In a scaled-down version of our 2017 test, we ran the new OXO Brew Conical Burr Grinder up against our top pick, the Baratza Encore, and our previous budget pick, the Capresso Infinity. Grinder veteran Kyle Ramage says: “Grind particle distribution is much more important than grinding fresh. All burr grinders will still include some smaller and larger particles than the intended result, but good ones will include fewer of them. Tell us what you want to hear and we’ll make sure you’re the first to know! (If you need a scale, we recommend the American Weigh Scales LB-3000 for precise coffee measurements.) Note, however, that the one thing the grinders in this guide aren’t great for is espresso. One of the irrefutable truths of specialty coffee is this: Behind every great barista, there’s a great burr grinder. With a smaller profile, the Porlex is easier to hold. Wirecutter is reader-supported. We also ground coffee with a simple Krups blade grinder to see what the opposite end of the spectrum looked like. They can be made of steel, ceramic, or even plastic (not ideal). The Virtuoso+ is a little better-looking than the Encore, with a cast-zinc body that may complement modern decor better than the simple matte-black Encore. Enter your email address and we’ll send you a link to reset your password. While most coffee grinders will have a range of size selection from finest (theoretically, but not necessarily, espresso grind) to coarsest (for French press or steeping cold brew), not all grinders offer visual clues about where on the spectrum other brew methods might fall. Durable burrs made of material like steel last over time and are easy to maintain and clean with a stiff brush. With the hopper removed, it’s easy to twist the top burr out of the Encore for easy cleaning and maintenance. I’m also the associate editor for the coffee news website Sprudge and have published coffee grinder guides and articles about coffee equipment there and elsewhere. Free ground shipping on all orders over $19.99! A good grinder will turn an alright coffee routine into a great coffee routine. So long as you mainly drink drip or French press coffee, the OXO’s relatively even grind, wide range of settings, and ease of use make it a good alternative if you can’t afford the Baratza Encore, which still offers a more consistent, versatile grind. With all the above criteria in mind, we narrowed down our list of electric burr grinders to test in 2017. While it doesn’t grind quite as evenly of finely as the Baratzas, it does come with a wider and more nuanced range of settings than the Capresso. Brew coffee so good, it’ll make a hipster cry. Usurping our long-running former budget pick, the Capresso Infinity, the OXO is a function-rich, capable grinder with consistent and speedy performance. Unlike the old Virtuoso and the Encore, the Virtuoso+ doesn’t have a simple on/off button that you hold down to grind (like the pulse button on a food processor). The fact that they are electric, removes the need for any manual grinding. Ultimately, we brought back our top pick and runner-up from last time, the Baratza Virtuoso and the Baratza Encore, as well as our former budget pick, the Capresso Infinity, plus the OXO On Conical Burr Grinder (also called the Barista Brain) and the Breville SmartGrinder Pro. Lastly, the upper burr’s handle snapped off in our hands when we tried to remove it for routine maintenance. But the abundance of settings—timed dosing down to 0.2-second increments and up to 60 different grind sizes—and complicated digital interface made it difficult to use. A tiny amount of coffee nearly always falls from the ejector into the empty bin slot even if you give the grinder a stiff bump after usage. Ease of cleanup around the machine is important, too, especially if a grinder is particularly naughty about spraying chaff everywhere. In particular, there’s no way to close the bottom of the hopper that funnels whole beans down through the burrs. Wirecutter updates writer Eleanor Ford uses the OXO Burr Grinder every day. - Using setting 30 (course grind for a coffee press), the grind results are not as consistent as I'd like. “At home, I think a lot of people just look to brands they know, and the problem with that is those people don’t make coffee equipment, that’s not their thing,” says Ramage. You may even learn to brew your own perfect cup of joe. Both manual coffee grinders and electric coffee grinders have their pros and cons, such as achieving better grinds with a manual coffee grinder than a cheap electric coffee grinder. That said, these grinders are great for travel, with the Porlex even fitting conveniently into the tube of an AeroPress for that coffee geek on the go. A quality grinder will necessarily cost you at least $100, which is one reason so many coffee lovers linger in the purgatory of affordable, substandard blade-grinder-land. Nick Cho, Throw Away Your Blade Coffee Grinder, Serious Eats, January 6, 2014, The Beginner’s Guide To Buying A Burr Grinder, Prima Coffee, Lauren Crabbe, Slave to the Grind: 7 Coffee Grinders Tested and Rated, Wired, April 12, 2013, Nick B, Grinders 101 - A Beginners Guide!, Whole Latte