We Tested 14 Coffee Grinders—Here Are the Best Ones

我不能告诉你多少次我听说过咖啡e pro say that the single biggest upgrade a person can make is to buy a good-quality burr grinder. Less often have I seen other suggestions, like buying a better coffeemaker, learning the ins and outs of brewing, and developing a better sense of one's own coffee-bean preferences. But still, it's true: A good coffee grinder makes a whole lot of difference.

For this review, we tested 14 coffee grinders—to find the best one for all kinds of brewing methods, including automatic drip, French press, pourover, and Aeropress (but not espresso—I'll explain why below). Recently, we re-tested all of our favorite coffee grinders as well as new models, going through pounds and pounds of coffee to make sure our favorites were still the best. We've been testing coffee grinders consistently for nearly five years, and we've continually gathered editor feedback on our favorite coffee grinders—should any long-term insights arise.

To further understand my findings, I consulted coffee-making professionals, as well as coffee-drinking civilians. The team at Joe Coffee Company was invaluable in helping me run grinder taste tests and analyses, and conversations with Steve Rhinehart of Acaia (formerly of Prima Coffee Equipment) and Nick Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters helped deepen my understanding of this piece of coffee gear and the technical details that underpin its use.

The Winners, at a Glance

The Best Coffee Grinder for Serious Coffee Geeks

Baratza Virtuoso+ Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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Baratza's Virtuoso+ coffee grinder is routinely picked by pros as the home grinder to beat, and for good reason. Its well-made conical burrs produce a wide range of grind sizes, the results are consistent, the machine is solidly built from both metal and plastic, and it's all backed up by good customer service. I don't love taking apart and reassembling the burr set for cleaning, as it isn't intuitive enough, but beyond that, this is the grinder to get for serious home-brewed coffee drinkers looking to maximize control over grind size.

Best For:Folks who are well-acquainted with concepts like flow rate, brew time, and extraction level; who use scales to measure everything and know their bean-to-water ratio by weight; who prefer light to medium roasts that present more of a bean's inherent flavors; and who usually drink their coffee black.

Alternate Best Coffee Grinder Pick

Breville The Smart Grinder Pro

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Breville's Smart Grinder Pro also performed very well in our tests, and it's worth considering since it costs less than our other top pick, the Baratza Virtuoso. Its grind trends finer than the Virtuoso. Even at its coarsest setting, the results were closer to the medium grind that other machines produced. That potentially makes it less well-suited to making French press and cold brew, but it'll perform well for most other brewing methods and can even function as an entry-level espresso grinder—something few other home coffee grinders can do.

Best For:The same people who would buy the Virtuoso, but those who are less likely to make press pots or cold brew, and those who may want to casually play with pulling espresso shots.

The Best Budget Coffee Grinder for Coffee Geeks

Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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在那里's a lot to be said for Baratza's entry-level Encore grinder, which comes in a lighter-weight, all-plastic housing. It packs the same motor as the more expensive Virtuoso, and it includes a slightly less effective burr set that grinds nearly as well as—and slightly more slowly than—the Virtuoso. Also worth knowing is you can upgrade the burr set in the Encore to the one made for the Virtuoso if you do ever end up feeling like the Encore isn't quite cutting it.

Best For:Anyone considering the Virtuoso but who's not quite ready to pay the higher price tag.

The Best Coffee Grinder for Most People

OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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Like many of OXO's products, its burr grinder's design is simple and intuitive. Even more importantly, it delivers excellent grind consistency given its price tag. This is about as inexpensive as a burr grinder gets before the grind quality really starts to fall off, making it a good starter grinder for most home-brewed coffee drinkers.

Best For:Any coffee drinker who wants more control and a chance to experiment with grind sizes; who wants to begin to explore some of the more detailed coffee-brewing concepts without a huge cost of entry; who likes a good cup but maybe isn't 100% clear on what terms like TDS (total dissolved solids), acidity, and sweetness mean (at least when discussing a cup of joe).

The Best Super-Budget Burr Grinder

Krups Precision Coffee Grinder

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If the price points of our favorite grinders make them an out-of-the-question proposition, and if you'd like to stop using a blade grinder to chop up your beans (after all, it does kinda suck when your coffee tastes like the cumin you also blitzed in there), you can't beat the price on this Krups model. Its grind is inconsistent, and its build quality leaves a lot to be desired, but you get what you pay for. On the upside, even with the inconsistent grind, you'll still have more control over your grind size than you would using a blade grinder, and for many people, that's all that matters.

Best For:Coffee drinkers who tend to buy dark roasts and/or drink their coffee with dairy or sugar; those who want to grind whole beans for fresher flavor and are sick of having to do it in the spice grinder.

