Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

Miami-Made Panther Coffee is Popping Up in Manhattan

Beloved Miami specialty coffee company Panther Coffee is making its first major New York City showing with the opening of a popup shop in Soho. With a soft opening scheduled…


Miami-Made Panther Coffee is Popping Up in Manhattan

Beloved Miami specialty coffee company Panther Coffee is making its first major New York City showing with the opening of a popup shop in Soho. With a soft opening scheduled…


Three Questions with Gabriela Parfait of The Good Sourcing

After eight years working for the French green coffee importing company Belco, Gabriela Parfait has launched a coffee-focused company called The Good Sourcing.  The new venture is intentionally small, although…


Why it’s easier for wealthier producers to grow specialty coffee

It takes money – and sometimes a lot – to grow specialty coffee. Producers not only need to continuously maintain and improve quality and yields, but they also have to invest back into their farms. Whether it’s replacing equipment and machinery or planting more resilient varieties, producers need to turn a profit to operate their […]

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

3 All-Women Coffee Roasting Companies that Are Changing the Game

The world of specialty coffee is still largely governed by men, but these all-female specialty-coffee roasters are helping to close the gender gap. BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Feature photo courtesy of Lot Zero/7Gr As is the case for many commercial sectors, the world of specialty coffee continues to display gender disparity along the entire […]


Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

We continue our deep dive into honey, bringing to light environmental and animal rights concerns related to the product, and how the industry is addressing them. BY EMILY JOY MENESESBARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Feature photo via Unsplash This week we started our discussion of honey, uncovering how it’s produced, the differences between varieties of honey, and […]


10 Minutes With Helena Oliviero: Part One

We talk with coffee champion and Q Grader Helena Oliveriero about her career, her life in Colombia, and what it means to be a young woman in the male-dominated coffee world.   BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Featured photo courtesy of Helena Oliviero Helena Oliviero, originally from Tuscany, Italy, is 28 years old, but already she […]


Interest in coffee & health is rising – what do consumers need to know?

There is a wealth of scientific research available about the many health benefits of coffee – as well as the undesirable side effects of drinking too much. But like all fields of science, research about the impact of drinking coffee on human health is ever-changing as we uncover new findings.  Interestingly, the continuous discovery of […]

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

Miami-Made Panther Coffee is Popping Up in Manhattan

Beloved Miami specialty coffee company Panther Coffee is making its first major New York City showing with the opening of a popup shop in Soho. With a soft opening scheduled…


Design Details: A Petit Le Café Coffee in Midtown Manhattan

Welcome to Design Details, an ongoing editorial feature in Daily Coffee News focused on individual examples of coffee shop architecture, interior design, packaging design or branding. If you are a coffee…


Serving Coffee in the Epicenter

The Turkish specialty-coffee community is coming together to support earthquake relief. BY MICHAEL BUTTERWORTHSPECIAL TO BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE When Niji Coffee went live on Instagram,…


Serving Coffee in the Epicenter

The Turkish specialty-coffee community is coming together to support earthquake relief. BY MICHAEL BUTTERWORTHSPECIAL TO BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE When Niji Coffee went live on Instagram,…

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

minimum dose size?

Jan 31, 2024 |

I use the Hario switch to brew my coffee and am trying to reduce my caffeine consumption. Hence I would like to brew smaller cups of coffee. I am currently using 10g of coffee with 160g of water. (1:16 Ratio) I am wondering if there is a minimum amount of coffee...

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

If you take the title at face value, my job is done. If you need to be convinced, here goes…

With the winter holidays coming up and my Baratza Encore deciding to have electrical issues, I needed a coffee grinder for the few pounds of beans in my kitchen cabinet. Amazon wouldn't get a new Encore to me in time so I went to my local Williams Sonoma and bought a Cuisinart automatic burr grinder. A burr grinder's a burr grinder, I thought, and since it was almost half the price of an Encore I went for it and hoped for the best.

