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Why is a burr grinder better than a blade grinder?
There are two different types of electric coffee grinders: burr grinders (the only kind you’ll find in coffee shops) and blade grinders (the dinky plastic gadget that doubles as a spice grinder). Both grinders will break down whole beans, but the results are vastly different.
Burr grinders crush the coffee beans between two revolving, serrated surfaces called burrs (hence, the name). This technique is more likely to yield an even grind, which means the beans’ flavors will be released evenly in your brew. The price point for a good electric burr grinder starts around $100—but if you want to take your coffee routine to the next level, it’s worth the investment.
Blade grinders, which you can buy for as little as $20, use a more, ahem, violent Edward Scissorhands-style approach. A conical blade whirrs around the chamber like a propeller, chopping those pricey beans into pitiful, pulverized bits. In addition to damaging the beans, this technique is less likely to give you an even grind: Some beans could end up in bigger chunks, while others may be powdery. As a result, a blade grinder is more likely to produce slightly bitter coffee or a brew that isn’t quite as flavorful as the ones you get at a coffee shop. (It’s worth noting that hand grinders/manual coffee grinders, like this travel grinder from 1Zpresso, are also burr grinders.)
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What to look for in a burr grinder
Here are a few key distinctions you’ll find between burr grinders to look out for based on your choice brewing method.
Different brews require different grind consistencies: You’ll want a fine grind for espresso, a medium grind for pour-over coffee, and a very coarse grind for French press and cold brew. Machines vary in the number of grind settings they offer, but generally speaking, the more settings, the better. Some grinders, like the Eureka Mignon series, are what’s called stepless grinders, which means they don’t have a fixed number of settings and the adjustment wheel moves freely to make the smallest adjustments, like a dial on a high-end gas range. However, don’t be wooed by a machine offering 800 settings if you’re not actually going to use them all. Instead, think about the coffee making methods you use most often and choose a machine that covers all of those grind consistencies. If you’re pulling espresso shots at home on the daily, you might want a coffee and espresso grinder with plenty of space on the fine-grinding end of the dial. If you enjoy an occasional espresso but also make your own cold brew, opt for a machine with a broader range, like the do-it-all Fellow Opus that has coarse and fine-grind settings. Don’t do espresso at all? You can get by with far fewer settings like on the Fellow Ode or even a more budget option like Oxo’s entry-level grinder.
In addition to adjusting your grind size, most burr grinders typically allow you to set the amount of time the machine will grind for (unless you have a single dose option like a Fellow). Most under-$200 burr grinders operate on what’s essentially a fancier version of a windup timer, while slightly more expensive models like the Baratza Virtuoso+ use a digital timer to achieve split-second precision. These smart timers are ideal for honing your espresso craft, but if you’re working with a drip or pour-over, this feature isn’t as important. As long as you’re weighing the coffee beans and depositing them in the hopper per batch, the grinder will only eat up the amount of beans you feed it. Our advice: Unless you’re pulling espresso shots, in which case you’ll want to figure out exactly how long it takes to grind 18 grams of beans for a double shot, a digital timer isn’t essential, but you should still be weighing your beans with gram scale for the best tasting, consistent results.
Once the machine has ground up the beans, where does it dump ’em? Some grinders, like the Baratza Encore, deposit the ground coffee into an attached chamber (kind of like a vending machine), which you can shovel the grounds from to use as you please. Others, like the Fellow Ode, deposit into a sleek removable cup, making it easy to pour the grounds directly into a French press or pour-over filter. Espresso-specific grinders, like the Baratza Sette 270, deposit directly into an espresso filter basket. This is one particularly helpful feature to look out for if you have an espresso machine.
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Other coffee grinders we tested
Oxo Burr Grinder with Built-in Scale
This is the least expensive grinder we’ve seen that uses a built-in scale rather than a timer to measure how much coffee it’s grinding. That helps it to produce the most accurate results of any grinder that isn’t single dose. The grind is consistent, though it has fewer settings than many other grinders we tried. This is a good burr grinder that has held up well over time and the scale is a convenient feature, but given its higher price tag we think the Fellow Opus is a better bet.
