Best Coffee Bean Grinder for French Press, Drip and Espresso?

Making great, fresh coffee is all about getting the best combination of coffee beans, coffee bean grinder and coffee maker. For most of us, there are also cost issues to think about. Do you really need to spend big on a grinder or coffee maker to get the results you are looking for?

The more you understand how the various kinds of grinder work and the way that coffee makers extract flavor, the better you can decide what you need to buy for the coffee you most enjoy.

The best grinder for a French press coffee maker is a conical bur grinder, for example, for reasons explained below. If you are using a drip coffee maker you can can get good results using a simple and inexpensive blade grinder.

Simple Blade Grinders

These are the small, inexpensive grinders that we are all familiar with. A blunt metal blade turns at high speed and literally smashes the coffee beans to pieces. The disadvantage is that the coffee grounds are of all different sizes, ranging from a fine dust to large chunks.

The dust gives problems during filtration- it can clog filters or pass right through, producing muddy coffee. It also makes extraction of the coffee flavors unpredictable.

Burnt Coffee Taste

A final problem is that blade grinders can overheat the coffee and your coffee will have a burnt taste when it is brewed. Some machines offer 'pulse' grinding so that the blades don't spin too fast for too long. Alternatively, you can just take care not to run a grinder for too long on manual control.

Using Blade Grinders for Drip Coffee

I don't want to overstate the case against blade grinders here. If you are making drip coffee you can use a blade grinder successfully. A paper filter will help remove bitter oils. Practice with the grinder can ensure you don't burn the coffee before it is brewed.

It will certainly taste a lot better than instant coffee!

Using a Blade Grinder for Expresso

If you are making espresso you need as much flavor to be extracted as quickly as possible from your ground coffee. This means a fine grind. Too many 'boulders' in the coffee and it will work against the best efforts of your coffee maker.

Using a Blade Grinder for French Press

This is never a good idea. Any dust sized coffee grounds will pass through the metal filter and result in cloudy, foul-tasting coffee.

Burr Grinders

These have wheels that spin at high speed. The wheels have burrs that crush the coffee beans and produce a consistent particle size.

They can overheat the coffee and many have a timer that limits the grinding to thirty seconds in order to prevent this. You might need to run the machine a couple of times to get the ground coffee that you want.

On the downside,they take up more counter space than a blade grinder and because the burr speed is high, they can be noisy.

Conical Burr Grinders

These are burr grinders that work at a slower speed. The burrs grind the coffee against a long flat surface to produce carefully graded coffee of even particle size.

These machines are the most expensive grinders but offer a lot of advantages. They are especially good at grinding oily, full flavored gourmet coffees of all kinds without the grinder clogging. They are also quiet and will allow you to produce even the finest grinds without burning.

When You Really do Need to Invest in a Conical Burr Grinder

• If you need complete control of the grinding process to produce great coffee every time.
• If you want to use gourmet coffee beans which are sensitive to heat
• If you are intending to use a French press. Any coffee 'dust' will pass though the mesh of the plunge pot clouding the coffee No one likes muddy coffee.
• If you like espresso coffee- only beans from a handful of coffee tree varieties are used to make good espresso and these tend to be oily beans that need a conical burr grinder. If you use any other kind of grinder, the mill will clog, leading to a lot of frustration.
• Any coffee that needs to be ground to a very fine and even consistency benefits from a conical burr grinder. If you are making Turkish coffee, for instance, a conical burr grinder is probably the only mill that will produce the right consistency without burning.

You Don't Need an Automatic Coffee Maker to Make Great Coffee- just a good Grinder.

If you like a lot of coffee in the morning- several cups- or you are making coffee for a lot of people an automatic drip coffee maker or a large French press can save a lot of time. If you are only making one or two cups of coffee, a simple cone and filter will make coffee just fine. In fact, a simple cone is better than many coffee makers in terms of the coffee it produces and the time it takes.

Why is Manual Coffee Making often better?

One reason is that any coffee maker that uses a hot plate, is a coffee maker that can burn your coffee, giving it that 'worst diner in town taste'.

Another reason is that many automatic drip coffee makers are terrible at controlling the flow of water through the coffee. The water might be added too quickly which results in poor extraction of flavors. The water might not be spread around the coffee leaving dry spots (or at least under-extracted areas) again producing poor coffee.

Many machines just don't keep the water at the right temperature (around 200 degrees Fahrenheit is perfect) If the water is be too hot or too cold you won't get the right taste.

Only a very good automatic machine can get everything right. Unlike you, a machine cannot learn from its mistakes, so if it is second rate when it leaves the factory it will be second rate for ever.

Tips for Manual Drip Coffee Making

• Set up your filter cone and carafe. Pour hot water through the filter until the carafe is about half full, discard this water. Do the same with your cup. This will preheat everything, giving you a hotter cup of coffee. It will also purge any paper taste from the filter..
• If your coffee doesn't foam up, it is stale. Hot water will force fresh coffee to give up its carbon dioxide gas. Stale coffee will already have de-gassed.
• Don't rush the brewing, Wet all of the coffee grounds first before you add the bulk of the water. You can stir the coffee in the cone if you like strong coffee but be careful not to break the paper filter!

The video below shows you how to produce fresh coffee without pumps, gurgles, vibrating kitchen counters or a significant outlay of money.