Burr Coffee Grinders

icarian

icarian

Joined
Nov 19, 1999
Messages
251
The other day, one of my soldiers saw me grinding coffee with my old $20 Braun coffee grinder and told me I must get a BURR coffee grinder...said the difference was unbelievable.

Does anyone have any recommendations on a good and "relatively" inexpensive burr coffee grinder? Do you think the new type of grinder is worth it? Preferred price range is $75.00 or below and I must be able to purchase it online (deployed for the forseeable future). No expresso machine, so I'm grinding coffee beans for the regular drip coffee maker.

thank you for any info,

Glenmore
 
My one cautionary piece of advice is that many burr grinders are meant for creating espresso drinks, not a plain ol' cup o' joe. The coarsest setting on some burr grinders is still too fine for regular coffee.

The effect of a burr grinder is said to be most prominent in espresso drinks, which have to be prepared carefully; in fact, it's pretty much considered a rule that you just have to use a burr grinder to get acceptable espresso. I could swear I could tell at least a small difference with regular coffee made in my machine as well.

The way it works is: the burr grinder grinds the beans all to a very similar size -- unlike a regular whirly grinder, in which there's a big standard deviation off the standard size of the ground pieces. So with a regular grinder, the bigger grains end up under-extracted, and worse, the smaller grains end up over-extracted and you end up with some bitter oils coming out. With a burr grinder, the grains are all exactly the same size, so once you find the right size, each grain will be perfectly extracted.

Again though, I'm not sure if there's uniform agreement that a burr grinder makes a difference for regular drip coffee. Though I thought I could taste a change for the better.

Joe
 
I remember with nostalgia the days when a "regular coffee" meant with milk and sugar. Today, regular means no hazelnut, no raspberry, no foam, and no cinnamon. I don't need no steenkin' coffee grinder, burr or otherwise. Just gimme a plain cup o' coffee, dammit!

Whew! Thanks for listening. :)
 
Heh. I'll give you the rebuttal: anything worth doing, is worth doing well. :) That's definitely my motto when it comes to coffee!

Joe
 
May I recommend Maker's Mark coffee. Excellent stuff. Not just another company slapping their name on someone else's product, but excellent coffee.
 
I got my DeLonghi burr grinder at Target or K-mart for ~ $30, they do grind the beans uniformly, and I think I get a better cuppa joe using this burr-ground coffee. These grinders don't 'burn' the bean as they grind, this is the most common complaint about a whirlybird like your old $20 Braun...or my old $20 Krups. (The Krups whirlybird is semi-retired now, I mainly use it to grind spices for my world famous chili powder)

Here's a place you might enjoy looking at, their top quality burr mills are all manual...something you may find handy if ever deployed where the powercords won't reach. They also specialize in green coffee and coffee roasters...another worthwhile gadget.

Sweet Maria's
Note, they're on vacation this week,returning after Labor Day.


These guys carry the same DeLonghi grinder I use (model DEL-DCG4) at a decent price.

The Coffee Com
 
Clay,

Maker's Mark, huh? I have some of their product, but I don't recall it being coffee beans;) Thanks for the lead, though...all my roots (family) are in Henry/Shelby Counties and Lexington, so if I can't find it online, I'll put a local request in for a care package.

Texascarl,

Thank you for the sites...very good prices and a hand crank Turkish mill just might be a "necessary" gadget.

Wholeheartedly agree with Joe's rebuttal.

regards,
Glenmore
 
icarian -- The coffee is almost as good as the bourbon, but not quite. It is made with bourbon, though even folks that don't like bourbon (sacriledge, I know, but my wife falls into that category) seem to love it as well.

I noticed many of the hand cranked coffee mills are Zassenhaus. I have one of their pepper grinders and it is awesome. The difference in quality between it and any other I have used is amazing.
 
Good to see that there are other bourbon fans on here. Y'all might enjoy some of the discussions we have over at Straight Bourbon Com Coffee and bourbon are two of my favorite drinks. But never mixed together, thank you.
 
Solis Maestro burr grinder from www.coffeewholesalers.com. I grind for a Chemex, somewhat coarser than other drip filter systems, on a setting about 7/8 towards the coarse end of the adustment scale. I paid $129 plus shipping about the beginning of this year. Very satisfied.

Psollo
 
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