Grinder Roundup

Kevin Sinnott

Grinders are the unsung heroes of coffee brewing. Every single coffee brewing method depends upon accurate grinding both of the overall size and size distribution. The best example in the cooking world is stir frying. If your vegetables are uneven in size, the smaller pieces get overcooked and the large ones may not even be cooked. Coffee grounds are the same way. The smallest pieces expose so much surface area they get over-extracted and the larger boulders are under-extracted. Meanwhile, with drip brewing methods, grind has a second function, that is as a flow regulator. Small grinds called "fines" clump together and can stop cause backups in the brew basket. Conversely, if the grind is too coarse, the water will run through too quickly, leaving precious coffee oils behind, un-extracted.
There are three basic choices in grinders:

Roller ground (Preground) – This is the way canned coffees come, but it's also an option for most sealed bagged coffees. This is the theoretical holy grail of grinds. These are gian industrial rollers that crush the beans (video) , with very little heat I might add. There's an ongoing debate about preground versus bean freshness, but no one can challenge the ability of large roasters to grind evenly. It took me years to come close to matching at home what any canned coffee does when it comes to grind consistency.

Blade Grinder – These are the $19.95 specials that pervade the industry. I have yet to test one that does even a passable job because they work using a flawed theory, that is that coffee is simply another spice. If pulverization is the goal, they are effective, but at anything coarser, their unevenness is a fatal flaw. Although in theory this would make them acceptable for espresso, their lack of consistency batch to batch makes them unusable for espresso, which needs both extreme fineness and very specific particle size.

Disc grinder – This type of grinder is the only kind I recommend to home users. A few things you should know: The faster they work, the more likely they are to produce fines, which really means a wide disparity between coarse and fine. The commercial Ditting grinder (which my wife insists remain outside the kitchen) is a great grinder, but produces a lot of fines, which it by design cling to the inside except when cleaning it, but can sometimes fall out into the ground coffee, rendering it unusable. Slower, manual grinders inherently produce fewer fines and this is a good attribute. Another factor to consider is just why you want a grinder, as in what brew method are you most interested in. I've found that every disc grinder has its sweet spot – that is an optimal grind setting. For instance, the Ditting does a great fine grind for auto-drip, but when it comes to coarse grinds for my Chemex or French Press, I get better results from my Jericho grinder, which does not do fine grinds as well. Ditting even makes a different disc set optimized for coarse grinds, but I checked into costs and I can more easily afford a second grinder.

There are differences in build quality between grinders as well. Some discs are coated and others aren’t.

So, how do they stack up? Unlike brewers, where there are ultimately subjective tests that one might proclaim as ultimately more important than any simple specification, grinding comes down to dry scientific inquiry and publishing the outcomes. The test that judges a grinder’s worth is called a ro-tap. It is a series of sieves or screens that measure the distribution of grind fineness. There is an acceptable range of grounds distribution and the grinder that has the least variance between big and small wins.

Here are my test results of various grinders. I compared a good preground sample done by roller as well as blade grinder samples. All ro-tap tests courtesy of Modern Process in Chicago, who are world leaders in grind technology. Dan Ephraim just happens to be the first person I even met in the coffee industry, but that’s another story and was at a different company. Dan owns Modern Process and conducted all the tests.

Conclusion

Cuisinart -- If I had money in Cuisinart (I don’t), I'd be rolling. They make a hands-down winner when it comes to grind consistency and, as I said, it's the holy grail single thing a grinder has to do well. Things are never perfect. It's a very noise machine (audio clip). You must also be careful to not knock the fines which clump together. If you are so thrifty that you use them or if you're careless and they tumble into your brew basket, the fine quality this machine exhibits is lost.

Zassenhaus -- This excellent German-made hand grinder is the perfect grinder for the camper. It is designed to fit between your legs as you hand grind. It is not difficult to use and it might even be a form of exercise. If is quiet, and there are little or no fines. The only negative is the lack of settings, even click stops. You have to get good at setting it by eye and, yes, it will drift. For the experienced end user, it’s fine and it handles the range from French press to auto-drip. Not for espresso. You can watch Peet's Jim Reynolds use it here.

Kitchen Aid -- A fine contender, nearly as good as the Cuisinart and much quieter. It lacks the ability to collect the fines – who knows, maybe that's why it tested less well, but it is still in the top rank. Build quality, as usual with Kitchen Aid is very good.

Solis -- This beautiful and well-promoted high-end grinder costs around $200 and it's made its way into just about every well-heeled coffee connoisseur home. Is it that good! It did pretty well in our comparison, but it did not do as well as the $50 Cuisinart, although no one, certainly not me, is going to claim that Cuisinart is going to last as long. No one claims a Jaguar is as good a value as a Ford Focus. This report is about grind quality period. Maybe down the road we can do some long-term durability tests. The Solis does a good job with everything from a Technivorm through home espresso.

Jericho -- My vote for coolest looking grinder, at least by my standards. Perhaps the best coarse grinder. It ought to be sold in combination with either the Chemex or French press. Doesn't even pretend to do espresso, but can probably be coaxed to accomplish a fine drip for, say, a Krups Moka machine.

Kitchen Aid (Retro) -- when this machine first came out it was as if I found a TWA Convair 880 flight to New York – I literally had to have one. I was very disappointed. It turns out (and Kitchen Aid's Bruce Roberson is one honest man) that they over reached on the grinder's range. They actually re-did the grinder’s design and re-issued it. The newer one does pretty well. Kitchen Aid has two grinders, a retro and a modern one. The Retro one looks cooler and does a good job, but… use if for drip grinds, not espresso. Okay for Chemex too.

Kitchen Aid (Modern) -- actually, this machine most resembles a modern looking Jericho grinder. It does something very smart – it grinds fairly slowly, a very good thing. Whereas the Cuisinart gets its high marks only if you know to leave the clumpy fines alone, the Kitchen Aid, although it does slightly less well, has almost no problem with fines. It is a very good match for all drip grinds, including French press/Chemex and does not attempt to do espresso. It comes with instructions on how to move the disc to extend its fineness, albeit at the cost of coarse grinds.
Technivorm – I met Gery, the Technivorm's owner/engineer/designer at this year's International Housewares Show. He was somewhat shocked when I told him of my general distaste for all things blade grinder. He grinned and revealed why: Techivorm had just released a blade grinder. I was as shocked as I would be to see George Howell drink instant coffee. Gery seemed a little hurt at my expression and he insisted his blade grinder meets all the stringent European coffee standards for drip grind. If I recall, it has no range, just one and of course that's for Gery's Technivorm, although that would probably be enough for most people. I have yet to receive my sample.

Braun grinder -- This baby has been around longer than any competing model, unless you consider the Kitchen Aid’s redesign and reissue a continuation, and I do not. The Braun was many people's first real grinder. It uses a genuine burr. Like the Cuisinart, it has both a clump of fines in every batch that's easy to remove and discard. It is only a little quieter than the Cuisinart (face it, everything is quieter), and it does most drip and even slightly finer grinds quite well. It does not do espresso and it is clearly optimized for European drip (read non-coarse) grinds. It does a passable Chemex and French press, but if you use either of those as your primary unit, look elsewhere. Ignore the cup settings: they are unusable. Expect to run through two full cycles for enough coffee to make a real pot.

Capresso -- For some reason , this grinder is seldom mentioned at coffee meet-ups and I don't know why. It’s something of a sleeper. It does a very competent job at grinding and is better-than-average in construction. It has an interesting reach, doing drip to home espresso and is reasonably quiet, although nothing competes with the Kitchen Aid (modern) for being usable while your other half seeps.