Coffee Grinder Basics

Did you know green coffee beans can stay fresh for years?

Once the beans are roasted, the clock starts a’tickin’, subtracting freshness every week.

Once the beans are ground, forget it! You better brew that stuff. Let me explain…

Whole-bean coffee (roasted) is best kept for a week. If you keep the beans two weeks, they begins to lose aroma. If you keep the beans three weeks or longer, they lose flavor. OH NO! I’m not drinking coffee to dull the senses. Wake me up with that smell and taste.

Experts recommend roasting your beans and using them within a few days, up to a week. Read about roasters here on the blog.

If you’re ready to learn about grinders, stay with me.

There are two modern ways to grind at home, steel burrs or an electric blade. You can always go way old school and crank a hand burr – which, frankly, sounds awesome to me. Or you could use a mortar and pestle. But I won’t be covering those because I’d like my coffee today.

Feelin’ Fine

1. Steel burr grinder. Two little corrugated plates grind the beans evenly (sometimes there is a corrugated cone inside of another cone).

PROS:

• Sets the fineness–coarseness of the grind with a setting
• Turns off by itself (you can press start and walk away)
• Creates a consistent grind (this factor is big depending on how you’re brewing coffee)

CONS: (I don’t even want to write cons, because I am biased towards this type of grinder, but here they are.)

• Flavored beans can clog the plates (but you weren’t using flavors anyways *wink*)
• You can’t grind other things like nuts with it (who grinds nuts?)

2. Electric blade grinder. Two steel blade circle and chop the beans. Fineness is controlled by you.

PROS:

• You can replace the blades
• You can grind nuts
• The machine is smaller so it takes up less space on the counter
• No trouble using flavored beans

CONS:

• The grind is inconsistent within that batch and when you compare one batch to another. (One good thing is the grind consistency doesn’t really matter if you’re using paper filters in a regular coffee maker.)
• You have to time yourself. Or you have to sit there and “pulse” the motor to make the beans jump and settle, attempting to make the grind consistent.

Keepin’ it Fresh

The ideal schedule for roasting, grinding, and brewing.

Sunday: get a latte from your favorite cafe. roast enough beans for 3 days

Monday: grind and brew (I grind mine the night before so I can press ‘start’ in the wee hours before work)

Tuesday: grind and brew

Wednesday: grind and brew and then roast some more!

Thursday: grind and brew

Friday: grind and brew

Saturday: grind and brew

*repeat*

Yummmmmmm.