Getting started with coffee: should you choose a manual grinder or an electric grinder?

Source:Best Coffee > News Author:Best Coffee Published:2019-08-24 11:50:51

The relative unevenness of hand grinders is mainly due to the design of the burrs. The vast majority of hand grinders use conical burrs, which are characterized by fast but inconsistent grinding. In contrast, burrs that offer relatively even grinding are flat burrs, but they also have the drawback of being slow—meaning it takes 3–5 times longer to grind the same amount of coffee. That’s why hand grinders generally don’t use flat burrs.

Flat burrs can be likened to the stone mills used in rural areas for grinding flour. They control the coarseness of the grind by adjusting the distance between the upper and lower burrs, offering high precision and even grinding.

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Most hand grinders use conical burrs, grinding coffee through the passage between the outer and inner burrs. Due to the significant difference in spacing between the upper and lower parts of the burrs, the grinding is fast but lacks precision. Since hand grinders lack marked settings, adjusting the grind size—say, from French press to siphon—requires trial and error, wasting time and coffee beans.

Entry-level hand grinders are very affordable. The editor suggests that if you’re not yet sure whether you’ll fall in love with coffee and are just trying it out, don’t invest too much at the start. You can upgrade later if you get into it. So, for an entry-level hand grinder, there’s no need to buy an overly expensive one. Personally, I think one around a hundred yuan is fine. Those with more money can ignore the price factor, but even higher-end models mostly use conical burrs, and the improvement in evenness isn’t particularly noticeable.

Getting started with coffee: should you choose a manual grinder or an electric grinder?

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