General Advice on Grinders [good if you're wondering what to buy]

admin

Thought I'd repeat this excellent post from long-time member FC from another thread:

---

Guys, take care not to confuse an interest in coffee, with an interest in the equipment, with the journey taken to get the cup of coffee out at the end.

People say a lot of stuff about a lot of different things to do with coffee in the forums, and in the end I wonder if many would be able to tell the difference in an actual blind shoot out of coffee VS equipment....and if they could ("tell the difference"), what would it prove...that something is different to something else OR that something is "better" than something else. What is the definition of "better", to any individual? And once you add milk will the difference still be there?

There is no academic difference to be found between a grinder with 58 mm planar burrs ("plates") and one with 50 mm plates. The difference is in the delivery / volumetric output (ie grams per second or minute or whatever).  For a similar speed, 58 mm plates will deliver more grams of grinds than 50 mm plates, in a certain amount of time.

Anyone that says they can discern a significant difference in the character in the cup, when using the same bag of beans and machine and operator technique, that can be attributed solely to the difference in size of the plates used between a 58 mm and a 50 mm grinder (eg K3 and M2 and others)....has a very special palate indeed.

This group of small to large sized cafe grinders (be they planar or conical), have been developed with only a couple of things in mind.....to deliver varying quantities of grinds in a working environment, without overheating when used in continuous manner.

Cafe sized conical grinders are well known to require atleast 3 kilos of beans to be put through before they bed in to deliver consistency in grind and speed of delivery. Planar grinders on the other hand work well pretty much straight up but the burrs dont last as long as conicals (so....you change them more often).

And now we also have titanium plated flat (planar) burred grinders, with the same benefits as regular flat plated griders, except that the plates last around 8 times longer before needing to be replaced. That means they also last an aweful lot longer than conical burrs, and dont have the need of bedding in at the start.

The difference in all this stuff, is in the type of use that any of these grinders is put to. If you overuse something, it will fail in some way or other, and if you overspecify something, you just end up with a different set of probelms. EG large cafe sized conical grinders used in a home situation = wasting a lot of coffee "bedding in" at the start OR waiting an aweful long time in home use before the grinder will deliver consistency in grind and speed, and the large amount of grind retention left in the grinder after each individual use.

So I say again....not sure about a lot of stuff that is written in the forums about coffee grinders and "quality".

There are a lot of grinders on the market that are very good grinders each in their own way, that will appeal to consumers according to their individual needs and wants. And individuals all have different palates......(they can be grouped into people that have above average palates, average palates, and below average palates....which one are you, and if you did a blind cupping, could you pick any differences between the grinders....really, and if so what would it all really mean  ?).

Try not to confuse an interest in the equipment, with whats in the cup. Buy what you want, above a certain price bracket of grinder, where the quality of the equipment is assured, and enjoy your journey. Its the journey that counts, and your palate will develop with it over time. Then you can look around to see if some other type of equipment may be able to do something different for you....but you have to undertake the journey first.

Hope that helps.

Edit:
Of course I should have noted that rather than finding differences between grinders according to the type or size of grinding plates/burrs that they employ, real differences in the cup may be found due to the differences between the methods of adjustment used. Much is written about stepped VS stepless and micrometric adjustment, but there is probably virtually no difference in good quality modern grinders whether they are stepped or stepless because in this day and age the size of the steps in good quality stepped cafe grinders is small enough to be virtually insignificant VS stepless adjusters, some of which can be quite notchy due to clutch arrangement and therefore also not as accurate as people think from the reading material out there...... This leaves true micrometirc adjustment to be the most "accurate"except these cant be used for multiple coffee making methods and therefore have a much smaller "convenience" factor for people that use more than one method of brewing.