KitchenAid Burr Grinder
With a price tag under $200, KitchenAid’s burr grinder is relatively affordable for everything it offers. It comes with 70 grind settings, which is plenty if you have a house that enjoys both espresso and French press. It uses a digital timer for its dosing and also has the capability to grind directly into a portafilter, making it the least expensive option we’ve found with both those features (the Breville Smart Grinder Pro has both, but is a bit more expensive). It’s durable—we’ve used it for years—and think it’s a good choice if you’re looking for a truly budget espresso grinder, but the evenness of the grind and quality of the materials is better on the Baratza Encore ESP
Baratza Virtuoso+
Baratza makes burr grinders that range in price from what we’d call very affordable (the Encore) to pro-level machines that can top $900. The Virtuoso+ is a step up from the brand’s entry level machines, but that step is a sizable one. It uses a digital time dosing down to the tenth of a second that we found to be very consistent. Using setting 18, which Baratza recommends for drip coffee, we repeatedly got exactly nine grams of coffee in four seconds. Your mileage may vary with different roast levels but use that as a jumping off point. It uses Baratza’s M2 burr, which gives a bit more precision than M3 burr in the Encore and makes this a better bet for brewing methods that need coffee ground at the extreme ends of the spectrum (Turkish, espresso, French press, or cold brew). We’d note though, that the Encore ESP also uses the M2 burr, and while it doesn’t have digital dosing, it is less expensive.
Eureka Mignon Filtro
Eureka is an Italian coffee equipment company that specializes in high quality (and often expensive) machines, most of which are well outside the price range we considered in these tests. And while the Mignon Filtro is Eureka’s most affordable model, it has the same sort of high quality construction you’d expect from a much more expensive grinder with features like 50mm flat burrs. It’s simple, using completely manual dosing, but it also has stepless adjustments, meaning the burrs don’t click into different settings, but instead expand and contract freely, offering the ability to make the tiniest adjustments. That kind of versatility is a big plus, but the downside is that it’s impossible to tell how the grinder is set when you look at it for the first time. The adjustment dial is numbered 1-5 but it can make four rotations, so it takes patience and a willingness to do some trial and error. It’s also really only equipped to do middle of the road grinds for methods like drip or pour-over. Despite its relatively low price its definitely a more advanced grinder.
Eureka Mignon Notte
The espresso-only entry from Eureka functions much like the Filtro, with manual operation and stepless grind adjustments. It’s designed to grind finer though, and only into a portafilter. The quality of the grind is wonderfully consistent and the Mignon Notte also features a burr adjustment that makes it easy to clean and reset the burrs. If you are OK without any automatic dosing you’ll like this grinder, we just think features like time dosing or single dosing (like Fellow does) are preferable options for most people.
Breville Smart Grinder Pro
Breville’s Smart Grinder Pro, like many of its espresso makers, provides a quality product at a mid-level price. It uses conical burrs and offers 60 settings—plenty for all brewing methods—and both manual and automatic grind settings. The Smart Grinder Pro doses by time, and selecting a set number of cups or correlates with a preset amount of grinding time. You’re going to need to tweak it though, because while we got a suitable 9.8 grams of coffee on the 1 shot setting, we got 45 grams of coffee on the 2 cup setting, which is way too much. 45 grams of ground coffee is plenty for four cups. The grinder is easy to adjust, produces a consistent grind, and allows for direct grinding into both a 54mm and 58mm portafilter, so if you go in willing to do some trial and error on the dosing we think you’ll be happy with this one.
Hamilton Beach Burr Grinder
This is the least expensive burr grinder we tested (and may be the least expensive brand name burr grinder out there). Its performance is what we’d expect for something that costs 40 bucks. It can’t really grind fine enough for espresso, and the grind was a bit uneven on coarser settings. Instead of a timer it comes with “cup” settings (grind 2 cups, or 4 cups for example). But those settings seemed to be arbitrary. With same level of coarseness, the 2-cup setting produced 12 grams of coffee grounds. The 4 cup setting produced 13. For an extra $30 or $40 you can get something better than this.