最好的咖啡研磨机设计

Fellow Ode Gen 2 Coffee Grinder

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After a lukewarm reception for their first coffee grinder, Fellow re-tooled the anti-static system and overhauled the burr design for the Gen 2 Ode. This version featured some of the most consistent grinding in our testing, great user interface details (like a grind chart under the lid), and virtually no static cling—all in a stylish, small format.

Best For:People who want counter appeal and ease of use and are willing to pay for it. The Ode Gen 2 delivers high-quality grinding and a great user experience while its modern design and small stature look great on most counters.

The Best Handheld Coffee Grinder

1Zpresso J Manual Coffee Grinder

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We separately tested 11handheld coffee grinders, but are including our favorite in this review. It was fast, ground top-notch coffee, and was easy to adjust.

Best For:People who want a compact, handheld coffee grinder (particularly those with small kitchens or who are traveling).

The Criteria: What We Look for in a Coffee Grinder

To understand the importance of a good coffee grinder, you need to have a basic understanding of what happens when coffee is made. Generally speaking, when we brew coffee, our goal is to extract a sufficient amount of desirable soluble molecules from the beans while leaving the undesirable ones behind.

如果我们不提取足够的我们想要的bean, the resulting coffee will taste "underextracted." Underextracted coffee is not necessarily weak coffee. Rather, it's coffee in which an insufficient amount of the desirable soluble molecules have been pulled out of the beans and dissolved into the water. If you brew a high ratio of coffee beans in water but underextract them, you could end up with coffee that is both strongandunderextracted, a seemingly contradictory concept. Underextracted coffees tend to taste more sour—and not in a good way.

Overextracted coffees, on the other hand, have pulled too much from the beans, including unpleasant things we don't want in the cup. Those coffees often taste harsh and bitter. And just like the seemingly antithetical possibility of a strong underextracted coffee, you can have aweakoverextracted coffee, say, by brewing a small amount of coffee relative to the water for too long.

It should go without saying that you can also have weak underextracted coffees, strong overextracted ones, and everything in between.

A grinder plays a pivotal role in coffee extraction because it determines the grind size of the coffee. Grind size can affect extraction in two ways. The first is perhaps the most obvious one: Finely ground coffee has far more surface area than coarsely ground coffee, and that increased surface area makes what's in the beans more immediately accessible to the hot water, speeding up the rate of extraction.

The second thing the grind size determines is the flow rate for certain methods of coffee brewing, such as pour-over, which, in turn, affects extraction levels. The smaller the coffee particles, the more slowly water can seep down through them; the larger the coffee particles, the faster. If you imagine two pipes, one of which is packed with sand and one that's packed with marbles, and you poured water through each, the water would pass much more quickly through the marbles than the sand, given all the empty space around them. With coffee, the water traveling more slowly through the finer grounds has more time to extract coffee molecules, while the water racing through a coarsely ground coffee will have less time.

Exactly how coarse or fine to grind coffee depends on a complex set of factors, including the batch size, the brewing method, and the coffee beans themselves. It's a moving target and therefore takes some practice to begin to understand how to use grind size to improve your coffee.

As you are probably starting to see, given how grind size can determine surface area and flow rate, and thus extraction, a grinder that offers a wide range of grind sizes and produces a uniformly sized result at each grind setting is desirable. The idea is that if a grinder produces coffee grounds that have too much variance in size for any given grind setting, results become increasingly difficult to control. A setting that's meant to produce a medium grind but instead gives that medium grind littered with fine powder and too-big chunks, may under- or overextract, or both. At least, that's the theory.

Exactlyhowuniform coffee grounds need to be is open for debate, and it's something professionals in the coffee industry continue to explore. If we can say one thing with certainty, it's that we want a grinder that helps us produce a cup of coffee that we consider enjoyable and delicious. As Nick Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee pointed out in a conversation I had with him a few years ago: The challenge is finding agreement about what that means.

Cho told me he'd done a taste test some years before our conversation, and that even coffee professionals were all over the place in terms of their preferences. "No one has to learn to like strawberries," Cho said at the time. "Whereas with coffee or beer, the things that contain bitterness, it’s an acquired taste—so what kind of taste you acquire is everything."

Before diving into my review of coffee grinders, I decided to explore this question a little more deeply.

Do You Really Need a Good Burr Grinder?

My first grinder tests go back a number of years. I wanted to get some data, and my initial results left the question unresolved. In those tests, I pitted one ofour favorite blade grinders(technically, it's a spice grinder, but lots of people use them for coffee) against an inexpensive burr grinder (the Cuisinart DBM-8) and a higher-end burr grinder (Breville's Smart Grinder Pro). I used aClever coffee dripperin those tests, which was a brewer that made it easier to control some key variables. All samples were tasted blind by my colleagues.

