solutions may require a couple of grams, if that. so designing around retention is really a key issue. Here you have a quite different approach. Retention is addressed by the innate design type of the bird camera.

Here you have a bellows where you push down to blow air. through the grinding chamber pushing the last bit of coffee into the collection cup below, that's the kind of idea there is about how a grinder handles retention, whether it's a bellows or a little knocker on the side , it's something you have to think about and decide how. You want to spend your money because it will affect your type of workflow in the morning. Do you want to have to go and click on something a few times or press the bellows a few times if it doesn't bother you and saves you something? money then it's worth considering, but retention is important and retention is discussed a lot when you watch other grinding machine reviews on YouTube or read about them on websites, so I think understanding is really key.

Now one last note on tapered versus flat burrs. And I don't want to get too deep into an esoteric discussion here, but some people believe that tapered burrs are a little more suited to espresso and that having a little more particle size diversity can help give more texture and more body to your espresso. , other people prefer a kind of flat bird-style espresso, where you have a little more clarity, maybe more sweetness, but not as much texture, understanding that is a consideration if you're getting to the fine end of dialing in espresso when you have a great machine and you want a great grinder to go with it, but if it's your first grinder, it's not something you necessarily need to obsess over until your technique and other aspects of coffee brewing catch up.

Now one last note on the burst is that some grinders have options for different birds where you can install grinders like this one or this one. You can install different birds from different manufacturers that will give you different results if you are buying a grinder and want to test it in the future considering a grinder that has a few options for the grinder burrs, it is one thing that maybe you just need to keep in mind when purchasing, That's not essential, but it's nice to have if you're thinking of buying a grinder that will last you a long time.

Long time not worrying about needing to constantly upgrade now these nine grinders I have here are, I think, viable first time purchases, even though we've gone up to £500 I could see this still being someone's first coffee grinder at home. I want to include a little bit more just to explain how people could end up spending huge amounts of money on coffee grinders for what they're chasing now, this grinder in the end is incredibly expensive, it costs three and a half thousand dollars, but I think it's a good example. of how far people will go in the search for better uniformity, better construction, better design or better construction, more control.

Here you have variable rpm. I can change the speed of my motor to achieve different results and how the workflow works. different type very nice it's beautiful I can easily change the burrs you know these types of details are what you end up paying for now I understand that going from a more basic level grinder to something like this is a big jump in quality and a big return on your money investment in going from something like this to something like this is an increase in quality, but it's a smaller jump, it's a more incremental increase for a lot more money and that's true for most things in this world, like how much the closer you are.

Getting to the final goal is more expensive and more difficult to do any type of update. I'm not saying it's bad value for money, but if you're thinking about spending a lot of money on a coffee. Grinder, you really have to have some very specific problems that only this one will solve for you as a final note. It seems like they range from the lowest quality to the highest quality, but that's not entirely true. Manual grinders are a cheaper way. to achieve better quality, better grind uniformity at lower prices because you don't have to spend money on the motor so you only spend on burrs and overall construction so that's the

beginner

's

guide

to coffee grinders and It's there, I hope I can help you.

Create a small flowchart for you, your needs and your budget. If you are 300 pounds and want a filter coffee grinder, I can help you get where you need to based on your needs. Do you want absolute quality for the money or do you want an electric motor to help you do some of the work. These are questions that I can't answer for you, but I hope that now you can answer them for yourself and make a better decision and know that there are still things that we have. We haven't talked about it here, they are small details that are worth taking into account in the reviews, such as not only the volume of a grinder, but also the quality of the sound, which suits you very well.

Those kinds of things, like the user interface, frustrate you. Is it peculiar? It's frustrating? Is he picky? Those things are important and should be taken into account when reviewing a review before purchasing, but now I want to hear from you in the comments below. Do you have one of these? Are you thinking about upgrading to one of these? What are you looking for in a coffee grinder? How has this video potentially helped you make a better decision? I'd love to hear your feedback, I love your thoughts, but for now I'll say thank you very much. for watching and I hope you have a great day