The 3 Different Types of Coffee Grinders and Best to Buy

What are the 3 Different Types of Coffee Grinders and the best type to Buy? As a coffee Afficionado or even the average coffee drinker. So long as you love homemade coffee and like to make yours at home to your taste. You’re going to rely heavily on coffee grinders as grinding your beans is the first real step you have to take to make coffee at home.

Here are the articles to explain, The 3 Different Types of Coffee Grinders and the Best Type to Buy

When you use a good grinder, you get even grounds and consistent grinding. Which leads to more flavorful cups of coffee with consistent tastes.  We have this luxury today, but it hasn’t always been this way.

In the distant past, pestle or stone mortars were used to grind coffee beans before the advent of grinders. Over time, grinders came into existence, and they increasingly became more and more efficient. While incorporating advanced features to make grinding as easy and fast as possible.

Today, we have coffee grinders with different features and methods of grinding, some with simple features, some with advanced features, and commercial-grade super-expensive models with top-of-the-range features.

There’s a huge variety of grinders available today, but they can all stand grouped into two categories. These are the various types I intend to explain to you in this article.

Types of Coffee Grinders

Burr grinders:

This is a type of grinder that uses two burrs to grind beans into fine particles. Burr grinders produce the best results due to the way the burrs work. When the burrs are close to each other, they produce fine grounds and when they are apart, they produce coarse grounds. The grounds get coarser the farther they are from each other.

Burr coffee grinders let you customize your grind settings and pick the number of grounds you want basing on the number of cups of coffee you wish to brew. This type of grinder is usually run by an electric motor, but there are manual models available on the market being sold at cheaper prices.

There are two types of burr models – flat and conical. These only differ by the type of burr they have, which results in several more differences between each type.

Blade grinders:

As the name implies, blade models use blades to crush coffee beans into smaller particles for brewing. Because they use blades, the results they produce are inferior to that of burr models. They produce less evenly sized particles, which means some particles are larger than others, and this can affect the taste of your coffee unfavorably.

Also, with blade grinders, you can’t select a grind size or customize your grind settings. You just keep grinding and grinding until you get the result you want. If you want to find grounds, you may need to grind your beans multiple times.

That said, blade models are cheaper than burr ones because they cost less to produce and offer fewer features. Just like their burr counterparts, they are available in electric and manual models.

Built-in Grinders:

Depending on the type of coffee you like to brew, you may or may not need a separate grinder. For most brewing methods, you’ll need one, but if you love espresso or espresso-based drinks like cappuccinos, there are espresso machines that come with built-in burr grinders. If you haven’t already bought an espresso machine, you can save some money and buy a model that comes with a built-in grinder. There are drip coffee makers with in-built grinders too.

The Best Type of Coffee Grinder to Buy

If you read without skimming, you probably already know what type is the best to buy. Burr grinders are vastly superior to blade ones if you’re serious about making great homemade coffee. This is the only type you should be considering unless you’re limited by your budget.

If you don’t really care about the quality of your brews and just want to have your coffee fixed every morning and get on with your life, then a blade grinder should be good enough to meet your needs.