The fact of the matter is that coffee is delicate—it’s made up of hundreds of flavor and aromatic compounds that start to deteriorate if mishandled. Grinding your coffee fresh is one of the easiest ways to prevent such mishandling and thus improve your cup—that’s why I suggest that if you are only willing to invest in one piece of coffee equipment, you should make it a decent grinder. It is paramount for two things: the flavor of the coffee and the efficiency of the brew.
Most coffee aficionados will tell you that coffee quickly starts to lose flavor and aromatics as soon as it’s ground. Many of the delicate compounds that make coffee taste great are locked in the bean’s structure, but breaking that protection apart via grinding exposes them to air, moisture, and light—the ever-present banes of a coffee bean’s existence. All of those compounds will start to noticeably diminish—at least to the trained palate—about 30 minutes after grinding. And like the proverbial man who went out for cigarettes, once flavor is gone, it’s not coming back. But to be honest, a person with an average palate likely wouldn’t be able to detect any diminished flavor until about an hour or more after grinding. (Most of the anxiety surrounding lost flavor is related to espresso, which uses a very fine grind, giving the coffee more surface area and thus more opportunity for flavor to escape.)
But there is another practical reason—one that I think is even more important than freshness—to skip preground beans: doing so will up your extraction game. Recall from chapter 1 that for best extraction, the size of your grind needs to align with the device you’re using. Brewing devices that take longer to brew generally need larger grounds; brewing devices that are quick tend to require smaller grounds. Here’s why this matters to you: the odds that your preground beans are the correct grind size for your device of choice are slim. A can of preground coffee and a French press, when used together, are unlikely to bear tasty results because that preground coffee is not ground specifically for a French press (and it’s probably stale). By grinding the beans yourself, you can tailor the grind size to your particular device. Similarly, being able to adjust the grind size allows you to troubleshoot your brewing process; buying preground beans eliminates that option.
Coffee Grinders versus Spice Grinders
Coffee grinders and spice grinders are the same thing, but make sure to never cross-contaminate by using coffee in your spice grinder or spices in your coffee grinder!
In sum, for best results, buy whole beans and grind them just before use. Still sounds like a pain in the rear, you say? Let me put it into perspective: according to Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast, during the Civil War, Union soldiers carried around whole coffee beans and ground them fresh with grinders built into their guns’ buttstocks. If they could manage to grind their own beans in the face of bloody, hand-to-hand combat, you can manage to do so at home. But unless you have a Civil War–era Sharps carbine lying around, you’ll need a grinder.
Blade Grinders
Most devices that you see marketed as coffee grinders are blade grinders, which use a rotating metal blade to chop the beans. The cheapest grinders hold the beans in the same chamber that houses the blade and require the user to push and hold down a button to activate the blade. The longer you hold down the button, the finer your grind will be. Most blade grinders make it easy to check on the state of the grounds—simply pop off the lid and take a peek. If the grounds are looking too coarse, take them for another spin. In theory, this sounds like a simple way to get freshly ground coffee. But if you are interested in making a consistently better cup at home, I think a blade grinder will end up being a frustrating device to work with.
When you use a blade grinder, some coffee beans get pulverized while others remain coarse. You generally end up with an inordinate number of fines and a wide range of other grind sizes, no matter what you do. It’s the nature of the blade grinder’s design: the chamber doesn’t allow for much movement, so the beans at the bottom (nearest to the blade) get chopped more finely than the beans at the top. I actually use blade grinders quite regularly (we have one at my place of employment), and I’ve tried almost everything to make the grind more consistent: grinding a small number of beans at a time, gently shaking the device in an attempt to redistribute the beans, pausing every few seconds to stir the grounds with a spoon. These tricks help a little, but they always seem like wasted efforts when I pour the fresh grounds into the filter and find an entirely whole bean at the top and fines packed into clumps around the blade.
Simply put, blade grinders are really bad at grinding coffee evenly.
Let me tell you why this is a problem. Too many fines will clog up your paper filters like silt in a stagnant pond, which slows—or stops!—water flow. Your cup will take an excruciating amount of time to make, and it likely will end up being overextracted (read: gross and bitter). Even worse, some metal filters, such as those on French presses, cannot trap fines, which means fines end up in your cup and continue to extract. Yes, French presses are designed to keep some fines in the cup, but too many will turn your delicious full-bodied brew into a dirty, muddy mess.
Generally speaking, you want your grind to be as consistent as possible so that each particle extracts at a similar rate. The smaller the particle, the faster the water can penetrate it and extract its flavor. The more consistent the grind, the more consistent the extraction. Imagine that you are chopping up potatoes to fry. You’d want each piece to be about the same size so that they all cook evenly and get done at the same time. If they were all chopped to different sizes, some might burn while others might remain raw. The same concept holds for coffee grounds. When all of your grounds are consistently sized, they all will be done around the same time. A consistent grind will also make it easier for you to figure out what went wrong if you end up making a less-than-desirable cup—and you’ll be better able to troubleshoot that cup as needed.
