Good ol' Mr Capresso...

This is a piece on getting the job done vs. blowing your retirement savings on snob appeal.

Roasting is really just an opening step to my real purpose which is to enjoy s good cup of coffee. That all important intermediate step of brewing is something The Admiral (mostly) and I (a little bit) have worked out and it hasn't varied in years. 

• I roast the coffee, then we
  
• grind a measured amount of beans, 
• put the ground coffee in a filter basket (a Melitta these days), and 
• pour directly (for a Melitta) or indirectly (like a Mr Coffee) hot water over the top [don't laugh at the Mr Coffee- if you buy the right model it can brew great coffee! ]
  

Once the beans are roasted it's time to brew and brewing starts with the grinder. And we've used a few over the years.

The fanciest grinder we had was a Mazzer Mini we bought from Sweet Maria's for under $365 in 2003 (they cost about $700 today!). It was pretty much a commercial grade espresso grinder with a built-in doser.

At the other end of the spectrum we used a $30 blade grinder intended for herbs and spices. It did a good job shattering the beans, but 'ground' was not what you would call the end product. What we got was more like hammer-smashed coffee-bits with a lot of dust.

The Mazzer Mini was spectacular but when I accepted that trying to switch from grinding for pour-over to grinding for espresso 2 or 3 times per day was an absolute PITA, I looked around and found a Capresso conical burr grinder for $65 at Sweet Maria's. That was around 2004. 

Since 2004 I've purchased 2 additional Capresso grinders so we could leave one on the RV. The price has crept up a bit in the nearly 20 years (they're $99 now). Once I realized how durable they are, we were left with 2 extras. One stays on the travel trailer (it's in storage) and the other - the oldest one - I gave to my neighbor who had only a blade grinder. That thing is 16 years old and still working fine. It has a cracked hopper which doesn't interfere with its operation. And if it did it can be replaced since the design today is essentially identical to the old one.

 

Because it's inexpensive as burr grinders go, I assumed all these years the Capresso was either a Chinese creation or maybe something out of Eastern Europe. But it turns out Capresso is a Swiss company (I'm hedging cuz Capresso may out-source the fab). The Capresso isn't fancy like some conical burr grinders, but they work well and are both consistent and reliable. And if the burr gets too worn it can be replaced. 

If you want to grind for espresso you'll need to look elsewhere. And that's how we came to own the Mazzer Mini mentioned above- it's an Italian creation. And there was the briefly owned Rancillio Rocky (another studly Italian grinder), a Eureka Mignon (yet another Italian grinder) and currently a Baratza 270Wi. This latter example is from Taiwan. It grinds the exact amount of coffee you want by weight, It's an amazing device once you get one that works!

But all these burr grinders (flat or conical) do the same thing- they grind coffee beans with some measure of precision and they do it consistently. All the espresso grinders mentioned will grind coffee either for the Melitta pour-over or for espresso (espresso requires a fine grind). But they need to be set up for each purpose which requires essentially throwing away the previous setting. As I said above, I found that a stumbling block and chose to have one grinder for the daily grind and a separate grinder for espresso. While the Capresso will not grind fine enough for espresso. it does an outstanding job for our morning cup of coffee. It's is a hero!

Our Capresso is set to the fine end of Medium and is never adjusted. To clean it, I simply remove the hopper, lift out the upper burr, brush it out, return the upper burr and the hopper, rotate the hopper to the correct setting and away we go. 

It's in daily use and I grind about 1/2 Cup of beans every day- that's about 40 grams in coffee-nazi speak (coffee-nazi? think Jerry Seinfeld!). At 40 grams of coffee per day since 2004, that first Capresso has ground over 233.6 kg of coffee. That's over 520 lbs of coffee in 16 years. Pretty good value.

Unlike the blade grinder, conical- and flat-burr grinders cut even size bits from the beans. That means the texture is consistent which is a necessity for repeatable results. Yes, the Capresso grinder leaves a little bit of dust (the espresso grinders leave less) but not at all like a blade grinder. And our morning cup is as consistent as I could hope.

So why this long diatribe about grinders? I guess it's just to say that it isn't necessary to spend big bucks for a grinder that does a good job for your morning cup as long as that grinder is a flat- or conical-burr grinder.

Btw, a manual (hand-crank) grinder will work well too. In fact the coffee-nazis have jumped all over this cult approach to the point absurdity. A high end hand-crank grinder can cost as much as $1,000 (circa 2018). That unique bit of snobbery seems to have disappeared and what is left is a range of almost-OK to really-good hand grinders that covers a price spread from $35 (hand held) to nearly $400 (board-mounted for table- or counter- top use).

More than you ever wanted to know about grinding coffee. And you didn't even have to ask!