The Art and Craft of Coffee (14 page)

Each of the two types of burr grinders—conical and flat—has inherent advantages. Typically, conical burrs work better for coarse grinding, whereas disc burrs are preferred for finer grinding.

Choose a burr grinder if you can. They are available in several styles. A Jericho grinder is shown here with its exposed burr.

Instructions

To use a burr grinder, follow these steps:

1
. Measure the desired coffee amount and weigh the beans
(a)
.

2
. Place the beans in the grinder hopper, which is usually located at top
(b)
.

3
. Turn the grinder on. Most electric coffee grinders are loud. Even with quieter models, you can usually tell when the beans are ground. To be sure, check the hopper for stuck beans.

4
. Once the grounds sound finished, remove thereceptacle that holds them. Check for ground fines clumping. If possible, remove any clumps and discard. (It makes great compost!).

5
. Fill your filter with finished grounds
(c)
.

Generally speaking, a burr grinder will serve you best. Some claim that fast grinders produce more fines and superfines, but my less-than-scientific tests of various grinders do not demonstrate any correlation. My own prized hand grinder did most poorly in our tests and my super fast Ditting electric grinder did better than any consumer machine. Of course, the Ditting is more than 1,000 dollars, so the build quality should be first rate.

Coated burrs last longer and maintain grind calibration. Expect to pay anywhere from 50 to 1,100 dollars for a good grinder. Cost is not the lone deciding factor. If you’re really a player, investigate restaurant suppliers. Some of these grinders are large, however, so keep the SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor) in mind. Someday someone will invent something like a laser cut home coffee grinder that simply does the quantum physics necessary to give you exact, evenly cut pieces from your beans. Until then, seek out the best grinder you can find to grind fresh and consistently even coffee.

Burr Grinder Tutorial

Manual Grinders

You may have seen hand-powered manual burr grinders, particularly in antique shops. Zassenhaus in Germany still makes a fairly well-known model. These units are attractive, probably sold more often as conversation pieces and decorative items than working grinders. But don’t dismiss them. The dedicated coffee enthusiast may use a hand-powered wooden grinder while traveling. Why give up fresh ground coffee on vacation? Know that bean hoppers are small, which may mean filling and grinding twice for a decent-size batch. But the grind mechanism in the Zassenhaus is a true conical-disc burr grinder, as is the case for most antique models. Some match the best electric grinders in overall grind quality.

Wall-or table-mounted hand grinders are also options. Some of them do an excellent job grinding. No electric grinder really uses all that much power, but it’s a nice feeling knowing you’re not using any. Some people even consider it a mild workout.

Though probably sold more as decorative items thatn working grinders, some manual grinders match the best electric grinders in overall grind quality.

ATTENTION COLLECTORS

Large wagon wheel grinders fetch big money at auctions and at collectors’ shows. If you spot one, you’ll instantly recognize it. These are unusually easy to use because of the large wheel (some are actually too large to fit in the average kitchen). They also do a great job of grinding coffee.

Grinder Maintenance

Grinders require little in the way of maintenance, but there are a few checks you should make regularly, including the following:

• Check your grinder’s exposed parts from time to time for grinds accumulation. Use a brush—an old toothbrush will do—to remove grounds. A dry brush tends to work more effectively than a damp or wet one.

• Wash removable, dishwasher-safe hoppers in the top rack once per month to remove any oil buildup. If you frequently grind dark roast coffees, you may wish to increase this washing to once a week.

• Wash the receptacle between each use. A sponge and some soapy water will do the trick. Avoid scented dishwasher detergents.

• Use oats to remove flavor oils from a grinder that has ground flavored coffee. These flavor oils stick to your grinder’s mechanism and will likely change your non-flavored beans’ taste. Once my wife was entertaining her aunts, and one of them brought as a housewarming gift some flavored coffee, which they ran through the grinder. Horrified, I spent a sleepless night considering how to save one of my favorite coffee grinders. Oats worked perfectly. They are soft enough to run through the grinder, gentle on the burrs, and absorb the flavor oils. However, let me emphatically state that you should not regularly grind flavored coffee in a grinder dedicated to non-flavored coffee.

• Avoid using your coffee grinder as a spice mill, unless you have a separate unit for this purpose. Blade grinders are supposedly terrific for this use. You should still purchase a separate grinder because ground coffee is a flavor and aroma sponge.

Determining the Right Grind for Your Brewer

In addition to selecting the right grinder, you need to select the right grind. The following are basic guidelines for various grinds, moving from finest to coarsest:

Warning: Most novices grind too fine. Start out grinding coarser than you think you’ll need. Then move a notch at a time finer until you reach the perfect grind and taste.

