We rigorously tested the most popular coffee grinders to find the best ones, taking into account the coffee drinker in question and offering our recommendations.
Daniel joined the Serious Eats culinary team in 2014 and writes recipes, equipment reviews, articles on cooking techniques. Prior to that he was a food editor at Food & Wine magazine, and the staff writer for Time Out New York's restaurant and bars section.I can't tell you how many times I've heard a coffee pro say that the single biggest upgrade a person can make is to buy a good-quality burr grinder.
Like many of OXO's products, its burr grinder's design is simple and intuitive. Even more importantly, it delivers excellent grind consistency given its price tag. This is about as inexpensive as a burr grinder gets before the grind quality really starts to fall off, making it a good starter grinder for most home-brewed coffee drinkers.
It should go without saying that you can also have weak underextracted coffees, strong overextracted ones, and everything in between. As you are probably starting to see, given how grind size can determine surface area and flow rate, and thus extraction, a grinder that offers a wide range of grind sizes and produces a uniformly sized result at each grind setting is desirable. The idea is that if a grinder produces coffee grounds that have too much variance in size for any given grind setting, results become increasingly difficult to control.
This time we assembled a tasting panel that included two professionals along with four civilian tasters who represented a range of coffee-drinking expertise and preferences.
What does this tell us? Mostly, it tells us that the preferences of the individual taster matter a lot and that the coffee itself has a significant role in determining whether a grinder's uniformity of grind matters much or not. The darker the roast, the less the grinder's quality seems to matter. If anything, the uniformly sized grounds produced by the better grinders seemed to be a bad thing for the dark roast, bringing some of the harsher charred flavors to the fore.
Before running these tests, I called up Steve Rhinehart of Prima Coffee Equipment in Louisville, Kentucky, to get some of his wisdom on grinders. According to Rhinehart, ideal grind sizes fall roughly as follows: 1,000 microns and larger for French press; 600 to 800 microns are the most common sizes for most other home-brewing methods like pour-over; grinds for AeroPress and moka pots often fall in the 400 to 600 micron range; espresso is usually around 300 to 400 microns.
Overall, it was clear that none of these grinders could really pass muster with a professional barista for pulling espresso shots, but for a home user who's less concerned with pro-level perfection, the Breville can work.Baratza's Virtuoso+ coffee grinder is consistently recommended by pros for home use, and for good reason. It's well-built, with metal and plastic housing that gives it enough weight to sit solidly on the counter.
Taking apart the burrs for cleaning is one area where the Baratza machines fall short compared to the competition; it could definitely be a more intuitive and user-friendly process.One other thing worth mentioning about Baratza, in general, is that they have a great reputation for their customer service.
A different major kitchenware review site complained about this interface, saying it was difficult to figure out how to use. I have no idea what they're talking about—it couldn't be more clear or easy. A large turn-dial sets the grind level, which is clearly indicated on the screen's grind chart. That chart has some useful labels on it, offering suggestions on which grind setting ranges are best for which brewing methods, a helpful starting point when trying to dial in a grind.
Even better, if you start with the Encore and later want to upgrade the burrs, it's as simple as swapping them out with the ones that come with the Virtuoso .Priced at the low end of what a person can hope to pay for a decent burr grinder, this is the one to get if you want to up your coffee game by playing with grind settings but don't want to shell out for our other top picks.
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