Coffee Grinders

To ensure the best tasting cup of coffee you need to purchase the freshest high quality coffee and grinding your own coffee beans. Both of these steps are fairly easy to do, the first step is to visit our coffee store for the beans, the second step is to use a coffee grinder. Coffee grinders can be inexpensive as a separate appliance, and today some coffee makers or espresso machines even have the coffee grinder built into them.

There are basically two different kinds of coffee grinders, the blade coffee grinder and the burr coffee grinder. What's the difference between these two kinds of coffee bean grinders?

Blade Coffee Grinders
Most inexpensive coffee grinders use a metal blade to chop up the coffee beans. The blade cuts up the coffee beans, and you control the grind fineness by how long you let the grinder run. Unfortunately, the resulting coffee grounds can be uneven in size, leading to inconsistent brew quality. Another downfall, is that if you are grinding coffee finely, and therefore leaving the beans in the grinder for a longer period of time, there can be significant heat created by the blades. This can give your final coffee a burned taste. These are fine coffee grinders for basic use, but that's about it.

Burr Coffee Grinders
Burr coffee grinders crush the beans between a moving grinding wheel and a non-moving surface. The spacing between the grinding wheel and the non-moving surface is what regulates the coffee grind size. This method of grinding coffee allows for a more consistent coffee grind. There are two different types of coffee grinders in the burr category, the wheel burr and the conical burr.
Wheel Burr coffee grinder is the less expensive of the two burr grinders. On this type of coffee grinder the wheel spins very fast and can be noisy. On some brands of wheel burr grinders this higher rotation speed make the coffee grinder rather messy as well.
Conical Burr coffee grinder is the best coffee grinder you can buy. On this type of coffee grinder the burr spins slower than on the wheel model. This slower speed makes the Conical burr coffee grinder quieter than their wheel counterpart and are generally less messy. When grinding oily or flavored coffees the conical burr coffee grinder is not as likely to clog as other types of coffee grinders. The conical burr coffee grinder is the best type coffee grinder as well as the most expensive type of coffee grinder.