In each of those tests, tasters preferred the coffee made by the higher-end grinder more than the other two, and the blade grinder came in last for most people, but we were all surprised to find that the differences weren't particularly striking—certainly not different enough to support the common recommendation that most home-brewed coffee drinkers should pay for a really good burr grinder. Yes, there was a difference, but if we didn't have the benefit of side-by-side tastings, we weren't sure we'd have been able to easily tell them apart.

Fast-forward to this review, when I finally decided to return to this question. I headed over to the Joe Coffee Company Pro Shop, where Christopher Malarick helped me run a new round of tests.

This time we assembled a tasting panel that included two professionals (Malarick and a Joe Coffee colleague) along with four civilian tasters who represented a range of coffee-drinking expertise and preferences.

For this test, we used four different grinders, each representing a different class. AKrups blade spice grinderrepresented the type of grinder usually frowned upon by professionals; aKrups GX5000 burr grinder, which retails for about $30, represented the absolute cheapest of burr grinder options; the Baratza Virtuoso was our representative high-end home grinder; and a pro-levelMahlkonig EK-43, which is famed for its consistent grind quality and sells for nearly $3,000, acted as the crème de la crème against which all the other grinders were compared.

Malarick did all the brewing on aKalita Wave pour-over brewer, which is prized for its consistency, and we tasted all samples blind.

We ran this test two times, using two different roast profiles. The first one was aJoe's blend called The Waverly, which combines Peruvian and Colombian beans with a medium roast profile. The second was a very, very意大利烤黑from Starbucks. The results shed more light on the complexity of how drinkers perceive coffee and how the grinder can affect that perception.

With the medium roasted beans, the tallied results put the grinders more or less in order of quality, with the EK-43 in first place and the blade grinder in last place. But not everyone agreed. One of the pros rated the blade grinder in the middle of the pack, and the other pro, who admitted later he wasn't a huge fan of the Waverly blend, had an inverted list, with the blade grinder his favorite and the EK-43 his least favorite. In light of his opinion on the blend, this starts to make sense: the EK-43 created the truest expression of the coffee, which he didn't love, while the blade grinder produced a less clear expression of the beans, which worked for him—the less he could taste of the coffee's nuances, the better.

Among the civilian tasters, one picked the two cheapest grinders—the blade grinder and budget Krups burr grinder—as his favorites and the coffees from the higher-end grinders as his least favorite. His tasting notes seem to indicate that he wasn't the biggest fan of this coffee either, and so, perhaps like the pro, he valued the grinders that obscured the coffee's full flavor. The remaining civilians ranked the coffees as one might expect, with the better grinders tending to get higher scores.

But things took an interesting twist when we switched to the dark Starbucks roast. Rankings became scattered, with no clear pattern, except that the EK-43 got consistently bad scores. A couple tasters had a hard time ranking the coffees at all, handing out ties and noting that it was difficult to tell the samples apart. Others did their best to rank the results, but all agreed afterward that the differences were incredibly difficult to notice, even in side-by-side tastings. The oft-maligned blade grinder came out toward the top on a couple tasting sheets, including in both of the professionals' assessments (they each ranked it the second-best tasting coffee of the bunch).

What does this tell us? Mostly, it tells us that the preferences of the individual taster matter a lot and that the coffee itself has a significant role in determining whether a grinder's uniformity of grind matters much or not. The darker the roast, the less the grinder's quality seems to matter. If anything, the uniformly sized grounds produced by the better grinders seemed to be a bad thing for the dark roast, bringing some of the harsher charred flavors to the fore.

This makes some sense when you consider that the more deeply a coffee is roasted, the more it loses its original flavors and takes on a more generic roasty profile. A dark roast is not unlike oak in wine or hops in beer—it's an equalizer of sorts, erasing some of a bean's natural flavor, covering up flaws, and pushing the product's overall flavor in one very particular direction. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can lessen the effect that grind uniformity, and therefore the grinder itself, can have.

The lesson here is that coffee drinkers need to know what their preferences are in order to make an informed decision about which grinder to buy.

Do they prefer medium and lighter roasts that try to preserve the original character of the bean? Do they drink the coffee black instead of adding ingredients like milk and sugar, which can mask flavors and soften the harsh edges of darkly roasted beans? Or do they like a dark roast, maybe with a splash of cream or a bit of sweetener? Answers to these questions will determine which burr grinder is right for them or even if a blade grinder will suffice.

The Testing

The above taste tests were very helpful in constructing a more complex picture of just how much and when a grinder truly matters. With that information helping to inform us, the next step was to analyze each grinder, looking at both the range of grind sizes each machine offered as well as how uniform the grinds were. We could then see how each grinder related to the others in terms of quality and price and make recommendations.

