How To Grind Your Own Coffee Beans?

Air and oxidation are main problem, when it comes to the freshness of ground coffee.

Ground coffee starts to lose its freshness when air comes to its contact and this mainly destroys its taste.

What Makes The Ground Coffee Lose Its Flavor?

The flavor of grounded coffee beans stays intact when it is all sealed up in a package. Once the coffee beans have been ground, oxygen from the air reacts with the exposed surfaces of the coffee grinds and starts to destroy its flavor.

When you buy already ground coffee from supermarkets you will find that they have been vacuum sealed in plastic lined foil bags.

Being vacuum sealed the coffee beans are intact, nice and fresh while they are standing on the shop shelves.

However, once you break the seal off the coffee grinds, the inevitable procedure of oxidation starts resulting in the flavor loss.

Why You Should Grind Coffee Beans Yourself?

One of the best ways to ensure that you have the freshest ground coffee is to grind it yourself.

Different types of grinding mechanism are to be followed for making different varieties of coffees and to produce verities of taste.

This is why, you need to learn what is required and how to use your coffee grinder correctly. In this way you will make sure that you get the freshest tasting coffee possible.

• Grinding Coffee in a Percolator/French Press 

Coarse grinds of coffee are needed if you are going to use a percolator or the French press style of coffee maker.

To do this type of grind, put the beans into the coffee grinder and then simply tap the grind button a few times.

When tapping the grind button simply follow the way when using the pulse feature on a liquidizer. The aim here is to break up the beans into chunks.

The chunks of the beans should look like tiny pieces of the original coffee bean, such that you might think you could glue them all back into place and get the original bean shape back.

If you find out that your percolator has produced a powdered texture then it is time to start the process again.

Try to repeat the actions more carefully this time and quickly. You should remember that you need to only tap the button and not hold it down.

• Grinding Coffee in Drip Coffee Maker

If you have an automatic drip coffee maker, you will find that the medium ground coffee is ideal. This is the same kind of grind that you are likely to find in packages of supermarket coffee.

If you look at these grinds more carefully you should notice that they look a little like brown sand. Keep the image of the sand in your mind while you are grinding your coffee.

Once again you have to be careful not to grind the coffee too much as you hold down the button on the coffee grinder.

Make sure you don’t get carried away and over-grind your coffee because you don’t want to be using a fine powder in your automatic drip coffee maker.

When using an espresso coffee maker you need a fine coffee grind where the beans are ground right down to a powder.

This time you just need to make sure that you grind it enough. As a result you should just keep grinding it until you are happy with the result.

Take some time learning how to control your coffee grinder and in this way you will be sure to get the best results that you can with your particular coffee maker.

Best Types of Coffee Grinders Available

Grinding the coffee beans is an important part of making sure that you brew up a great cup of coffee.

There are 2 kinds of grinder available for the domestic market. Both kinds have advantages and disadvantages.

• Burr Grinder

This kind of grinder uses two serrated discs called burrs to grind up the coffee. You can set on a dial the kind of grind that you want and then put the beans into the chamber.

You then start the grinder and as time goes by the ground coffee collect in a second chamber.

You don’t have to make judgments and the grind should be consistent.

• Propeller Grinder

This is the most common kind of grinder. It has a 2 sided blade which spins and chops the beans. You load the beans into the chopping chamber and start the machine to function.

You can watch what is happening through the transparent cover of the grinder. You as the operator, decide when to stop the grinding process based on what you see and your personal experience.

A propeller grinder doesn’t have a second chamber to collect the ground coffee. Instead of this you have to decide when to stop grinding.

You can of course open the lid to take a closer look and check how the grinding process is going and if it isn’t done enough you can carry on.

Pros & Cons Of Propeller And Burr Grinder

It takes longer to grind coffee in a burr grinder compared to the propeller type but you can be confident that the grind will be consistent without having to make any judgments.

Consistency is important when it comes to brewing good coffee. Propeller grinders when used too much or when old and worn out can eventually end up burning your coffee.

However, these are the most common ones around, easily available and come in at a nice affordable price. Propeller grinders can save you time by doing the job in a fraction of the time, if and only if that is an important issue to you.