Grinding your own coffee at home can dramatically increase the your brewed coffee quality. Coffee loses it’s freshness much faster in ground form over whole bean form. If you are looking to increase your cup quality and you are not grinding your own coffee, buying the right coffee grinder will give you some serious bang for your buck.

There are two basic types of coffee grinders you can purchase. The first is a standard blade type grinder (think Magic Bullet). The second type is what is known as a burr grinder. These two types of grinders have totally different ways of grinding coffee and thus have different results.

The importance of particle size and consistency

Before I break down the two types of grinders and make a few recommendations, I would like to talk about particle size and consistency . Particle size as It relates to coffee is how coarse or fine you grind your coffee. Based on your brewing method, you may want a larger particle size (for an immersion brewing technique like French Press brewing) or smaller particle size (Like for espresso).

One of the most important elements with particle size is consistency. You want to have all the particles to be roughly the same size. You do not want some really big chunks and some fine powdery chunks in your grind.

If you have an inconsistent grind, you will have an inconsistent cup of coffee. You will not get all the flavors you want out of the big chunks of coffee and the powdery coffee dust will be over extracted. The result will be flavors you do not want in your cup. Particle size and consistency are very important for cup quality.

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