People buying older used grinders should beware that older grinders is where the larger steps are. A good example of this is the Rocky. When discussed only from the point of view of grinding plate type, there wont be any discernible difference in the "in cup" quality between coffee ground with it and any other 50 mm semi commercial cafe grinder. However the literati amongst us will get a much more *accurate* grind from a more modern 50mm stepped  grinder such as Macap M2 where the steps are much smaller than those opf the Rocky, or the micrometric version of the M2 or other such as Eureka Mignon (also 50mm, micrometric adjustment). The minute you do one of the "stepless conversions" in the Rocky as written up in any of the forums, there shouldnt be any difference in grind accuracy or cup quality between it and any other modern 50 mm grinder, and this makes for a good example. There is also the issue of how much slop there is in the adjuster mechanism of any particular model grinder...

Note what I have just written means that any individual forum reader needs to be able to judge howe *up to date* the information they are reading is. In terms of the stepped Vs stepless discussions, I find they are rather dated, except if you buy a poor quality new grinder to start with (but they are generally not discussed in coffee forums).

And of course you cant downplay the importance of the individual operator in all of this, because a good operator will make great coffee with an old rocky, and an inexperienced or bad operator may well make swill using the most expensive Robur.......

While rather long winded, I hope all this helps put these seemingly endless debates on grinder "quality" and cup quality into perspective.

UNM

Excellent advice!!

Janlab

This is a great post, and should alleviate much anxiety in new prospective grinder buyers. Here is the alternative: You are going to spend a relative large amount on a grinder, and you have a budget, and you choose a grinder, only to find a negative post on it somewhere, then the doubt steps in, you look at others' kit and you think "I need at least similar"...and you forget its their fourth or fifth grinder. You see that for $100 you can get a better "review" and so the spiral ascends, up way beyond budget and sanity, and then the crash comes as you sober up and then you fix on another starting grinder and the whole scenario plays out again..... I can write this because it happened with me, and I've read it over and over again. So I consider the advice from KK to look at the Pharos great, and now I have one, very happy. For my conssumption I need no more, and guests can wait for the good coffee that it allows me to make. Jan L

shape_shifter

I guess my view is that although I don't have a top of the line grinder I still find that my $100 Spong gives a better consistency, and keeps a consistent pressure in the machine, compared to the electric grinder which can vary up to 1 bar during a 30 second pour, and as I'm only doing 1-2 coffees at a time it doesn't matter how long it takes to do the grinding.

galumay

Just get an HG-One. That is all.

FreshCoffee2

Appreciate your thinking my post is worthwhile enough to place as a stand alone topic  There is at least one other point to make. Too often items of equipment are looked at as being the sum of their individual fitments or technical attributes. In the case of grinders for example, in view of whats written in a lot of web based articles, a buyer might decide (for fear of buying the "wrong thing") to bypass looking at any stepped grinders, or only aspire to conical burrs or only to look at certain brands or models. Unfortunately the reality is that the equipment is not the sum of its techincal attributes. Rather, I would say that particular machines are in toto, simply good grinders or they are not.  This will change according to any particular individuals sitiuatoin, needs and wants, and this is why internet reading should be supplemented with a visit to a profesisonal equipment trader so that the discussion can be better balanced, before a client makes their choice. Otherwise, clients just get channeled to the same old pieces of equipment while other perfectly good equipment is passed over or deemed not to be good enough. Also as someone above wisely stated in a round about way  it is not a good thing to get caught up in the spiral of upgradeitis (caused by over reading and then second guessing and becoming insecure about the "quality" of your current equipment, and becoming convinced that some other equipment offers more than yours......) Thats good for busines but in many cases is nothing more than a waste of money searching for minute differences that may or may not in reality exist. Reiterating then, beware the onset of needless insecurity brought on by over reading, and for that the best medicine is to talk to a professional equipment trader. Fact not fiction, right decision for you not just based on what others have done, after which its not a bad idea to tone the reading right down a bit so that you can learn and enjoy your chosen equipment rather than become fearful that it's not doing something for you that some other brand model would have done..... Hope that helps. 

UNM

and as I said elsewhere. Usability should be a primary consideration. This can vary between different people and buying something sight unseen on the internet based just on others reviews is risky.

Jupiter212

Thanks for your advice!