Coffee Grinders - Choosing a Coffee Grinder
When on a quest to prepare the perfect cup of coffee, coffee aficionados will advise you that you must use a coffee grinder to grind your own coffee beans. When you grind your own beans they spend less time exposed to the air thereby preserving their freshness and flavor. When you walk by a specialty coffee shop you can smell the strong aroma of the freshly ground coffee. The smell almost draws you to it and we strive to achieve that when making coffee at home.
So, you may wonder are there different coffee grinders or will any run of the mill kind suffice? There are different coffee grinders and quality of the coffee you produce at home can be dependent of the coffee grinder you ultimately choose.
There are ultimately three ways to grind coffee. The first way would be the blade grinder. This is the most common coffee grinder found in households today. The ending result of grinding coffee is to make sure that the coffee is ground evenly. Unfortunately, blade grinders fall short here. One will find when using a blade grinder is that the pieces are both large and small and there will be more than a sufficient amount of “coffee dust” as well. The coffee dust can be clogging to espresso machines and French presses. The coffee produced from the blade grinder will be of a lesser quality due to the fact the lack of uniform bean size tells us the brewing method will not perform optimally.
The second way to grind coffee is known as the burr grinder. This is the best method by far for grinding coffee beans. Burr grinders will be found in specialty coffee shops and they are infamous for producing an extremely even grind. The burr grinder even touts a range of settings so that espresso, French press, percolators or drip coffee machines can be used to produce the final cup of coffee. Burr grinders also have another advantage as they use less heat so that there is less chance of the taste of the coffee bean changing.
The final way of grinding coffee is particular to making Turkish coffee. To produce a high quality Turkish coffee you would need to produce an extremely fine ground coffee. You would need to utilize a high end burr grinder to achieve this result but an old fashioned mortar and pestle will also suffice!
The best type of coffee grinder would be the conical burr grinder but also be advised that these are in fact extremely costly as well. You must take into consideration your individual needs and how much you love your coffee!
If you would like to add something whimsical and unusual to your collection of coffee grinders, try an antique coffee grinder as well.