Test 1: Grind Screening

To determine grind uniformity and range, we ran each grinder at its coarsest, middle, and finest settings and analyzed the results. We useda Kruve sifter systemto sort and analyze the grinds.

Before running these tests, I called up Steve Rhinehart of Prima Coffee Equipment in Louisville, Kentucky, to get some of his wisdom on grinders. According to Rhinehart, ideal grind sizes fall roughly as follows: 1,000 microns and larger for French press; 600 to 800 microns are the most common sizes for most other home-brewing methods like pour-over; grinds for AeroPress and moka pots often fall in the 400 to 600 micron range; espresso is usually around 300 to 400 microns. Anything ground smaller than that is referred to as "fines" and is considered undesirable, as it will overextract quickly and clog filters.

Those numbers line up with the filter screen sizes Malarick used to separate our samples into groupings, cutting each into three groups: smaller than 400 microns (essentially an espresso grind and fines); between 400 and 1,000 microns (the range most useful for home coffee-making methods); and larger than 1,000 microns, for French press and such.

Since the 400 to 1,000 microns is still quite a large range, we did a visual assessment to see roughly how consistent and how large the grinds seemed to be within that range.

Test 2: Taste Tests

In addition to all of the rounds of taste tests described above, we also ran our finalists through more rigorous tests. This included grinding several varieties of beans from different roasters and brewing coffee dozens of times, and using different brewing methods to get used to the machines to develop a sense of how easy they are to dial in our preferences and otherwise assess real-world results.

Test 3: Design Quality Assessment

Throughout testing, we examined the build quality of each machine, itsease of use, loudness, and other design factors and weighed those in our final decisions of which grinders to recommend.

Test 4: Quick Espresso Test

This review deliberately did not take a close lookat espresso．As just about any professional barista will tell you, home grinders at this price point are generally not considered up to par for pulling good espresso shots, largely due to a lack of fine-tune settings to truly dial a shot in.

Unfortunately, espresso is a more expensive brewing method to get into at home, and grinders that are made for it tend to cost quite a bit more, starting at several hundred dollars and climbing up into the thousands. We've reviewedthem separately, for those interested in investing in this type of grinder.

Still, after we'd narrowed the field of grinders in this test down to the final set, I thought it'd be fun to at least try them for espresso, and the folks at Joe were kind enough to humor me. We didn't try to pull shots with any but the top performers—the Baratza Virtuoso and the Breville Smart Grinder—starting each at its finest setting just to see what would happen.

What we found is that both of those grinders are capable of grinding fine enough for an espresso shot—the finest settings were, in fact, too fine, clogging the portafilter and preventing the water from flowing through properly.

Malarick was concerned that the Virtuoso didn't have small enough steps between grind settings to allow him to adequately dial in that shot, but the Breville, which leans fine and devotes about a third of its grind settings to espresso-level fineness, stood a better chance. He adjusted the Breville's grind and pulled a second shot with it, getting it closer to his goal. He still wasn't happy with it, but I didn't think it tasted too bad.

Overall, it was clear that none of these grinders could really pass muster with a professional barista for pulling espresso shots, but for a home user who's less concerned with pro-level perfection, the Breville can work.

The Best Coffee Grinders

The Best Coffee Grinder for Serious Coffee Geeks

Baratza Virtuoso+ Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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What we liked:Baratza's Virtuoso+ coffee grinder is consistently recommended by pros for home use, and for good reason. It's well-built, with metal and plastic housing that gives it enough weight to sit solidly on the counter. It's the grinder I've used at home for the past five years, and it's still going strong.

To operate it, you rotate the bean hopper to select one of the 40 grind settings, add the beans to the hopper, and then either use the pulse setting or the 40-second timer.

All of these grinders, the Virtuoso included, like to claim you can grind a set amount of beans based on the timer duration, but I don't recommend doing that. First, different beans grind at different rates depending on their size and density (bean density varies with roast level, among other things), and, second, it's simply not accurate. If you're going to bother trying to take advantage of a higher-quality burr grinder, you don't want to shortchange yourself on something basic by not measuring the beans and water for a proper ratio. Instead, get agood coffee scaleand weigh your beans (aim for roughly one gram of coffee to every 16-17 grams of water).

In the grinding tests, the Virtuoso+ showed an impressive level of consistency. On its coarsest setting, it produced huge boulders above the 1,000 micron threshold (bigger than anyone is likely to ever want). Only a very small amount of grinds in the 400 to 1,000 micron range that—to the eye—seemed more on the coarse end of things and so few fines that our scale couldn't register them.

