Redneck coffee grinder

I splurged for my wife a few years ago. Baratza Virtuoso. I clean it out once a year but does not really need it. . From the grinder it goes into the Technivorm Mocca master.

Rather than try to repurpose an existing tool it is smarter to buy a cheap grinder for $15 or less.

Separate unit like this one

Check the link in the reply I made to DerbyDad . And quit being an ass , I was clearly NOT talking about a shop tool .

Just boil the beans!

Nice pix. 'Grinder Guard' poll:

Grind your coffee with a blender. If there's no blender, use a mortar and pestle, if not a hammer.

I've got nothing in my electrical or computer repair toolboxes that would be able to do anything as far as grinding a coffee bean in a realistic amount of time while still being suitable for brewing.

I suppose you could use one of the drills, but, I have no attachment intended to grind beans... You'd have to fabricate something.

Perhaps, crushing... but, it would be slow process. Or maybe... the dremel with the proper wheel? You'd want to put the bean in a vice or something... probably make a bigger mess than it would viable ground coffee.

If you are low on funds, why don't you stop drinking coffee? That stuff is expensive!

And what is that based on? With a burr grinder you get a uniform particle size so that the extraction from each particle is the same. With a cheap blade grinder, or worse, with a hammer, you get inconsistent extraction, with fine particles over extracted, big ones barely extracted at all. With espresso you have the additional problem that the grind need to be fine, which a hammer can't produce, but the uniformity problem exists with coffee too.

If you can't grind it right, I'd just buy it at one of the stores that have grinders there, grind it at the store, keep it in a sealed container in the fridge.

The fact I've forgotten more about coffee than you will ever know.

nb

Taxed and Spent posted for all of us...

Starsucks is going to raise their prices. Just think... you can buy gasoline cheaper than coffee. I like coffee ice cream.

Then explain to us how you extract evenly when you have one piece that's half a bean and one piece that's a pinpoint. You won't extract much at all from the half bean. Nuff said.

Nuff not said.

Coarse ground coffee, which is used in a french press and for cold brewed coffee, is far from uniform.

How do you know that coffee was run through a burr grinder and not a cheap blade type? No one said you can't make coffee from non-uniform grind, only that it doesn't taste as good. Plenty of people buy a can of cheap pre-ground coffee and think that tastes good too.

Do an image search on "coarse grind" and you will see that the images are consistent, i.e. large variations in the resulting output size. Those variations will occur with both a cheap blade grinder, a conical burr grinder or a flat burr grinder. Each type of grinder may produce different levels of variations, but a coarse grind will always result in a non-uniform grind.

For further proof, check out this video where they discuss burr grinders and grind sizes. You will note that both coarse grinds are "variable" in size of the output. In fact, even at the medium grind, you will begin to see significant variations in the size of the output.

I don't know of any type of grinder that will give a uniform output size when coarse grind is desired. It's a function of the bean and the grinder and unless you are taking the grind all the way down to a fine grind, you will never get completely consistent grind size.

I do find it interesting that they mention "uneven particle size" when warning against blade grinders, yet their own images of the medium through extra coarse grind show uneven particle sizes.

Nothing is perfectly uniform, no one said it was. And I would agree that the variation is going to be more noticeable the coarser the grind. But there is still a big difference between the output of a burr grinder and a blade type, here are the pics I see:

It's that the unevenness is worse with a blade grinder. Now, you can probably find tests that shows it matters when brewing a cup of coffee that people can tell the difference and ones where they can't. For the OP on a budget a cheap blade grinder is probably fine or just grind the coffee at the store and keep it sealed in the fridge.

If I'm going to go with ground coffee, I just use the machine in the store to do it for me. I love the smell. Otherwise, I have normal everyday coffee machines that are okay with Folgers/Maxwell house branded coffee (I've tried 8oclock too). I like my coffee, but, i'm not overboard with the 'perfect' cup.

Treat yourself sometime. Go to one of the better coffee sellers and try a pound or two. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get a better grade.

Most times I pau about $15 a pound but I've splurged one time and bought my wife a half pound of a Panama coffee for $48, Wow, was it good.