Hand Coffee Grinder

Grinding coffee by use of a hand coffee grinder has a few advantages. Its quiet, produces a more uniform grind and it’s more practical and fun to use. Grinding your coffee beans at home is the most important action you can take to improve the flavor and freshness of your coffee. It is believed by purists that the heat generated from electric grinders damages the coffee while the hand grinders produce the best results.

Hand crank coffee grinder was among the first coffee grinders to be used. though today most people prefer the electric grinders, the hand coffee grinders has an advantage in that incase of power failure, you’ll still have a fresh, great  tasting cup of coffee. It is important to learn that this hand coffee grinders come in two different types. There is one that chops the coffee beans by use of two steel blades.

The blades turn in a circle and chop beans. The other type grinds the whole beans up by use of two burrs that work together to do the job. Both types of crank grinders are adjustable from fine to coarse setting. Whatever type you choose to use, instructions on usage are almost the same. Burr crank coffee grinders are easier to use and produce a more evenly ground coffee.

The hand blade grinder works like a dry mix blender. It chops the beans into small bits. The more you grind the smaller bits you get. This means that if you want to get fine grind out of the blade, you have to grind for some time. Using this kind of grinder gives relatively uneven grounded coffee, some large and some tiny ones.

Inconsistency of grind size is one bad characteristic. The second bad characteristic is that the metal blades that spin around will heat the beans the longer they are grinding, making the coffee brewed out of the grind taste bad. Though cheap in price and easy to use, they are no longer commonly used for their disadvantages.

A hand burr grinder uses two pieces of burred metal, sometime flat, sometime cone shaped. The two metal lie on top of one another. These metals rub together while the coffee beans pass through them and the grounds are mashed into a hopper. In most models only one of the burred metal pieces moves but in some models both metals move against each other.

The closer each burred metal is to the other, the finer the resulting coffee grain. In professional burr grinders the grinder is calibrated by setting the selector to the coarse grind and adjusting the dials till the burrs are touching.

In home units especially the less expensive ones are mostly not calibrated well so they have uneven distances between each burr during grinding process. This causes them to produce uneven granule size in burr grinders. The granule size uniformity is not as bad as the one by the hand blade grinder.

One of the better makes of hand grinders are the zassenhaus hand coffee grinder. It’s fully adjustable from coarse to Turkish fine grind. The housing is made from solid beech, tapering towards the middle, making it easy to hold on your lap. It is made of Stainless steel making it easy to clean.