On the finest setting, almost the entire bulk of the grinds landed in the 400 to 1,000 grams range and looked like it leaned on the finer end of that spectrum. It also produced the largest amount of under-400 micron particles (a mere 1.2 grams out of 20 grams total, but still more than any of the others), marking the Virtuoso+ as the grinder capable of producing the finest grinds of the pack. This fits with our espresso test, where the Virtuoso's finest grind clogged the portafilter on the espresso machine.

At its middle setting, the Virtuoso's grinds split into two groups, about two-thirds of which were just barely too large to make it through the 1000-micron screen, while the remaining third did, falling into the 400 to 1000 range.

One other thing worth mentioning about Baratza, in general, is that they have a great reputation for their customer service. Not only are they helpful in resolving any issues that might come up with a machine, but they also sell just about every conceivable replacement part, from the motor and the circuit board to the burrs and rings and gaskets and more, including for discontinued models. This means that a Baratza grinder can be brought back from just about any malady and is unlikely to find its way into the trash for many, many years to come.

If you're serious about your coffee for all brewing methods except espresso, this is the top of the line for home use.

What we didn’t like:My biggest gripe with the Virtuoso+ (and it shares this flaw with the Encore) is that the hopper and conical burrs are not intuitive to assemble and disassemble. Getting it all to fit properly requires stretching a rubber gasket over a ring, setting that ring into its seating on the grinder such that small tabs are oriented properly (though what "properly" is can't easily be deduced without consulting the instruction manual), locking the hopper on top of that, and then rotating it into place. It's not difficult, but if you haven't done it in a while, you will almost definitely have to tinker with it or go find the instructions.

A smaller, second gripe (and one that plagues many grinders): Coffee bean chaff can build up in the chute and then get knocked loose when you're removing the grounds basket, making a mess on your counter. Baratza’s grounds binsaremade from anti-static plastic, it just takes 40 seconds of waiting before the static charge dissipates.

Price at time of publish: $250.

Key Specs

• Dimensions:4.7 x 13.7 x 6 inches
• Weight:8 pounds
• Burr type:40-millimeter stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings:40
• Warranty:1-year
• Features:Digital timer and backlit grounds bin

Alternate Best Coffee Grinder Pick

Breville The Smart Grinder Pro

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What we liked:Breville's Smart Grinder Pro was the Serious Eats office grinder for years, grinding beans for multiple pots of coffee daily, and it's done that job admirably. While the Baratza machines in this review are all analog, Breville's offers an appealing digital control interface.

A different major kitchenware review site complained about this interface, saying it was difficult to figure out how to use. I have no idea what they're talking about—it couldn't be more clear or easy. A large turn-dial sets the grind level, which is clearly indicated on the screen's grind chart. That chart has some useful labels on it, offering suggestions on which grind setting ranges are best for which brewing methods, a helpful starting point when trying to dial in a grind.

The Breville also has a timer function to control how long the machine runs, and it seems to suggest it's a viable way to measure the beans, but as I wrote above, I don't endorse that method (again: use a scale!). Still, it's functional enough, allowing the machine to run unattended for the duration of the grinding time setting; if the beans are fully ground before the timer is finished, you can push the start button again to stop it.

One of the areas where Breville beats Baratza is in its hopper and burr assembly. Taking the hopper on and off and removing the burrs for cleaning is as simple as twisting a very clearly marked spindle and lifting the upper bur by its handle. Not once did I feel the need to consult the user's manual to successfully accomplish this task.

As for its grind consistency and range, the Breville split evenly between the 1,000+ micron range and the 400 to 1,000-micron range at its coarsest setting, slightly finer than is probably ideal for something like French press (at the very least, one would want the option to go coarser, even if the coarsest setting can work for that method). It produced an immeasurable amount of fines at the coarsest setting.

At the finest setting, the Breville sifted similarly to the Baratza Virtuoso, with almost all of the grinds falling into that middle 400 to 1,000-micron zone. That said, the Breville's output looked to the naked eye to lean on the finer end of that range (though, as noted above, the Virtuoso does produce a small amount of even finer grounds). At its middle setting, the Breville also trended toward the slightly finer grind, with most of the results remaining in that middle 400 to 1,000 range.

As mentioned in the espresso section above, this grinder is probably your best bet if you want to experiment with pulling shots. It even comes with a portafilter holder accessory, so the grounds can be deposited directly into it without a clumsy transfer from the grounds container to portafilter that's bound to spill them all over the place. It should be stressed, though, that not a single professional I spoke to thought it'd be able to make particularly dialed-in results.

If you want a consistent and well-designed grinder that gives some room for espresso-making without breaking the bank, this one is worth considering.

