How to choose coffee grinder? Blade grinder or Burr grinder ?
By Chloe
March 24th, 2021
67 views
If you want the freshest and most flavorful cup of coffee, you've got to grind the beans right
before you brew coffee beans, otherwise it will start to lose flavor and aroma within one hour of being ground. So what's the best way to grind coffee?
Two Styles of Coffee Grinders
Coffee grinders basically come in two styles, blade and burr grinders, the blade grinders work like tiny food processors with a spinning blade that chops coffee into smaller and smaller pieces. You just need to hold the button down to grind and shake the machine and then to redistribute the beans and stop when the coffee is grounded on the size you want. Blade grinders are compact and inexpensive compared to burr grinders. Burr grinders are a little bit bigger and a little fancier, they have three parts, a hopper where you feed in the beans, the grinding chamber and a removable bin that captures the ground so you can transfer them to the coffee maker. With a blade grinder, you need to hold the machine for all the grinding process, grinding and shaking in order to have it work. With a burr grinder you just switch it on and it goes to work. The whole beans are pulled from the hopper through the metal rings called burrs that spin against one another to crush the coffee. The setting you choose determines the space between the burrs. If you want to changes the size of the grind, you just need to turn the coarseness dial knob to adjust the distance between the upper and lower burrs.
Different way to brew your coffee
Whatever the style, a good coffee grinder should be able to grind beans to precise sizes. The size you want depends on how you plan to brew your coffee. In general coarse coffee is for French Press, medium for drip machines and fine for espresso. Think about how it's going to be exposed to the brew water. For fast brewing like espresso you want small particles so the coffee has plenty of surface area to give water fast access; for a slow French press style, where the coffee sits in the water, bigger coarser particles are better.
Choice of Coffee Beans
You also need to pay attention to the coffee beans that you use, light roasted beans and very dark roasted beans will be a little bit different in the result because they have different densities.
Which one is better? Burr or blade grinder?
1. Easy to Use
From the point of convenient usage, we found that burr grinders were more easy to use. They had sturdy plastic grounds containers they could withstand a morning drop and they ground coffee neatly without making a mess. Burr coffee grinder can free your hands.
For blade grinder, you need to shake blade grinder all through grinding not just at the end, or some pieces get over ground while other beans stay whole.
2. Grinding Performance
We also checked grind performance, burr grinders produce an extremely even grind since each bean only passes through the burrs, compared to that repeated whacking they get in a blade grinder. The issue with a blade grinder is that the superfine particles get stuck on top, and the fine particles end up below the blade. This issue is relative to the blade design. It is also very important for the grinding, if the blades sat lower in the bowl, the coffee beans couldn't escape from the grinding, the whole beans and huge chunks will not left behind.
So considering the time and consistency, we would suggest using a burr grinder, which is better for home, and better burr grinders would improve on those aspects. They're easy to use and they take the guesswork out of grinding.
3. Budge
If you do not have a big budge, the blade grinders are not a bad choice, they are less expensive than burr grinders. It’s better that you can get the fresh ground coffee with the blade grinder than buying the pre-ground coffee. To remember, shake the machine while grinding in order to get a better size of coffee.
Choose the one which meets your need and that's all right!
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