Coffee Grinders

Any coffee fanatic knows that coffee grinders and sometimes coffeemakers actually make or break a pot of coffee. Need a cup of joe in the morning and not sure what your best bet is in regard to coffeemakers or coffee grinders?

First, Coffee Grinders

Whether you roast green coffee beans at home or buy them already roasted at the store to grind at home, diehard coffee drinkers can't get a fresher cup of coffee than if they grind their own from beans with every pot.

Freshly ground coffee gives coffee a robust, clean, full-bodied flavor that you just can't get from coffee in the can; once ground, coffee can go stale very quickly because the oils in the coffee go rancid. Therefore, roasting your own or buying already roasted beans and then keeping them in the freezer are a much better way to get fresh coffee and fresh coffee taste.

Type of coffee grinder model to choose?

There are three basic types of coffee grinders to choose from. They are electric, hand grind, and battery operated.

With the electric grinder, you plug it into the wall, pour your coffee beans in, replace the lid, and press (most coffee grinders of this type work with either a pressing or twisting motion to start the grind process).

The battery-operated have an advantage to the plug-in electric types of coffee grinder, in that you're not tethered to the wall with it, and it's also often dishwasher safe, where the electric ones often are not. However, batteries do need to be recharged or replaced frequently, which can make them somewhat more expensive to operate than electric grinders.

Finally, hand mills let you grind coffee the way grandma used to do it every day, by hand. It can be tedious and cumbersome because of course you're going to have to grind, grind, grind, grind, grind by hand for quite a few minutes before your ground coffee is ready for brewing. This can be tiring, especially if you're not quite ready with the appropriate muscles to do the job.

However, some coffee enthusiasts say that grinding coffee by hand helps protect coffee's delicate oils from becoming rancid in that the hand grinders do not "heat up" the oils as the speed of the electric and battery-operated grinders can do.

Whether or not this is a difference you can truly taste is really a personal opinion. In addition, of course, most hand grinders are at least partly dishwasher safe and of course require no electricity for operation, which can make them great to take on camping trips and so on.

Second, Coffee Makers

Go on the Internet and research using the keywords "coffee maker reviews." This will pull up a number of different sites touting coffeemakers, and which are the best for you. Keep in mind that the priciest isn't always the best quality. Many can be bought for as little as $20 and still do a very good job.

And, look online for "free coffee maker;" one particularly famous company was offering a free coffeemaker as long as you signed up for a trial of their coffee delivery service; as long as you bought at least two packages for about nine dollars, you got the coffeemaker for free, which means you got the coffeemaker for about $9 and the coffee as well. They may not be running the special anymore, but you can still find very good coffeemakers for under $20.

A Note About the Type of Coffeemaker

Drip coffee maker

The most "healthy" type of coffeemaker (and most popular) is still a drip coffeemaker that uses paper filters. This is because the paper filters filter out unhealthy oils that can raise cholesterol. Some diehard coffee drinkers say that the natural filters are better and that the bleached filters can give your coffee a rancid, "chemical" taste. You pay a little bit more for the natural filters, but they may be worth it for the money. It's really up to you.

Regardless, though, disposable paper filters, not reusable ones, are what you need to filter out these unhealthy oils. Plastic or nylon filters let these oils go through, so use the paper ones and keep these unhealthy oils out of your diet.

French press

This can make you a very, very good cup of coffee, because the coffee is not "cooked" as it is with percolators, which are described below. Instead, boiling water is poured into the carafe and then allowed to steep the coffee in the hot water, then "plunged" to bring the full coffee flavor out. This produces a very good, very strong cup of coffee; the caveat here is that you do get those unhealthy oils a drip coffee maker will filter out.

Percolator

The tried-and-true percolator is still around and many people swear by it. With a percolator, boiling water is thrust "up" into a filter basket that holds ground coffee. The boiling water perks over and over and over, washing over the coffee grounds continuously, until it's done. As with the French press, coffee oils remain in the coffee instead of being filtered out.

However, many people say that this gives the coffee a much more robust and full flavor (along with a few grounds in your coffee itself) than you can get by the drip method. The choice, of course, is up to you.

Conclusion about Coffee Grinders

The type of coffeemaker and grinder you get is really a personal choice. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, as described above. It's up to you based upon personal preferences as to which of these you prefer.

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