What we didn’t like: Even with impressive grind sifting results, the flavor quality from this grinder wasn’t as high as some of the other winners. While brewed coffee ground in the Breville still offered a lot of sweetness and balance, it lacked the flavor clarity of the Virtuoso+, Ode Gen 2, and even the Encore.

Price at time of publish: $200.

Key Specs:

• Dimensions:8.5 x 6.3 x 15.3 inches
• Weight:6.4 pounds
• Burr type:Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings:60
• Warranty:1-year
• Features:Digital timer

The Best Budget Coffee Grinder for Coffee Geeks

Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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What we liked:I'll keep this one short: the Encore is an excellent choice for anyone who is leaning toward the Virtuoso+ but doesn't want to spend quite that much money. In exchange for the savings, you get the same motor, an all-plastic body that's only slightly lighter than the Virtuoso+, and burrs that are just one step down in quality from the Virtuoso's.

And, frankly, in our testing, the Encore kept pace with the Virtuoso in terms of grind ranges and consistency remarkably well. It's maybe a hair less consistent, but the chances most people will even notice the difference are small.

Even better, if you start with the Encore and later want to upgrade the burrs, it's as simple as swapping them out with the ones that come with the Virtuoso (which, again, you can buy separately, as Baratza sells just aboutevery replacement partyou could dream of).

What we didn’t like:This grinder is loud. With a mostly plastic body, the Encore doesn’t absorb sound as well as the Virtuoso+. It also came just under our two top picks for flavor clarity (though, as mentioned above, the burrs can be upgraded).

Price at time of publish: $170.

Key Specs

• Dimensions:4.7 x 13.7 x 6 inches
• Weight:7 pounds
• Burr type:40 millimeter stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings:40
• Warranty:1-year
• Features:Pulse button

The Best Coffee Grinder for Most People

OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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What we liked:OXO has entered the coffee game with some serious contenders, and this grinder continues that trend.

Priced at the low end of what a person can hope to pay for a decent burr grinder, this is the one to get if you want to up your coffee game by playing with grind settings but don't want to shell out for our other top picks.

The OXO is also slender and sleek-looking, with an easy-to-read grind-setting dial, a metal grounds container that claims to resist static cling (something all the other grinders suffered from), and an easy-to-remove and easy-to-reinstall hopper and burr assembly for cleaning.

What we didn’t like:In the grind consistency and range analysis, OXO's grinder didn't do as well as our other top picks, but it still held its own. On its coarsest setting, it produced almost comically large boulders, with a smaller fraction of midsize grinds and an immeasurable amount of fines. On its finest setting, it landed mostly in the middle range, with a small but measurable amount of grinds below the 400-micron mark. While it might not be the most precise, it’s still a solid pick for most casual coffee drinkers.

Price at time of publish: $100.

Key Specs

• Dimensions:7.5 x 5.25 x 12.5 inches
• Weight:4.5 pounds
• Burr type:Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings:15 (plus micro settings)
• Warranty:2-year
• Features:UV-blocking tint
  

The Best Super-Budget Burr Grinder

Krups Precision Coffee Grinder

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What we liked:I'll be honest: This is not a great burr grinder, by any measure. The grinds are inconsistent, online reviews are spotty, and the machine's build leaves a lot to be desired. It frankly doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in terms of longevity. That said, it's as cheap as a burr grinder could ever hope to be, making it a good choice for anyone happy with their blade grinder, except for the fact that they also use it to grind their spices and are sick of their coffee tasting like cumin.

This grinder did beat all the others in one very small area: the designers found a clever place to store the cleaning brush, hiding it in the hopper spindle. Amazingly, none of the other grinders managed to find a place for it, leaving the brush loose, which means it will almost definitely be misplaced.

Grab this one if all the tinkering and dialing-in of coffee-grind sizes I've described in this article sound like your idea of morning hell, but you still want to grind whole beans.

What we didn't like:The burrs in this thing look dinky compared to the higher-quality ones in our other picks, and the ground coffee they produce backs up that assessment: it's not great. Depending on what coffee you drink, though, that may not be a huge problem. As I wrote above, darker roasts tend to do better on a wider range of grinders and suffered less from inconsistent grind profiles. The Krups never made坏coffee in our tests (that's not to say it can't make bad coffee, only that even with an inconsistent grind, most coffee drinkers probably won't be bothered by the results).

Price at time of publish: $52.

Key Specs

• Dimensions:13 x 10 x 6.5 inches
• Weight:4.24 pounds
• Burr type:Metallic flat burrs
• Number of grind settings:12 (plus micro settings)
• Warranty:2-year
• Features:N/A
  

最好的咖啡研磨机设计

Fellow Ode Gen 2 Coffee Grinder

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What we liked:首先,ambiti Ode磨床的设计ous: it’s built around vertically-oriented flat grinding burrs, like high-end commercial coffee grinders. Flat burrs are harder to precisely align because they have to get much closer than conical burrs, but when done well, they can deliver much more consistent grind results.

