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See why.The Best Burr Grinders
Coffee aficionados have long debated the best brewing method, but is the secret to great coffee all in the grind?
After careful review, we still think that the Baratza Encore and the Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder are the best burr grinders available. We've added some tips for cleaning and caring for your grinder in the FAQ sections below.
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What You Need To Know
If you want the freshest, most full-flavored cup of coffee, we always recommend grinding your own coffee beans. It's best to do this right before you brew, as our testing has shown that the beans begin to lose flavor and aroma within an hour of being ground.
Home grinders come in two styles: blade and burr. A blade grinder works like a tiny food processor, with a rapidly spinning blade that chops coffee beans into smaller and smaller fragments. You have to hold the grind button down, time the grind, shake the grinder periodically to distribute the beans, and inspect the ground coffee to see if it's reached the desired consistency.
While a blade grinder has one chamber where you load, grind, and dispense the beans, a burr grinder consists of three components: a hopper where you feed in the beans, the grinding chamber, and a removable container that holds the grounds so you can transfer them to the coffee maker. You simply switch the machine on and whole beans are pulled from the hopper through two gear-like metal rings (called burrs) that spin and crush the coffee, similar to the way a pepper mill grinds peppercorns. The setting you choose on the machine determines the space between the burrs and thus the size of the grind.
Burr grinders are the norm in the coffee industry, and now household brands such as Breville, Hamilton Beach, and KitchenAid are offering them for home users. To find out more about this popular grinding method, we tested a variety of models, all with metal burrs and at least eight grind settings, and compared them to our favorite blade grinder from Krups.
Grinding Coarse, Medium, and Fine Coffee
Brew method usually dictates grind setting: Generally, coarse coffee is used for French press, medium for drip machines, and fine for espresso. A good grinder should be able to produce these three consistencies, so we ground coffee on the settings recommended by each manufacturer for coarse, medium, and fine. We repeated the grinding tests with light roasted beans and very dark roasted beans, which have different densities. Finally, we had six testers—from novices to coffee experts—operate each grinder to gauge its user-friendliness.
Almost every model was able to achieve these three consistencies, but many were confusing or a pain to use. Some sprayed grounds everywhere, even with their collection containers properly in place. Others had displays that were befuddling or hard to read, and some had grounds containers that were too small or irregularly shaped, so they overfilled easily or poured imprecisely when we transferred the grounds to the brewer.
Some grinders fell short in other ways. One had a built-in scale t...
Everything We Tested
Recommended
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
This grinder is bare-bones: Just select one of the 40 grind settings and turn it on; it mills beans until you turn it off. It was too minimal for novice testers who wanted more guidance, but its no-fuss design is perfect for experienced users. It doesn't include a scale, so you need to weigh beans beforehand.
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
This machine has only 16 grind settings, but we liked that each was clearly labeled. Its dial timer doses the correct amount of coffee beans for the number of cups you're brewing (two cups or more). Its grounds container was a little small and slightly awkward to clean.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
This model offers a mostly digital interface to take the guesswork out of grinding, but the numbers were visible only when looking from directly overhead. The machine kept ground coffee neatly contained, and we liked that its grounds container came with a lid.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
Novice testers felt confident using this machine with its digital display as a guide. Once set, it automatically dispenses the right amount of ground coffee beans based on user preferences. However, its settings for coarse grinding were much finer than we would have liked.
Recommended with reservations
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
This model has an intuitive dial and simple interface. Its highlighted feature, a built-in scale, didn't live up to the hype as it was consistently off target by 10 percent. (A second machine was off by 6 percent.) An air gap between the machine and the container allowed ground coffee to spray onto the counter.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
This compact grinder uses a dial timer but can run for only 20 seconds before it has to be reset—a pain if you're making more than a couple of cups of coffee. Though it ground the beans evenly, it sometimes sprayed ground coffee onto the counter, and its container was small.
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
This product has the fewest grind settings and an atypical design—a vertical flat burr fed by an auger, a spinning corkscrew-shaped rod. Our biggest frustration was its grounds container, which was made of glass. We accidentally shattered it within a few hours of the start of testing.
Not Recommended
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
This model's flimsy burr produced a powdery, gritty mess of ground beans. It was also tricky to use: To make one cup of coffee, we had to center the dial between “off” and “2 cups.”
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
This model produced powdery clumps of ground beans that were a pain to clean out of the container. Its automatic settings offered no option for grinding one cup's worth of beans.
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Grinding: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
This machine's built-in dosing system consistently gave us nearly double the amount of coffee we'd normally use. The grind was very uneven, with clumps of powder interspersed with nearly whole beans.
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
Valerie Sizhe Li
Valerie is an assistant editor for ATK Reviews. In addition to cooking, she loves skiing, traveling, and spending time outdoors.
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