

But despite its slick looks and professional-grade flat burrs, the grinder wasn't without its flaws. The timer allows you to figure out exactly how much coffee you grind per pot once and, from there on out, it’s set-and-forget.įellow's original Ode grinder is the coffee grinder to get for both design freaks and coffee nerds. Plus, the Virtuoso+ has a sturdy knob and timer system that the Encore - and most grinders that aren’t commercial-grade - don’t have.

The guts of the machine are made of more metal and less plastic than its sibling, too. Its burrs are the same size (40mm, one for each grind setting) as the stainless steel burrs in the Encore, but they’re cut sharper and thus able to produce finer grounds. It replaces the annoying plastic build of less-premium grinders with a heavier, metal foundation that reduced vibration and risk of decalibration.
AMAZON ENCORE COFFEE GRINDER UPGRADE
The Virtuoso+, which replaced the discontinued Virtuoso, is the ideal upgrade pick from the Encore. Unlike other specialty coffee grinder producers, its products cover the spectrum of coffee nerdery - beginner to commercial-grade. How We Testedīaratza is the only brand to have three products on this list, and for good reason. The Encore ESP solves this problem with the addition of 20 micro-step adjustments and an included dosing cup. Here's a snapshot of new and unreleased coffee grinders that we're considering for future updates to this guide.īaratza Encore ESP: Baratza's Encore is an all-time classic, but like the Fellow Ode, it doesn't grind fine enough for espresso. Our recommendations are based on real-world testing. This means it leads to more consistent grinds, and as we've mentioned already, consistency matters when it comes to great coffee. In the age-old question of whether to grind coffee by weight or volume, weight comes out on top, as it's simply a more accurate way of measuring how much coffee you're using. While not an outright necessity, you may look to save some counter space by opting for a grinder with a built-in scale. If you can’t take it apart easily, don’t buy it. Even if there’s not a mechanical issue, you’ll need to remove the burr and guts of the machine to clean coffee from months ago off the internal gears. No matter how nice the machine, every grinder requires service now and again. But it also means the grinder you’re buying - a relatively small machine tasked with crushing coffee beans for 30 seconds every day - is less liable to break internally because there’s less plastic and more metal.

One, more weight means the machine’s motor won’t knock itself out of calibration or grind setting mid-grind. With coffee grinders, the heavier the better. Flat burrs generally offer more consistency and uniformity in their grinds, which is good, but they can also retain more grounds and are more difficult to clean, which is not so good. Flat burrs are more expensive to manufacture and therefore are often found in pricer grinders, but one type is not necessarily better than the other. This results in an inconsistent cup, because you have an inconsistent grind setting." In other words, pots of coffee made with a blade grinder will never be replicable.īut even after you choose to go with a burr grinder, you're still left with one more choice to make: conical burrs or flat burrs. "Using a blade grinder is equivalent to chopping your coffee into uneven pieces. "A nice burr grinder is going to allow you to dial in your grind setting exactly to how it's brewing," says Natalie Van Dusen, founder of Montana's Treeline Coffee Roasters. This means the beans that sit below the blade, or wedge themselves into corners, are left at a completely different size, while the beans at blade level are turned to dust. When coffee is put in a blade grinder - which are typically inexpensive and designed for spice grinding - only the beans that are in contact with the blade are brought to size. The difference between the two is dramatic.

Where a blade grinder works more like a blender, chopping away at beans at the blade level, burr grinders effectively chew and crush beans. What Makes a Good Coffee Grinder? Burrs, Not BladesĪ rule of thumb: burr grinders rule, blade grinders drool.
