How to Grind Coffee

You can tell just by looking at coffee grinds whether they are top quality. In this accompanying picture, you can see that the coffee grinds produced by a blade grinder are uneven: there are giant pieces of beans that are still intact, and also little tiny particles no bigger than a speck of dust. Neither of these particles will give you much flavor in your cup. 

These are the characteristics of good coffee grinds: 

Uniform Size - if all the coffee grinds are the same size, that means there will be even flavor extraction. Burr Grinders are better able to produce even coffee grinds. 

No Heat - Heat is very damaging to the very sensitive flavor producing particles in coffee. Avoid grinders that produce a lot of heat when grinding up your coffee. 

Freshness - That wonderful smell when you grind up fresh coffee beans is actually flavor rapidly escaping. Make sure you grind your beans just before brewing your coffee. Once exposed to air coffee rapidly loses its flavor. This is why whole bean is always superior to pre-ground coffee. 

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When you looking to buy coffee grinders, there are three major types: 

Blade Grinders - These are the cheapest (and understandably most popular coffee grinders. They have blades that chop up the coffee beans. These types of grinders destroy coffee flavor in two ways: they create both large and small coffee particles (which creates uneven flavor extraction) and it rapidly generates heat. 

Flat Burr Grinders - The next step up is Burr Grinders, which features two 'burrs', or flat plates, that pulverize the coffee beans. Pulverization is a better method because it creates uniform-sized coffee grinds, and also generates very little heat. 

However the flat burr grinders aren't perfect, and sometimes whole coffee beans can escape being pulverized by the flat burrs. 

Conical Burr Grinders - The best type of burr grinders are conical burr grinders. Instead of two flat plates, there is a flat plate and a cone-shaped plate. The increase in surface area means that the coffee grinds are spread out and pulverized more evenly. No coffee bean can escape unscathed when it comes to conical burr grinders. 

Most blade grinders are manual, with no guide on how long you should be grinding your coffee for. When in such situations, this is a handy guide of grinding times for each particular brewing method: 

Coarse Grind (for French Press or Percolator): 8-10 seconds. 

Medium Grind (for drip Coffee Makers) - 10-15 seconds

Fine Grind (espresso machines) - 15-20 seconds

Very Fine Grind (for Turkish coffee) - 25-30 seconds