The Burr Coffee Grinder: An Essential Component
People often ask us how to go about making consistently great tasting coffee. They often think that they need to purchase some fancy small coffee maker or expensive coffee beans, but do any of these things really matter? The simple answer is no – your choice of machine or the type of beans you purchase won’t usually have much impact on the quality of your coffee. While there are some exceptions to this rule, the essentials to brewing coffee have remained relatively constant throughout time:
1. Freshly Roasted Coffee Beans
2. Properly Ground Coffee Beans
3. Proper Water Temperature
When any one of these components is missing from the brewing process, you can expect an inferior result. While all of the components are important, perhaps the most important is the quality of the grind, and the reason for this has to do with how the flavors are extracted from the ground coffee beans. To achieve the best possible grind it’s essential that you use a burr coffee grinder, which will produce a very consistent grind. Burr coffee grinders are able to achieve such a level of consistency because of the way they are constructed, using a movable wheel that rotates against a non-movable surface.
You may be wondering how a coffee burr grinder differs from the commonly used blade or “whirly-bird” grinder. The difference here is that blade grinders use metal blades to pulverize the coffee beans into a bunch of tiny particles. While some of these particles are of appropriate size for the type of beverage being brewed, many of them are not. In fact, most blade grinders produce a fair amount of dust that ultimately leads to bitterness in the final cup. The bitterness you taste is a result of the over-extraction of flavors that occurs due to the large surface area created by the dust particles. A quality burr coffee grinder will almost never produce dust due to the grinding mechanism it uses.
When it comes to purchasing a burr grinder, it’s important to make the distinction between a wheel burr grinder and a conical burr grinder. If given a choice, we would always purchase the conical model due to its lower operating noise, more consistent grind and cleaner operation. In our opinion, it’s just not worth saving a few bucks to deal with the sub-par performance of a wheel burr grinder. Of course, if you have to choose between it and a blade grinder then by all means opt for the wheel burr. Fortunately, purchasing an affordable and reliable conical burr grinder is relatively simple given the number of options available. Many of us have used burr grinders produced by the Solis Corporation due to their reputation for quality and performance. You can purchase a Solis Maestro grinder for about $80.00 and this grinder will last for several years if properly cared for.
Ultimately, if you’re interested in brewing consistently great coffee then it’s essential that you use a quality burr grinder. For more information and for a variety of burr coffee grinder reviews, please feel free to browse around our site.
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