When particle testing the Ode Gen 2, we found a negligible amount of fines and boulders, making it one of the most consistent grinders we tested. We could taste the results, too: without excess fines causing bitter or dry flavors, there was a clarity that stood out even amongst our winners. Only the Virtuoso+ delivered the same brewed coffee quality.

Aside from performance, Fellow packs user-friendly details into every aspect of the grinder. Under the lid is a grind chart to help users ballpark their grind settings, and the adjustment dial itself features easy-to-read icons to show which direction makes the coffee smaller or bigger. The coffee grounds catch-cup features a strong magnet that snaps it into place directly under the grind chute, and inside the cup are volume markings and two metal plates that act as a funnel directing ground coffee into the filter. It’s also the quietest grinder we tested (important for early risers) and has an auto-shutoff when it senses it has completed grinding. And with active anti-static technology (similar to the ionizer in a hair dryer), it left our counters super clean. And with its matte black or white modern design, it looks great, too.

What we didn’t like:First off, it’s expensive: it’s almost $100 more than our top pick, which was already a pricey option. With a grind performance that was on par with the Virtuoso+, the Ode Gen 2 mostly offers usability and aesthetic upgrades. Another downside is that it can jam up easily. We found if the grind cup isn't oriented directly under the chute, the lid closes off the chute and grounds back up into the burrs. To top it off, you can only clean them by disassembling the grind chamber. Luckily, the instructions for disassembling were easy to follow (though mechanically complex), and after making sure the cup was always aligned on the magnet, we didn’t have any other jamming issues.

Price at time of publish: $345.

Key Specs

• Dimensions:9.4 x 4 x 9.8 inches
• Weight:10 pounds
• Burr type:Stainless steel flat burrs
• Number of grind settings:30
• Warranty:2-year, or 3-year with registration
• Features:Anti-static technology; quiet grind

The Best Handheld Coffee Grinder

1Zpresso J Manual Coffee Grinder

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What we liked:Fast and simple to use, this is a fantastichandheld coffee grinder．特别是对于那些使pourover,进攻rs a compact grinding solution that takes up barely any storage space. We liked its rubber upper portion, too, which was nicely grippy, and found it easy to adjust the grind settings.

What we didn't like:It's not a workhorse like, say, the Baratza Virtuoso+. If you're wanting to try a variety of brew methods, we still recommend a motorized grinder.

Price at time of publish: $139.

Key Specs

• Dimensions:7.28 x 2.24 x 6.69 inches
• Weight:1.5 pounds
• Burr type:Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings:30
• Warranty:1-year limited
• Features:Foldable handle

The Competition

• OXO BREW Conical Burr Coffee Grinder with Integrated Scale:This upgrade to our “best for most people” pick features a built-in scale. however, the readings were consistently off by at least two grams during our tests. It’s also a very, very expensive upgrade for our cheapest recommended grinder, so we recommend sticking with one of our top picks and purchasing a separate coffee scale.
• Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder: The Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder is a simple machine that would meet the needs of casual coffee drinkers. However, the range of ground coarseness that it produces is much more narrow than our top picks. At a similar price point, the OXO grinder offers more finesse and control, allowing you to better dial in your grind size depending on your preferred brewing method.
• Fellow Ode Gen 1 Burr Grinder: If judged on aesthetics alone, the stylish Fellow Ode Burr Grinder would take first place. There is one major drawback with this grinder, though: it’s difficult to clean. Most grinders we tested had fairly simple removable burrs for easy cleaning, but cleaning the Fellow requires you use a screwdriver to remove the faceplate and access the burrs. A couple of Serious Eats editors do own this model and note that it seems to produce more static than other burr grinders, spewing a lot of grounds on the countertop. The updated version of this grinder—the Fellow Ode Gen 2—addresses these issues, and is now one of our top picks.
• Zwilling Enfingy Coffee Bean Grinder: When attempting to grind coffee on the finest grind setting, the Zwilling Enfingy Coffee Bean Grinder wouldn’t work. As in, it didn’t grind the coffee—at all. We even tried cleaning this model’s burrs multiple times and grinding two types of beans at different roast levels.
• Cuisinart's DBM-8 Supreme Grind Automatic Burr Mill: This was the first burr grinder I ever owned. Like the budget Krups, it comes with dinky burrs and grinds inconsistently as a result. It's also deafeningly loud and too expensive for the results it produces.
• KitchenAid's KCG0702 Burr Coffee Grinder: This is one of the more handsome grinders we tested; its body appears to be solid metal, and both the bean hopper and grounds container are glass, not plastic. But it suffered from poor grind consistency, and the glass grounds container does not sit securely in place below the chute; it would be very easy to accidentally knock it off while using the machine and break the glass.
• Ariete-Delonghi Electric Coffee Grinder: This grinder appeared to be of very poor build quality and exhibited subpar performance during our grinding consistency tests.
• Bodum Bistro Burr Coffee Grinder: This grinder performed so-so in the taste tests and its plastic body felt cheap. And even though the Bodum grinder is more expensive, it was outperformed by the OXO Brew grinder in every test.