Pulverized Grind

With this grind, coffee is as fine as flour. If you dip your fingers into Turkish ground coffee, which is typically pulverized, your fingers should come out coated with dust. Blade grinders could likely produce this grind, but you would lose aroma and flavor due to overheating. Consumer burr grinders rarely have the calibration to grind this fine.

A friend who’s an archaeology professor uses a mortar and pestle, which seems to work extraordinarily well. It can crush the beans to the required fineness without heating them up. For Turkish coffee devotees, get a mortar and pestle, which is easy to use and maintain and costs far less than the other less-likely-to-be-successful alternatives. Average particle size is 100 microns.

Espresso Grind

We devote an entire chapter of this book to Espresso, so we’ll only touch on it here to present it as a grinding option and so you can see where in the fine-coarse continuum it falls. For more information about espresso, see
chapter 6
, “Espresso,” which begins on page 127. Average particle size is 200 microns.

Fine/Vacuum Grind

This fine grind should almost, but not quite, be a powder. If you stick your finger in and pull it out, most of the coffee should not cling. It is designed for vacuum coffee brewers (discussed in
chapter 5
, “Brewing,” page 89) that typically feature three-minute extraction times. It also is appropriate for manual one-cup Melitta-style V-shaped cone filters or half batches of larger brewers that feature a three-to four-minute contact time (also see
chapter 5
). Average particle size is 500 microns.

Drip Grind

Most modern canned coffees use this grind, which is coarser than vacuum. It contains no powder and is designed for four-to six-minute contact times. It is coarser than table salt, but it should feature table salt’s pouring ability. The grounds should not cling together. Any brewing method that uses gravity—such as with drip coffee—needs grounds coarse enough to allow the water to pass easily through under its own weight. Average particle size is 500 microns and larger.

Automatic Drip Grind

These grounds start to resemble kosher salt. Designed for use in metal filter baskets typically found in electric percolators, this grind stands up to six-to eight-minute contact time. Therefore, it can work for any brewer that takes longer than six minutes to brew or any method in which a metal filter containing holes allows small particles through and into your cup, such as a press pot (most often used with a three-to four-minute contact time, regardless of grind) or flip drip maker (see
chapter 5
, “Brewing”).

If your automatic drip maker uses an underpowered electric heating element and chugs away brewing coffee for ten or twelve minutes, use coarse grounds. This helps the ground coffee endure the “long hot summer” of prolonged contact time. Bunn’s flat-bottomed automatic drip uses an uncommonly brief three-minute contact time, yet its makers recommend a slightly coarser grind, claiming the brewer uses turbidation (mild water pressure from the spray head) to agitate the grounds and thus achieve more efficient extraction. Of course, your taste buds must micro-manage the final determinant in your machine’s grind fineness setting. Average particle size is 800 microns (American auto drip). Europeans favor a smaller grind size averaging 580 microns.

Coarse Grind

This grind is a catchall for any method that takes longer than eight minutes and/or features filters likely to leak tiny grind particles into the final batch. Giant commercial coffee brewers that steep coffee in cloth sacks called urns use coarse grinds, as do such novelty brews as cowboy or campfire coffee, where grounds are tossed into an open vessel with boiling water (see
chapter 5
, “Brewing”). Average particle size is 1,000 microns.

In 1948, a voluntary group of coffee roasting companies agreed on these standards, which the United States Department of Commerce then published.

The specs haven’t changed a bit since 1948, and they are credible. Unlike almost every other area of coffee, the industry found consensus and objective by-the-numbers proof about grinding. Would you buy a car without knowing its mileage first? Hopefully, further research into getting the best grinder will cause people to start asking the right questions. Instead of useless circuitry-like timers, coffee grinder manufacturers will begin publishing specifications that indicate how closely their products meet these specs.

So is grind important? Yes. For a great coffee, you need the right grind. The wrong one can actually change a coffee’s taste.

GET TO KNOW YOUR AUTO DRIP

To figure out how fine to grind beans for your auto drip maker, time it. If it takes less than three minutes to brew, grind finer. If it takes more than six minutes, grind coarser. Finer grinding slows the coffee’s gravitational pull down through the grounds, which further increases contact time with hot water and speeds the flavor release.

Any change in grind particle size will affect drip coffee’s strength, making it the most dependent of any brewing method on the correct grind. Grinding too fine exposes more surface area and slows down drip rate, making your coffee stronger. Conversely, grinding too coarse exposes less surface area and speeds up drip rate, resulting in weaker coffee.