Aarke Coffee Grinder
The Aarke grinder is beautiful, as all Aarke equipment is. And it produces a terrifically consistent grind. If paired with the Aarke coffee maker (also pictured here), the grinder can automatically detect the amount of water and grind the right amount of coffee. This feature worked wonderfully, and we would recommend the two pieces together. We just don’t think that, on its own, this grinder warrants its high price tag.
Wilfa Uniform Coffee Grinder
The Wilfa Uniforma grinder has a sleek, minimalist design appropriate for its Norwegian origins and tremendous versatility; it had no issue grinding fine enough for Turkish coffee, which takes a finer grind even than espresso. The 58 mm flat burrs produced perfect, consistent results and the whole machine has a high quality feel to it. However it’s plagued with one very inconvenient design flaw: In order to adjust the grind setting you need to turn the entire lid and it’s quite a wide lid—nearly eight inches in diameter. It was very challenging to rotate. We also had some issues with flyaway coffee grounds when we removed the catch cup.
Technivorm Moccamaster Burr Grinder
If you’re familiar with Technivorm its for their very popular high-end drip coffee makers in the Moccamaster line. But the company also makes a Moccamaster burr grinder. Like the Eureka grinders, it’s got 50mm flat burrs, stepless grind adjustment, and manual operation via a button on its side. The issue we found with it though, was that it had poor grind retention compared to other grinders we tested. It held on to around 12% of the coffee we put in.
Zwilling Enfinigy Grinder
If you want an attractive grinder that doesn’t cost as much as Fellow’s, the Zwilling certainly has an aesthetics-forward design (and you can pair it the Enfinigy drip coffee maker for a complete set). But the materials are lighter and a bit flimsier than they appear in a photo. We did like the coffee we made across all three brewing methods, but between the lighter materials and manual operation we think you’d do better with either our budget pick from Oxo or, if you can swing the extra 90 bucks, the Fellow Opus.
Baratza Sette 30
The Sette 30 is one of Baratza’s espresso grinders and we loved the look and design. Unfortunately we had issues with performance. We had a lot of flyaway grinds when using a 54mm portafilter, which is what you’ll find on my espresso machines under $1000, and the design couldn’t accommodate a large espresso dosing funnel like this one that would help avoid all that spillage. Using a 58mm portafilter was better, but still a minor coffee storm on the counter. If you have your heart set on the Sette 30 we’d insist on a low profile dosing ring like this.
Baratza Encore Conical Burr Grinder
The Encore (not to be confused with the Encore ESP) is Baratza’s entry level grinder and uses an M3 burr that’s a step down from the M2 burr that’s in the Virtuoso+ or the Encore ESP. We actually found the French Press grind to be noticeably inconsistent with too many fine particles. Even if you aren’t going to make espresso we think you should spend the extra $50 and upgrade to the Encore ESP
DeLonghi Dedica Coffee Grinder
DeLonghi’s grinder will work fine for drip or French press brewing, but it’s limited on the espresso front. It’s designed to work specifically with DeLonghi portafilters which are just a tiny bit smaller than the standard 54mm portafilters on Brevilles or a range of other mid-priced machines, so you can’t use them with the Dedica grinder. It also only grinds one shot at a time.
Cuisinart Supreme Grind Automatic Burr Mill
We were pleasantly surprised at the evenness of the grind from this $60 grinder, but we weren’t happy with the dosing. You set the amount of coffee by cups (anywhere from 4-18), but the grinder produced wildly different weights of coffee on the same cup setting as we adjusted the grind setting from finer to coarser.
Capresso Infinity Burr Grinder
The Capresso was all over the place. The coarse grind wasn’t consistent,, the medium grind was too fine, and the dosing system (presumably cups, but just labeled 1-12) didn’t seem to correlate to any actual measure of coffee.
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