Love, Counter Culture Coffee New York Training Center, Best Burr Coffee Grinders, Homegrounds.co, Malarie Gokey, The Best Coffee Grinders You Can Buy, Business Insider, May 26, 2017, Scott Rao, author, phone interview, September 1, 2017, Kyle Ramage, United States Barista Champion, phone interview, September 1, 2017, © 2021 Wirecutter, Inc., A New York Times Company, Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder, Porlex Mini Stainless Steel Coffee Grinder, Portable and consistent, but labor-intensive, Budget pick: OXO Brew Conical Burr Grinder, Also great: Porlex Mini Stainless Steel Coffee Grinder, overextracted (more bitter) and underextracted (more sour), depending on your coffee machine’s interpretation of the word “cup.”, The Best Gear for Making Pour-Over Coffee, The Best Keurig Machine (But We Really Don’t Recommend It), The Best Nespresso Machine (But It’s Not for Everyone), The Beginner’s Guide To Buying A Burr Grinder, Slave to the Grind: 7 Coffee Grinders Tested and Rated. Since then, I haven’t had an issue, so I’m treating it as a good reminder that all coffee grinders need to be cleaned every so often. I was able to fix the clog by removing the top burr, and using a small, stiff brush (like a straw cleaner) to clean off the burrs and clear out all the impacted grounds from the chute where they pour out. All the latest models and great deals on DELONGHI are on Currys with next day delivery. You don’t have to wear an ironic t-shirt and grow a patchy beard to make barista-level coffee. - Removing the ground coffee bin without spilling some grounds on the counter is difficult. Cheap coffee makers are designed for mass-market, ... We tasted over 150 cups of coffee to find the best pour-over setup, from an easy-to-use dripper to a reliable coffee grinder and scale. After some sleuthing, he followed Baratza’s YouTube video guides for disassembling the machine and quickly identified the problem. For their Fast Forward coffee, the team found it tasted best when results measured between 19.5 and 20.5 percent. Available to ship in 1-2 days. They even convinced their mom to get one: “My mother says it's become incredibly easy to get a consistent cup with her coffee maker since switching over from a blade grinder.”, Wirecutter senior editor Marguerite Preston, who has been using the OXO grinder at home, added the caveat, “After about a year of use, the OXO totally clogged up on me, to the point where it couldn’t grind anything. It took us 30 seconds to grind 68 grams of medium-grind coffee appropriate for filter brewing—enough to make several servings, depending on your coffee machine’s interpretation of the word “cup.” This speed fell about in the middle of the other grinders we tested at this setting. Don’t expect to use the Porlex as an affordable alternative to an electric grinder, especially if you ever want to brew more than one cup at a time. The Hario Mini-Mill was one of our two hand-grinder candidates, but despite its quality ceramic burrs, it simply took too long to grind a cup of coffee to recommend. Brewed at the push of a button. It has some nice new features, but the grind consistency is the same as that of the old Virtuoso and comparable to that of the Encore. Expand submenu for Cooking & Baking category, Expand submenu for Cleaning & Organization category, Expand submenu for Baby & Toddler category, Skip to the beginning of the images gallery, Yes, I'd like to hear the latest and exclusives. Just add beans and choose from 15 grind size settings – from fine for espresso to coarse for French press – turn the dial to select grinding time and push to start. We'll update this guide with more on that soon. But its extra features weren’t enough to convince our team to recommend spending nearly $100 more over the price of the Encore. Manual coffee grinders are a good choice. Some burrs are conical while others are flat. So in order to change out coffees while beans are still in the hopper, you have to invert the entire machine over a bowl to empty it out—if you simply remove the hopper, beans will pour out the bottom and all over the counter. From Baratza, Bodum and Breville to Oxo, Cuisinart and others, here are our favorites. OXO has also designed a mechanism to help reduce static build-up as the coffee grinds, an issue we encountered with other models often in our testing. The Encore only has an on/off switch, so it doesn’t allow for a timed grind (which the Baratza Virtuoso does). We have recommendations in our guide to espresso machines and gear, but they’re worth the extra $200 to $300 only if you’re serious about making espresso at home. We also realize that $100 isn’t that cheap for a budget grinder. If you really don’t want to spend more than $100 on a coffee grinder, the OXO Brew Conical Burr Grinder is just the ticket. The good news is, it’s easier than ever to find a coffee grinder to fulfill your needs. My brother-in-law even put a drill on one once, and we couldn’t find a drill speed that would do it.”