Burr Grinders (Burr Mills)
If you are interested in easily improving your daily cup of joe, I wholeheartedly recommend investing in a burr grinder. Burr grinders are designed to grind beans to a uniform size. They work by pushing the beans between two grinding surfaces called burrs. The spaces between these surfaces can be manually adjusted. The smaller these spaces are, the finer the grind will be, and the larger these spaces are, the coarser the grind will be. To use a burr grinder, just pour the beans into the chamber, set your grind size, and flip the switch. On most models, the grounds fall into a detachable container for easy pouring.
Burr grinder
The downside to burr grinders is that the electric (i.e., convenient) models are generally more expensive than blade grinders. The best burr grinders offer a wide range of settings, and decent ones can range from $130 to $800. If you can’t (or don’t want to) spend that much cash, a hand-crank model will run you about $25 or more. As an added bonus, these manual grinders tend to be lightweight and compact, making them especially useful for camping and traveling. Yes, you’ll need to use a bit of elbow grease, but if your morning coffee ritual already takes five attentive minutes, what’s one minute more for perfectly ground coffee?
It’s worth noting that even burr grinders do not grind beans to a completely uniform size. One of coffee’s unique properties is that it breaks apart in unpredictable ways. This makes it impossible to grind each bean to a universal size and shape, which means there will always be some tiny broken fragments (fines) with a burr grinder. The difference is that with a blade grinder, you’ll have a wide spread of different grind sizes, from the tiniest particle to, in some particularly dismaying cases, a whole bean, while a burr grinder generally reduces that distribution, which allows for more even extraction.
Hand grinder
I think any burr grinder—even the cheapest one—is better than no burr grinder. Andreas and I happily used a Baratza Encore for several years before upgrading to the Virtuoso. When traveling, we used a Porlex JP-30 (until we gave it away), and now we use a Hario for our manual-grinding needs while on the road.
&
nbsp; Fines: Pure Evil?
Fines are widely accepted to be bad because they have so much surface area that they are presumed to extract almost instantly, which could lead to overextracted coffee if there are too many of them. Recent and convincing research by coffee scientist Christopher H. Hendon suggests that the number of fines is not what causes uneven extraction—it’s the distribution of the particles. Generally speaking, fines are okay as long as you take measures to limit the number of them in your coffee (i.e., by using a burr grinder). There is also some evidence to suggest that freezing your beans allows them to be ground more uniformly.
POPULAR GRINDERS
Your Local Coffee Shop’s Grinder
All reputable craft coffee shops use high-quality burr grinders. If you are fortunate enough to live near one of these shops, you may be able to purchase whole beans and ask for the beans to be ground in-house. Now, you may notice that this flies in the face of what I said at the beginning of this section: don’t buy preground beans. Some coffee people might even say that having a coffee shop grind your beans for you is sacrilege and mourn the loss of all those delicate flavors and aromatics—but hear me out.
My major concern with preground beans is the grind-size issue. At a coffee shop, you will likely be able to ask for your beans to be ground to correspond with the brewing device you plan to use at home. If you say something like, “Can I get these beans ground coarse enough to use with my French press?” the barista is probably going to know what to do. No, you won’t be able to tinker with that particular spec at home, but the barista will be able to get you the grind size you need, and I’m willing to bet that those preground beans will be easier to work with than any grounds that have been mangled by a blade grinder.
As for the issue of lost flavor and aromatics, there are always things you can do to get more flavor out of older, diminished coffee (namely, add a bit more coffee to the dose to compensate for any lost compounds), but there’s not much you can do about uneven grounds and uneven extraction rates. In fact, Andreas gives new employees old beans during their training to test their skills, and on more than one occasion, I’ve been able to produce surprisingly good results from months-old beans.
To be clear, I’m not encouraging you to use year-old beans—especially if they are preground. But if you normally finish a 12-ounce bag of coffee in two weeks or less (that’s about 14 [12-ounce] cups), I think you’ll still be able to make a tasty cup at home with preground beans from your local shop. Just be sure to properly seal the bag and store it as recommended (see page 181).
Tips
If you do choose to get your coffee ground at a shop, I suspect you will get better results by using those grounds in an immersion device. If you are using a device like an AeroPress or a French press, you can easily adjust the brewing time to match the grind size if needed.
I recommend avoiding the grinder at the grocery store, even though it’s likely a burr grinder, because (1) it’s probably never cleaned, (2) the burrs likely don’t get replaced as frequently as they should, and (3) many people will have used it to grind dark-roast beans, which means your coffee will be contaminated with stale fines and oxidizing (i.e., rancid) oils from other beans.