FAQs

What's the best cheap burr grinder?

Our testing shows that the best affordable burr grinder is theKrups Burr Coffee Grinder．Although not as consistent as some of the other models we tested, its $50 price tag can’t be beaten, and it’s better than a blade grinder.

What's the best coffee grinder for pour-over coffee?

If you want to make thebest pour-over coffee, the uniformity of grind coarseness is important. With pour-over, grind size affects both brew time and degree of extraction. Too coarse, and the coffee will be under-extracted and taste weak. Too fine, and it will slow the rate of water flowing through the grounds and cause the coffee to be too strong and bitter. For the highest level of precision when grinding, we recommend theBaratza Virtuoso+and theBreville Smart Grinder, though this modelfrom OXOwill also deliver consistent results at this coarseness (but has fewer grind settings for those looking to really tinker with their brew).

How do you grind coffee for a French press?

当磨coffee for aFrench press coffee maker, select a coarse grind setting. As we note in ourguide to making French press coffee, "The particles should appear somewhere between coarse salt and steelcut oats."

Do you have to clean a burr grinder?

Yes, you shouldclean your burr grinder regularly．Over time, fine grinds and oils in the coffee will build up throughout the inside of the grinder. If left unclean, the buildup of residue can spoil and add off flavors to your coffee. I like these tabletsfor the task．

Why should coffee be ground fresh before brewing?

Coffee beans are full of volatile compounds that contribute to the flavor and aroma of a freshly brewed cup. These compounds degrade over time, especially when exposed to moisture, heat, or air. And grinding coffee pulverizes the beans and increases the overall surface area, causing the coffee to oxidize and degrade much faster. In short: Grind fresh and use the beans right away to maximize freshness and get the best flavor.

Why grind your own coffee beans?

Grinding your own coffee beans ensures you'll have the freshest, most flavorful coffee. Because coffee beans oxidize quickly once ground, store bought ground coffee will likely taste staler. Plus, different brewing methods require different grind sizes and having your own coffee grinder allows you to adjust this easily whether you're brewing with an automatic drip machine, French press, or pourover.

How long should you grind coffee beans for?

If you're weighing out your coffee beans for each go (as you should be), you can turn the grinder on and let it go until it stops or until it sounds like the grinder has finished grinding. We do recommend weighing your coffee beans before and after grinding to ensure you're brewing the correct amount.

Should you moisten or spray coffee beans before grinding?

A few drops of water or a light spritz before grinding can help reduce static while grinding, but too much moisture can cause coffee to clump, clogging the grinder. We don't recommend moistening coffee before grinding because the risks outweigh the benefit. Instead, we suggest letting coffee sit for 30 to 45 seconds after grinding to let the static dissipate before emptying the grounds into your filter.

Why We're the Experts

• For this review, we tested 14 coffee grinders. As new coffee grinders have come on the market, we've continued to test them and update this review. Most recently, we evaluated theZwilling Enfingy Coffee Bean GrinderandFellow Ode Gen 2 Coffee Grinder．Our favorite coffee grinders have been used and evaluated, consistently, over a span of five years.
• Daniel Gritzeris the senior culinary director of Serious Eats and has worked for the site since 2014. He's a previous restaurant cook, has worked on organic farms, and is responsible for many of your favorite recipes on this very site. He's written a lot of equipment-related content for Serious Eats, including reviews of coffee grinders andcast iron skillets．
• Jesse Raubis the commerce writer for Serious Eats and helped to update this article. He's worked for 15 years in the specialty coffee industry. He's our resident coffee expert, having tackled numerous coffee-related stories for the site, including reviews ofcoffee scalesandhandheld coffee grinders．
• Dylan Ettinger帮助更新这篇评论,测试一些新的coffee grinders. Dylan is a contributor with more than a decade of experience working in the specialty coffee industry.
  
• 对于本文,我们一起工作的人Joe Coffee Companyand interviewed Steve Rhinehart ofAcaia(以前的Prima Coffee Equipment) andNick ChoofWrecking Ball Coffee Roasters．
• 华体会app入口严重的员工吃的几乎所有我们的favorite coffee grinders, using them regularly. This way, we've been able to collect long-term feedback.