. Though it isn’t cheap, the OXO Brew Conical Burr Grinder is the best grinder we’ve found in its price range. Because the best coffee starts from the grounds up, we created the OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder to help your beans unlock their full potential. If your machine does break out of warranty, and MacGyver isn’t exactly your middle name, you can send the Encore to Baratza for repairs (which come with their own, six-month warranty) for $45 at the time of writing. Buy today with free delivery. Let me tell you this quite frankly; when you first start your journey into the world of specialty coffee, you’ll hear a lot of superstition when it comes to grinders. This compact grinder is easy to use and has a wider range than most budget grinders, though it’s a bit less consistent than pricier machines. At grind speeds that feel glacial (particularly if you’re grinding the first cup of the day), we can’t recommend a hand grinder as an everyday tool to be used instead of an electric grinder. “I think that was the most surprising to me, I was so sure that even badly fresh ground coffee would beat pre-ground. In any case, the Baratza machines were no worse than any other machine we tested, so it’s not a dealbreaker. The design is simple, so nothing stands between you and your first cup. So a good grinder is integral to keeping the most essential part of your brewing technique—the coffee itself—at its most flavorful, and it will ensure the consistency required to produce and reproduce that flavor. If you’re a power user—if you intend to grind a lot of coffee every day and really put your machinery to the test—the sturdier base may make a difference in the long run for you, as you will need to readjust your grind calibration less frequently. After testing 12 cheap coffee makers, we like the Mr. Coffee Easy Measure because it’s compact, simple to use, and makes a decent pot of coffee. But remember, hand grinders can only make enough grounds for a cup or two of coffee at a time, and that can take 5-10 minutes of manual labor. The Baratza Encore grinds coffee more evenly than almost any other machine we tested on a wide range of settings. While it’s physically inescapable that even the most consistent burr grinder will produce at least some amount of particles smaller and larger than the target grind size, we found the Encore performed best at grinding evenly. Beyond that, Baratza has a great reputation for durability, repairability, and customer service. It’s the most important feature if you want to get the most even, balanced extraction with every brew. We tried hard to help casual coffee brewers break down the price barrier by looking for a decent, functional burr grinder closer to $50 than $100. For the two hand grinders we tested, we prioritized speed of grinding and ease of use over all else, since even the best hand grinder is likely to become frustrating to operate day after day, or worse, cup after cup for a thirsty group. For even more in-depth expertise, we conducted our testing at Counter Culture Coffee’s New York City training center, tapping the wisdom (and palates) of two of its staff, Matt Banbury and Ryan Ludwig, to fine-tune our testing criteria and evaluate each grinder. It grinds beans quickly and evenly, is simple to use and adjust, and is easy enough to clean and maintain that you’ll use it for years to come. Steel burrs are less expensive to produce and thus are more common, while ceramic burrs are harder and dull more slowly. JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. But we don’t see its simplicity as a real drawback. The OXO is speedy, too, grinding nearly 10 grams more coffee in a 15-second interval than either the Baratza Encore or the Capresso. But that needs love too. But that needs love too. (You can read more about his experience in the long-term testing notes on that grinder, below.) Ultimately, the fact that both Baratza’s Encore and Virtuoso+ (our current upgrade pick) came out on top was not a huge surprise to any of the coffee veterans we chatted with. Whether you make coffee at home once a day or once an hour, whether you brew with a Hario V60 and a precision scale or just dump it all into a French press carafe or an automatic drip basket, and whether you buy your whole beans at the grocery store or order them direct from Norway, how well your grinder performs will have a tremendous effect on the end brew. Using the Kruve sieve set to measure the amount of oversized and undersized particles created on a medium grind setting, the Encore hit the target best of all the home grinders we tested. Ideally, a grinder will be hefty enough to reduce vibration (or potential counter-scooting), which can contribute to having to more frequently readjust one’s grind setting as the burrs slowly jostle out of alignment. We’ve been testing coffee makers since 2015, and we think the OXO Brew 9 Cup Coffee Maker offers the best combination of convenient features and delicious coffee. This coffee grinder was purchased to replace on that was 5 years old and the blades started to dull. “Basically you can stand there with a hand grinder for 10 minutes and not get 20 grams of beans to go through. For those insistent on a hand grinder, the Porlex Mini was best in its class for speed, portability, and ease of grinding. What a mess. At a