February 01, 2017

Choosing your first grinder

If you’ve been planning on getting yourself a coffee grinder but unsure of which type to purchase, we’ve got you covered. There are many options available when it comes to coffee grinders but it all grinds down to your needs!

First you need to determine whether you’re purchasing the grinder for home or office use. Then comes usage - how often will you be using it at home or work?

If it’s for light, home use, an affordable grinder that is easy to use and clean would be your best bet. Here’s a list of grinders which are ideal for home use.

If you’re purchasing a grinder for commercial use, again it boils down to the level of usage. Once you’ve got that figured out you can choose either an on-demand grinder or a doser grinder. Here’s the difference between the two in case you were wondering:

On-Demand Grinders	Doser Grinders
Grind only when you need coffee, helps minimize wastage.	Consists of a doser with multiple chambers where ground coffee beans are stored.
Freshly grounded coffee.	Because of low demand, the grounded coffee will not be used immediately resulting in stale coffee.
Programmable dosage (single or double shot)	Dosage can be pre-measured if the chambers Dosage will need to be pre-measured f chambers are filled with coffee grounds. To do this, you’ll need to use a scale first and determine how many times you need to pull the lever on the doser to get the right amount of grounds for a single or double shot. Once you get that sorted out you’ll be able to get a pre-measured dosage without using a scale.
Lesser grounds leftover in the burrs making cleaning and maintaining very easy.	More leftover grounds in burrs and dosing chambers which requires more effort in cleaning and maintaining.

If there’s a high demand for coffee, then a doser grinder would be a better option because the grounds will be used while it’s still fresh. And you won’t have to hold your portafilter and wait for the beans to be grounded each time you make coffee. An example of a commercial doser grinder is the Nuova Simonelli MDX Manual Grinder.

On-demand grinder is also a great choice for a place with high volume coffee consumption. Apart from being doserless they’re also known to perform better and faster. The only downside to it is that it’s more costly than a doser grinder. Nuova Simonelli Mythos Plus Grinder is a good example of a commercially used on-demand grinder.

At the end of the day, it’s tough to say that a doser grinder is better than an on-demand grinder. It all depends on your coffee needs and consumption level.