Conical vs. Flat Burr Grinder What's The Difference（1）?
By Chloe
February 1st, 2021
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Conical vs. Flat Burr Grinder What’s The Difference?
Coffee grinder is one of the most important pieces of coffee equipment you’ll own as a home brewer. Since burrs grind is working better than chopping the beans, they result in a better way than a blade grinder. However there are two different types of burrs you can choose from: flat and conical.
No matter it is a flat grinder or conical grinder, the working structure is determined by how the entire grinder is designed and made, how to define the diameter of the grinders, the motor and its speed, the ventilation, and the whole machine.
What’s the difference between these burrs? What is the structure for these two types? How do they affect the precision and consistency of your grind size, as well as the risk of coffee retention? Let us start with the burrs difference.
What is a Flat Burr Grinder?
Flat burrs has two rings of burrs that lie flat on each other,horizontally aligned to the ground and have angled teeth. The lower flat burr is assembled onto the shaft of the motor, when the machine starts, the motor will start to work, driving the lower flat burr to spin. When you grind your coffee beans, the beans fall between the two flat burrs. The grinding is carried out by the “teeth” which are on the edges of the flat plates.
Because the flat burr are placed horizontally to the ground; one ring faces up while the other faces down.The coffee beans are pushed in between the rings by the spin force of the lower burr. It is the distance between the rings that determines the size. With flat burrs, the ground coffee is pushed sideways out of the burr set. This takes a lot of force, and to achieve this, the grinder’s motor rotates at a higher RPM.
Since beans spend more time with flat burrs than conical burrs, there’s more friction involved, which generates more heat. It also takes a stronger motor to spin the flat burrs, which produce a loud high-pitched noise.And you may find that flat burrs will produce a static charge which can cause your freshly ground coffee to become stuck to the sides of anything it touches especially plastic bean hoppers or ground coffee collection boxes built into your grinder.
What is a Conical Burr Grinder?
The burrs in the conical grinder have a cone-shaped ring that snugly sits inside another hollow cone-shaped ring. Your whole coffee beans are pulled down through the conical burrs at a slight angle, but the path is essentially vertical.
With conical burrs, however, the grinding happens vertically. One burr sits inside another. The outer burr is a circular, hollow ring with angled teeth. The inside burr is conical with a larger base. If you look at it from above, it can appear star- or flower-shaped. This is because it has channels that help the beans to funnel through. It also has small angled teeth.
Conical burrs usually rotate at a lower RPM which means that they tend to produce less noise. Because they turn more slowly, they also do not create as much friction as the flat burrs.Friction will create heat and any excess heat at this stage is not going to do your freshly ground coffee beans any good. In fact, it can alter the taste of your final brew due to loss of flavor through the coffee’s oils being vaporized.
A conical burr due to its structure, it will not bring out this problem because grounds flow straight down, and a quick flick of a brush will leave your coffee grinder clean and ready for its next use.
So now you know the differences between flat and conical burrs. We will introduce more about the difference in next article from the other point of views.
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Conical vs. Flat Burr Grinder What is the difference (2) ?
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