If you’re a coffee enthusiast who wants to experience that barista experience from the comfort of their own home, it makes sense to invest in a coffee grinder. But with a choice of bladed and burred grinders, how do you pick the best device to give you the authentic brew that you crave?
Well, worry no more; we’ve done the leg work for you and have compared blade and burr grinders, looking at the pros and cons of each.
Blade Grinders
Blade coffee grinders do exactly what they say on the tin, using a double-pronged blade within a spinning chamber to grind your coffee. The coffee beans hit the blade and are broken into pieces, falling to the bottom of the grinder, ready for you to create your favourite brew.
While blade grinders are convenient, accessible, and cheap, using one can leave your coffee with an unbalanced and irregular flavour.
Here’s why.
When the coffee beans hit the blade, they smash against it, leaving them broken into lots of different shapes and sizes. Sometimes you can even find half-cut beans at the end of your grind. Different sized grounds will brew at different rates, meaning that your final coffee will taste unbalanced.
One of the reasons why you want a coffee grinder in your home is because you want to experience the fresh flavours that come from grinding your own beans. However, the blades within a blade grinder heat up during use, which in turn heat your coffee grounds, ultimately reducing the freshness of their flavour.
Burr Grinders
Burr grinders mill your coffee beans. Using two burr pieces, they funnel the beans through the grinding area, creating grounds that are uniform in size. This increases the likelihood of a great cup of coffee.
The burrs in the grinder are made from ceramic or stainless steel, meaning they last longer than blades and produce minimal heat while grinding.
One of the best things about burr grinders is that they are adjustable, enabling you to select the perfect size of coffee grounds for your coffee maker. So, you can create a course grind if you plan to use a French press, a medium grind that is ideal for your AeroPress, or a fine grind for your espresso, all in the same grinder. It’s for this reason that burr grinders are the industry standard.
So, if you want to make great, barista-style coffee from the comfort of your home, a burr grinder is the way to go. No matter whether you already grind your own beans or are thinking about expanding your coffee experience, check out our review of the best coffee grinders for 2022.
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