Blade or Burr Coffee Grinders?
When choosing a coffee grinder to serve the purpose of grinding, many people are surprised that there are grinders starting right from the range of below $20 and some as expensive as being above the range of $400. While the cheap and inexpensive ones are usually blade grinders, the more expensive ones are burr grinders. So, the question that comes to the mind is whether or not expensive burr grinders worth the investment that one makes or is it another hyped up product to take gullible customers for a ride.
While blade coffee grinders are good enough to do the job of coffee grinding, there are many drawbacks to blade grinders.
One such is the inability of the user to control the fineness of the grind. There are no timers provided with these grinders to control the time for which the grinder should be used. It is only by experience that many people who use the blade grinders get to gauge the fineness of the coffee and stop the grinding at the appropriate time. This problem is sorted out when one buys a burr grinder as these models usually come with an adjustable timer to set the time according to the grind requirements.
Another huge problem with blade coffee grinder is the mess that it creates due to the formation of static. This makes handling the grind difficult and messy. Many burr grinders come with features like anti-static and reduced speed for grinding that reduces static making handling the grind easier. Also, the reduced speed that is used by these grinders makes it less noisy in comparison to blade grinders where the blades spin at high speeds making lot of noise during grinding.
Blade coffee grinders are fine when it comes to handling less quantity of grinding. But, if lots of grinding is involved, the lesser capacity of these grinders warrant more number of grinding cycles making it somewhat inconvenient. The capacity of burr grinders is much higher in comparison to blade grinders making it convenient for any quantity of grinding without any hassles.
Another problematic feature of blade grinders is that the spinning of the blades causes heat formation that can provide a burnt taste to the grind. This can alter the taste of your coffee. This altered taste is not acceptable to many a coffee lover who does their own grinding to get the right taste and flavor of the coffee. This kind of alteration to the taste is not seen with burr grinders as the grinder runs at a much slower speed for grinding the coffee.
So, even though both blade grinders and burr grinders are doing the same job, the efficiency and quality of coffee that you get from burr grinder is lot better than what you get when you use a blade grinder to grind your coffee. For this reason, many coffee lovers including you will agree that even though the cost of burr coffee grinders is a tad too high, it is definitely worth the higher investment you make in comparison to what you get when you use a blade grinder. So, which of them have you chosen for your kitchen today?