Right out of the box there were issues. Cheap construction, tiny and absurdly inconsistent ceramic burrs, and an automatic "number of cups" dispensing method instead of a toggle or hold switch. "No biggie" I thought, figuring that the flat burrs might perform OK and that I could just slam it to the highest cup setting to make sure all the beans were ground.

On to the brew test. I loaded in 18g of coffee with the grinder set to just under "Medium" which was the recommended setting for auto-drip and usually a good starting point for Aeropress, plugged it in, moved the super cheap feeling slider to 10 cups, and pressed start.

When I tell you that the grinder sounded like a jet turbine winding up on a runway, I am not exaggerating. The only thing keeping it from hitting approximately 500,000rpm was the presence of coffee beans in the hopper, and once there were only a few left, it kept going faster and faster and faster to the point where the last remaining beans didn't have a chance to get in between the burrs without being flung back out into the hopper.

The end result was a ridiculously inconsistent grind and lots of static cling, despite adding water to the beans as recommended by our lord and saviour Hoffman. It did not make a good cup of coffee. I might have been able to get a better result with a blade grinder.

Maybe I'm just spoiled because I got to use the Encore for the past year and a half, but this was a truly abysmal experience. The Baratza was loud but it had torque, a reasonable speed, almost perfect consistency, and a no-frills easy to use interface. Everything about it instilled confidence in a good end result being in my coffee cup, something which Cuisinart is incapable of creating. I intend to return this unit after Thanksgiving and buy another Encore or Virtuoso

Now I know, and I hope my experience can help you know, that some things aren't worth spending less on. If you don't want to shell out for a good conical or flat burr grinder, get a hand grinder. It'll be more work but you'll get a much better cup of coffee than a cheap electric burr grinder can produce.

​

Tldr; if you're looking at electric burr grinders and can't afford a good one, consider a hand grinder or buying preground coffee from a coffee shop because both of those will give you a much better result than a sub $100 electric grinder.

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Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

Perfect Little Beans

Chinmey Hill Coffee uses specialty-grade beans with zero primary defects (such as black beans or sour beans) and less than five secondary defects (such as broken beans). This is important because primary defects will greatly affect the taste of the coffee. Having zero defects allows the coffee to be the most optimal flavor.

Window for Optimal Flavor

Chimney Hill Coffee ships our coffee the same day it was roasted, so you will receive it before it enters the window of optimal flavor.  This means you’ll never miss the opportunity to enjoy the coffee’s peak flavor.

Coffee Ratings

Coffee undergoes many scoring processes by professionals who achieved their Q Grader certification. Coffee is first graded when it’s green. If there are defects the coffee is determined to be “not-specialty grade”. For those coffees that pass green grading, they are sample roasted and cupped. (Cupping is the official term for critically tasting and scoring coffees. The official cupping form is standard worldwide, and where the 100-point scoring system comes from.) A coffee’s dry fragrance, wet aroma, flavor, aftertaste, body, acidity, balance, and overall impression are taken into consideration while uniformity issues and defects, will lower the overall score.

Specialty Coffee

Specialty coffee, coined by Erna Knutsen in 1974, refers to a coffee that receives a quality grading score of 80 percent or higher. While “premium” or “gourmet” seem like they’re synonymous with “specialty,” they simply are marketing terms with no defined standards. Specialty coffees are grown in specific and ideal micro-climates, and have distinctive and unique flavor profiles, with little to no defects.

Third-Wave Coffee

We’re currently in the third wave of coffee. The first wave of American coffee put pre-ground, vacuum-sealed cans in kitchens across America. The second wave started with the late ‘60s introduction of Peet’s coffee (by Alfred Peet) through the proliferation of Starbucks. The third wave of coffee focuses on origin transparency, nuanced flavors, and artisan roasting. The term “third wave” is synonymous with specialty coffee.

Please Do Not Cheap Out On Your Electric Grinder

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