Hello, all of my coffee lovers! How are you doing? Still, start your day by getting a cup of coffee? Personally, I really like coffee and I used to go to the Cafes every day to drink coffee. But, during this pandemic, it is hard to go to public places and enjoy a fresh cup of coffee. However, if you have good tools such as a coffee grinder to make coffee at your home, you can freely enjoy the home-cafe atmosphere instead.
To tell the truth, coffee is inextricably needed for coffee lovers. When you start your new day or spend your tired afternoon time, even when you need to make yourself energized, coffee is a must-have drink. It is obvious that you can enjoy delicious coffee aunty,e anywhere when you have good coffee tools such as a coffee grinder and machine. And the first step of your coffee equipment is getting a coffee grinder. So, today we are going to describe to you in detail how a coffee grinder can make your coffee taste different.
Contents
Why do we have to grind coffee beans? (Importance of Coffee Grinder)
1) Grinding can extract various ingredients
If you look at the structure of beans, the cells outside of the coffee beans are small and hard, while the cells inside are porous. In other words, the outside plays a role in protecting nutrients inside of the coffee beans and contains various nutrients inside.
So, grinding is a necessary work to extract the various components inside.
2) Grinding can improve the surface area of coffee beans and have a better taste
When the beans are crushed, the surface area increases exponentially. You can increase the surface area just by cutting small. As the surface area increases, that is, the finer the coffee beans are, the more the ingredients can be dissolved. Therefore, understanding this well and controlling the degree of grinding is a very important task. The taste of coffee is in the ground beans.
A good barista can enhance the coffee taste by adjusting the surface area of the beans with a coffee grinder. But what you have to remember is that grinding alone does not change the extracted ingredients. It just changes the surface area of coffee beans for better taste in the next process.
For instance, espresso is very sensitive to the degree of grinding because it is brewed in a short time and under strong pressure. The coffee taste changes according to the degree of grind. Thus, if you want to enjoy a deep and good taste of coffee, then you must understand the concept of grind and deal with it correctly.
Grinding According to The Coffee Brewing Method
You need to know the relationship between the size of the coffee beans and the brewing time to make delicious coffee.
Very Fine Crushing
It has a particle size of 0.3mm or less and is about the thickness of powder or flour.
: Espresso machine, Turkish coffee
Grinding Crushing
It has a particle size of 0.5 mm and is similar to the size of sugar.
: Moka pot, siphon coffee maker
Medium Grinding
The grain size is 0.5mm-0.1mm, and the size is similar to that of the grains.
: Hand drip, coffee maker
Coarse Crushing
It has a grain size of 1.0mm or more, and the thickness is similar to that of sesame seeds.
: French press
Relationship of Coffee Taste According to Grind Degree
If the degree of grinding is too coarse
It is extracted quickly (within 20 seconds) and the body is weak and the acidity is strong.
If the degree of grinding is too fine
It is extracted slowly (more than 30 seconds) and a bitter and unpleasant taste is extracted.
Types of Coffee Grinders
The grinder plays a very important role. If it is not good, dirty or well adjusted, the coffee powder is not good, and when brewing, it will affect the coffee taste. Adjustment or cleaning is a problem that can be easily solved, so it is the choice of the grinder that you need to pay attention to and consider. So, we introduce two most common and basic types of grinders, and you can choose the one that best suits your job and coffee style.
1) Blade Coffee Grinder
It is the most basic grinder type, has good cost performance, is easy to replace, and is suitable for cafes with a low workload. Blade coffee grinder rotates about 1,500 times per minute and enables high-speed grinding, and has the advantage of evenly grinding coffee beans. As the blade coffee grinder rotates at high speed, it generates a lot of heat if it is used continuously, so the replacement cycle is shortened, and there are opinions that this affects the coffee being ground and changes the coffee taste.
Moreover, usually, the side where the grinder blade touches the coffee beans is small, and the coffee is discharged by centrifugal force, so it has to turn quickly (900-1400 times per minute), and it does not last long due to heat generation. (300-600 kg of coffee powder).
2) Burr Coffee Grinder
The cone-shaped grinder knife is more expensive but lasts much longer (900 to 1000 kg of coffee powder). Burr coffee grinder is mainly used for hand mills and small household grinders, and it is also used in coffee grinders for cafes as well.
This type of coffee grinder can rotate about 500 times per minute and have a longer replacement cycle than flat burs. It generates a lot of fines and the particles are uneven compared to the blade coffee grinders, but the crushing method has the advantage of enriching the flavor of the coffee beans. Additionally, gravity discharges the coffee to make it run more slowly (300-500 times per minute). It is suitable for busy cafes with a lot of grinds, and the coffee beans are less stressful as they turn slowly.
Conclusion
There are advantages and disadvantages of each of the blade and burr coffee grinders, and there are differences in taste when each espresso shot is extracted from the same bean. However, it is too subtle for the general public to feel the difference in taste, and it is such a difference that even experts do not notice when drinking Americano or other coffee types. So, if you choose a grinder for your cafe or home-cafe, you can choose it with the standards you want to pursue more.
Apart from this, the replacement cycle of coffee grinder blades varies greatly depending on the number of coffee beans used in the cafe and the maintenance of the grinder. Even the experts also have different opinions, but it is generally recommended to replace 500kg beans. For large cafes with high usage, around 1 year, and I think that a small cafe with low usage and good management can be used for about two years as well.
Hopefully, this article helped you gain more knowledge regarding the coffee grinders, and we will come back with a new interesting topic next time! Have a nice day and thanks for reading!