| Choosing Grinder - a guide |
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There is a saying in Italy that a Barista skills depends on how good the coffee grinder is handled. The truth is that a good espresso machine will not reach its full potential, unless you have a good grinder and grind the coffee yourself. An evenly and finely ground coffee is essential to get a good espresso with nice crema. Which grinder works best for you? On this page we will try to give you a brief guidance before making your choice of coffee grinder. We begin by sorting out the difference between the grinders that grind wih knives and grinder burrs, and then go into the difference between grinders that grind with low and high speed. |
| Grinders with knives |
 The most simple and cheapest coffee grinders grind with knives. Coffee beans are broken up by the rotating blades. How finely the ground coffee will become depend son how long you grind the coffee, the longer the finer will the ground coffee become. The quality of the ground coffee from a grinder with knives is usually not fine enough to be suitable for use in an espresso machine. A disadvantage is that if you grind for a long time, this can effect the ground coffee to become static and difficult to handle. A grinder of this type is suitable for use to a coffee brewer or a coffee maker where the degree of fineness of the coffee ground is not as important as it is when using the ground coffee for an espresso machine. |
| Grinder with burrs |
There are different types of coffee grinders that grinds with burrs. Those who grind at high speed and low speed. We'll try to sort out differences of these types of grinders.  What determines how good your coffee will be is how evenly the grinder grinds coffee beans and the heat generated by the grinder during grinding. If the grinder is too hot during the grinding process, it affects the coffee negatively. Grinder burrs that are conical or flat A grinder that grinds with burrs has either two conical burrs or two flat burrs. One of the burrs is fixed and the other rotates with the grinder motor. The beans are fed into the burrs disk and then ground down to a uniform size. The grinder has different settings, you preset the grinding degree and your grinder takes care of the rest. This is an important difference from grindes with knives where you control fineness of grind manually according to how long you let the blades grind. Coffee grinders that grind at high speed  Coffee grinders that grind at high speed have smaller, inexpensive motors to compensate what they lack in strength with the speed of the grinding process. This type of grinder has not the capacity to grind large amounts of coffee, and at fine setting there is a risk that the grinders will get clogged. Grinding at high speed can create static electricity which makes the ground coffee difficult to handle. Likewise is grinding under relatively high temperatures which can affect coffee's taste. A grinder of this type facilitates the grinding process compared to a grinder with knives as you can preset the grinding fineness. These grinders does usually have a difficulty to manage to grind fine enough for espresso why they are mainly suitable for grinding to coffee brewers or coffee makers. Grinders that grind at low speed  Coffee grinders that grind at low speed has a powerful engine at low speed has the power to handle large amounts of coffee without any problems. Grinders of this type have a relatively large and powerful engine that weighs more than 50% of the grinder's total weight.A grinder that grinds at slow speed generates little heat, even though it grinds large amount of coffee, i.e. the heat effect on the coffee is low. These grinders grind more quietly than other grinders. Grinders that grind at low speed can grind from coarse to fine. The number of settings for grinding is great. A grinder that grinds at a low speed is more expensive than other grinders, but there is also a big difference in quality. If you choose to buy a good semi-automatic espresso machine, we recommend that you choose a coffee grinder of this quality to get the full potential out of your espresso machine. Examples of grinders that grind with the burrs at low speed is Rancilio Rocky, Rancilio MD, Eureka Mignon, La Pavoni Jolly, Isomac Roby and Isomac Granmacinino. We hope this information will help you in your choice of coffee grinder. Please e-mail us at info@kaffegrossisten.se if you have any questions. |