practical price, it reliably delivers the high-quality grind needed to make a great cup of drip or French press coffee. It took forever for us to dial in, and our tests produced over-extracted batches each time. But ultimately, we found the OXO to have a better range than the Capresso and a better set of extra features like an accurate timer and removable hopper. While it can’t produce a fine enough grind for serious espresso enthusiasts, its output is consistent enough for a serviceable shot and should satisfy anyone’s filter coffee needs. If you’re willing to pay more, the Baratza Virtuoso+ is a nearly identical grinder to the Encore, but it has a slightly speedier burr set, a digital timer on the front, and a heavier base that helps the grinder stay in calibration. The Virtuoso+ also comes with a limited one-year warranty, and beyond that, can be sent back to Baratza for repairs for $60 at this writing. However, it did so only after my husband ground a large quantity of relatively oily beans in our sweltering kitchen on the hottest, most humid day of the summer. We looked at new reviews from Home Grounds and Business Insider, and we took into account recommendations for budget-category entries as well as some longevity complaints about other grinders from within Wirecutter staff. After over 80 hours of research and testing, we think the Breville Bambino Plus is the easiest model for beginners learning the ropes of espresso brewing. A manual coffee grinder is in most cases fantastic value for the money, and even the cheapest models will outperform most electric grinders in the sub $100 category. I don’t ever believe that people will really want to hand grind their coffee every morning like they tell themselves when they’re making this purchase—it takes ages of manual cranking, during which you’re wasting precious morning minutes while the dog is barking, the baby is crying, and you lack caffeine. Grind consistency at medium grind settings was nearly on par with our top picks (with its coarsest grind being the least consistent and very, very boulder-filled), but it wasn’t able to grind as finely as our top picks. The Virtuoso now runs perfectly again. We also paid attention to ancillary issues like whether the machines were noisy or made a huge mess on the countertop, and we kept an eye out for potential durability issues or weaknesses in workmanship as well. Then we brewed coffee from each grinder on an 8-cup Bonavita BV1900TS brewer (an older version of the runner-up in our guide to coffee makers). The OXO Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker is the best we’ve found after years of testing. Details, Better coffee. If you consider your morning (or afternoon, or anytime) coffee a serious matter, you’ve likely already heard that the most important item in your brewing setup is a quality burr grinder. Please enter your email address below to create account. Even the best beans won't brew evenly (or taste great) if they aren't ground evenly. We tested the Krups GX5000 because it came recommended by Business Insider as an under-$50 budget pick, but it was notably flimsy, loud, and imprecise. Still others will grind preset dosage amounts, roughly based on how many cups of coffee they’ll yield (sometimes you can also program your own dose presets). And to appease the off-the-grid set, we tested two hand grinders as well, timing how long it took to grind enough coffee to make a cup and analyzing the particle-size distribution of the grounds. No matter how qualified you feel in terms of your journey with coffee, a grind and brew set up can help you make sure you’re getting genuinely fresh-ground coffee every time rather than miscalculating and keeping a bit for the morning or (more annoying) realizing someone you live with has left a bunch in the grinder and if you don’t use it you’re being wasteful! I love that Baratza embraces repairs and provides as much assistance as possible in extending the life of your appliance.”. For many people, making the leap from a small blade grinder you can stash in the kitchen cupboard between uses and a $100-200 device that will demand counter space is no small upgrade. Unfortunately, unlike Baratza, the company does not sell burr replacements (although the top burr is removable for cleaning), so you’re out of luck if you need new burrs outside of the window of the warranty. It makes smooth, balanced, delicious cold brew. When we sifted 10 grams of grounds from first the OXO, then Baratza Encore in the Kruve sifter, the OXO yielded about 4.9 grams of coffee ground to the target optimal size, while the Baratza yielded 5.1 grams; the Capresso yielded only 3.8 grams of coffee ground to the target size. The sound of its motor annoying, but good ones will include fewer of.. Buyers like these as they can be used for grinding coffee beans, not... Refractometer to measure how much coffee you ’ ve found after years of testing grinds. World of OXO, Cuisinart and others, here are our favorites ’ s simple, intuitive design consistent... Won ’ t have to wear an ironic t-shirt and grow a patchy beard to make a hipster cry much. 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