SCALES
In the United States, many people hear the term kitchen scale and their blood boils. Americans hate kitchen scales. They love measuring spoons, and they love measuring cups. A scale—a machine—makes things seem more complicated, and no one wants to complicate a simple task like measuring. So it should come as no surprise that many are skeptical about the necessity of using a scale to make coffee. It can seem like one step too far, I suppose. But let’s get real: this is a multipurpose item that’s going to make your coffee life (and kitchen life, if you have one) easier. There is nothing simple about measuring cups or spoons, as anyone who has had to mince herbs before measuring them, scrape out syrup from a tablespoon, or wash multiple spoons, cups, and bowls after cooking can tell you. Here are the reasons why I think a kitchen scale is a great addition to your home brew bar if you’re willing to purchase two additional pieces of coffee equipment:
Digital kitchen scale
•Accuracy. As discussed previously, certain ratios of coffee to water (based on weight in grams) are most likely to get you in the ideal range of extraction and strength. This range is captured on the Coffee Brewing Control Chart (see page 21)—a chart that has science on its side. I believe a good starting brew ratio, one that will get you a great cup most of the time, is between 1:15 and 1:17. An inexpensive kitchen scale will allow you to measure both water and coffee in grams, which will make your coffee routine a whole lot easier. The most accurate way to measure anything is by weight—how could you compare the mass of coffee to the mass of water otherwise? That’s right: you can’t. You are going to have to use a scale. You are going to have to let go of your tablespoons and US customary units in general. Say good-bye to them. You don’t need them. You think you do, but you don’t. Bye-bye, US customary units!
•Consistency. Coffee beans can vary so much in size and density that measuring by volume can be surprisingly inconsistent. If you use a tablespoon (or guess) to measure your dose, you will end up using a different amount of coffee each day. That means you will never be able to consistently replicate yesterday’s cup. And that’s not even taking the water into consideration. I gather that weighing water is what really turns people off from the idea of using a scale. It sounds like madness—madness! But think of it like this: if you measure the water before boiling it, there is no way for you to account for any that is lost with evaporation and steam. Steam is your carefully measured water saying, “See you never!” If you measure your water as you pour it, you don’t need to worry about steam and its utter disregard for you. If you’d rather not leave the quality of your cup up to chance, a kitchen scale will allow you to steer the ship every time.
•Easy troubleshooting. When your brew ratio becomes a constant, you are better able to tweak your specs to get a perfect cup. Let’s say you decide to try a new type of coffee one morning. You go through your regular routine, but the resulting cup is too strong. A set of potential actions unfurls before you, the first of which is: reduce your dose. You can do that easily now that you have a scale. You know exactly how much coffee you started with, so you can easily reduce that amount next time.
•Less waste. Specialty coffee isn’t cheap. If you’re not measuring accurately, there is a good chance you are using too many beans, which means you are wasting precious coffee! Also, if you are using a tablespoon to measure ground beans, which some sources suggest, as opposed to whole beans, you are certainly wasting beans. If you grind the beans before you measure them, it’s unlikely that you are guessing the correct number of beans every time. How many cups of coffee do you currently get out of your 12-ounce bag? With accurate measuring, you should be able to get about 14 (12-ounce) V60 cups, 21 (8-ounce) AeroPress cups, or 10 (16-ounce) Chemex cups.
It may not seem like it at first, but I promise that a kitchen scale allows you to think less about your coffee and to make fewer movements during your routine. Using a scale makes measuring a seamless part of the coffee-making process. I encourage you to brew directly on the scale so that you don’t need to use multiple measuring devices or stress about getting exact measurements before you start brewing. This is especially true for measuring the amount of water to heat in your kettle. In fact, you should always heat a bit more water than you need. Once it’s hot, place your brewing vessel and brewing device (with coffee added) on the scale, zero the scale, and pour the water over the grounds until the scale reads the weight you want it to read. Easy! There’s no guesswork, no worry of evaporation, and no disruptive hunkering down to check the level of your brew. The extra hot water in the kettle can be used for lots of things. Before you start brewing, for example, I recommend wetting the coffee filter first (see page 54); or, while the coffee brews, some people like to pour a little hot water into their waiting coffee cups to preheat th
em. But the most practical use for extra hot water is rinsing the brewing device immediately after using it. It makes cleanup a snap.
What kind of kitchen scale should you choose? First of all, it doesn’t need to be expensive. A perfectly functional kitchen scale costs about $15 to $20. Of course, there are always more expensive options. Many professional shops use fancy scales, such as the coveted Acaia models, which can sync with your phone, monitor flow rate, and track bloom time. They can cost upward of $100. Is that necessary for you? Of course not. But keep the following in mind before you purchase a scale:
•Readability to the tenths place. It’s best if your scale can read to a tenth of a gram, which is important for dosing. Cheaper scales might read only to a whole gram or a half gram, which leaves significant room for error, and scales that read to the hundredths place are often unable to hold as much weight as is necessary to brew.
•Weight capacity of at least two kilograms. That’s 2,000 grams. You need enough capacity to hold not only your water but also the device itself. The six-cup Chemex and the Walküre, for example, each weigh well over 500 grams on their own.
•Large enough surface for your device and/or vessel. The bottom of your device or the vessel you are brewing into should fit completely on the surface of the scale to ensure accuracy.
•Tare function. Most scales do, but always make sure your scale can tare, or zero, after an object has been placed upon it and measured. This is essential because you’ll need to tare the scale after adding your device, grounds, and vessel to it before you can measure your pour.
Craft Coffee Page 9
