You lose a little complexity, he notes, but you don’t get the bad, off-flavors that come with an inconsistent grind. Make your brew with properly ground beans—as in, beans ground to a consistent shape and size—and you’ll easily detect a difference in aromatics and complexity of flavor, in sweetness and acidity, and even in the coffee’s texture and body. Finding the right grinder when you start your craft coffee journey can be mind-boggling – there’s so much choice and some great products on the market. Timemore has been making high-end manual grinders for several years, which have earned strong reviews from coffee experts.

This compact grinder is easy to use and has a wider range than most budget grinders, but it’s a bit less consistent than our top picks and less repairable. These remain the most popular and best-selling coffee grinders, and for good reasons: they’re simple, they’re cheap, and they do the job well-enough. Some machines have burrs that are off the shelf, so to speak, while other companies spend the time to design their own, with the hopes that their teeth and grooves more perfectly cut beans into consistent pieces. It won’t produce the tiny adjustments in fine grinds that thrill serious espresso enthusiasts, but its output is consistent enough to create a decent shot. In testing, we found we still prefer using the C2 and just refilling it if needed, because it was easier to hold.

Depending on how you’re brewing, it makes it very likely that you’ll get a too-fine or too-coarse amount of grounds, and end up with a muddy or flavorless cup.

But we don’t recommend this machine for serious espresso makers, because its range on the fine end just isn’t nuanced enough to allow you to really refine a shot, and it wasn’t designed for espresso grinding. In original tests of the Baratza and OXO grinders in 2017, we also had access to professionally trained palates and a suite of brewing and analytical equipment at the Counter Culture Coffee lab in New York City.With dots, you just have to take note of your selected settings—how many dots past zero is the setting you want. We know that some people will stand by their blade grinders and dismiss burr grinders as being pretentious or a waste of money.

These tablets are made of grain composites and can leave some dusty residue, which may not fully dissipate on the first one or two grinds after use. Load up your hopper with your favourite beans, turn the hopper to the grind setting you want, switch the Baratza Encore on and let the precision conical burrs deliver consistent, quality ground coffee every time. Dry environments produce more static, and lighter roasts produce more chaff than darker, oily ones do.

The OXO totally clogged up on me, to the point where it couldn’t grind anything,” she said, but she fixed the problem by taking out the burr and cleaning it and the clogged chute with a stiff brush. This grinder isn’t really for you to dial in the perfect and specific extraction for your precious latte, as the “Baratza Encore espresso setting” simply doesn’t exist. Lots of directions for different brewers (either online or with the included manual) will actually specify grind sizes for the Baratza Encore.

Like all of Baratza’s grinders, almost every part of the machine is repairable or replaceable, which is rare among grinders designed for home use. The Baratza Encore Coffee Grinder’s specially-designed conical burrs give a precise grind which enables a balanced extraction of flavours when making espresso or using popular manual brew methods such as pour-over, AeroPress and Chemex.

The OXO Brew’s grinds canister is also a huge improvement over the one on OXO’s more expensive grinder with an integrated scale, which we quickly disqualified for spraying coffee all over the counter. Then we twice brewed coffee from each grinder on an 8-cup Bonavita Connoisseur brewer, a previous pick in our guide to coffee makers that’s known to make great-tasting drip coffee. With an 8oz clear grounds bin, you never need to grind more than you’ll actually use (hooray for no stale coffee!