We Tested 17 Coffee Grinders to Find the Best Ones for Drip, Espresso, Pour-Over, and More

Ask a coffee pro what the biggest upgrade someone can make is and they’ll say a good burr grinder. Its precise cutting teeth allow for consistent brews and its adjustability means you can easily tweak the grind setting for your preferred coffee method. 

For this review, we tested 17 coffee grinders to find the best one for different brewing styles, including automatic drip, pour-over, French press, and espresso. Throughout the years, we’ve re-tested all of our favorite coffee grinders as well as new models, going through pounds and pounds of beans to make sure our top picks are still the very best. While we first tested coffee grinders about six years ago, we’re happy to say that our favorite models hold up—and that Serious Eats staffers use them daily in their own kitchens. 

The Winners, at a Glance

The Best Coffee Grinder for Serious Coffee Geeks

Baratza Virtuoso+ Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

$250 at Amazon $250 at Williams-Sonoma $250 at Sur La Table

Baratza's Virtuoso+ coffee grinder is routinely picked by pros as the home grinder to beat, and for good reason. It has a wide range of grind sizes, produces consistent results, and comes with excellent customer service. This is the grinder to get for serious coffee drinkers looking to maximize control over grind size.

Our Other Favorite Coffee Grinder (Editor's Pick)

Breville The Smart Grinder Pro

$200 at Amazon $200 at Williams-Sonoma $200 at Sur La Table

Breville's Smart Grinder Pro also performed very well in our tests and it costs less than the the Baratza Virtuoso. Its grind trends finer than the Virtuoso and even at its coarsest setting, the results were closer to the medium grind that other machines produced. That potentially makes it less well-suited to French press and cold brew, but it'll perform well for most other brewing methods and can even function as an entry-level espresso grinder. It was the Serious Eats office coffee grinder for many years and is what associate commerce editorial director (and co-author) Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm uses at home. "I've owned Baratza and OXO grinders and find the Breville the most streamlined and easiest to use," she says.

The Best Coffee Grinder for Most People

OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

$100 at Amazon $100 at Williams-Sonoma $100 at Target

Like many of OXO's products, its burr grinder's design is simple and intuitive. Even more importantly, it delivers excellent grind consistency given its price tag. This is about as inexpensive as a burr grinder gets before the grind quality really starts to fall off, making it a good starter grinder.

The Best Budget Coffee Grinder for Coffee Geeks

Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

$150 at Amazon $150 at Williams-Sonoma $150 at Sur La Table

Baratza's entry-level Encore grinder packs the same motor as the pricier Virtuoso. While it grinds more slowly than the Virtuoso, you can always upgrade the burr set if you feel like the speed isn't cutting it.

The Best Coffee Grinder Under $50

Krups Precision Coffee Grinder

Orig. $66 $53 at Amazon $53 at Home Depot $77 at Office Depot

If the price points of our favorite grinders are no-gos (and if you'd like to stop using a blade grinder to chop up your beans), you can't beat the price of this Krups model. Its grind is inconsistent, and its build quality isn’t the best, but you get what you pay for. On the upside, even with the inconsistent grind, you'll still have more control over your grind size than you would using a blade grinder, and for many people, that's all that matters.

The Best Grinder for Pour-Over Coffee

Fellow Ode Gen 2 Coffee Grinder

$345 at Amazon $345 at Williams-Sonoma $345 at Sur La Table

After a lukewarm reception for their first coffee grinder, Fellow re-tooled the anti-static system and overhauled the burr design for the Gen 2 Ode. This version featured some of the most consistent grindings in our testing, great user interface details (like a grind chart under the lid), and virtually no static cling.

The Best Manual Coffee Grinder

1Zpresso J Manual Coffee Grinder

$129 at Amazon $139 at 1zpresso.coffee

We separately tested 11 handheld coffee grinders, but are including our favorite in this review. It was fast, ground top-notch coffee, and was easy to adjust. If you’re traveling or want a super-compact coffee grinder, get this.

The Best Coffee Grinder for Espresso

Baratza Encore ESP

$200 at Amazon $200 at Williams-Sonoma $200 at Seattlecoffeegear.com

While we actually have three favorite espresso grinders, the Bartaza Encore ESP is a budget-friendly choice that will suit most folks well. It comes with 20 micro-adjustment settings, a dosing cup, and the same reliability and consistency that makes it so easy for us to recommend Baratza's grinders.

The Best Coffee Grinder with a Built-In Scale

OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder With Integrated Scale

Orig. $300 $205 at Amazon $210 at Oxo $300 at Macy's

An updated version of one of our favorite longtime coffee grinders, this OXO comes with a built-in scale. You can program it to grind by a set number of grams or choose how many cups you want to brew and the grinder will portion itself automatically.

The Tests

• Pro Evaluation: We took a blade grinder (for comparison) and burr grinders over to Joe Coffee Company Pro Shop. The team there—as well as some civilian taste testers—helped us taste two different roasts of coffee ground with each of the grinders and brewed using a pour-over.
• Grind Screening Test: To determine grind uniformity and range, we ran each grinder at its coarsest, middle, and finest settings and analyzed the results. We used a Kruve sifter to sort and analyze the grinds and also visually assessed them.
• Taste Test: We ground several varieties of beans from different roasters and brewed coffee dozens of times, using different brewing methods to develop a sense of how easy they are to dial in to our preferences.
• Design Assessment: Throughout testing, we examined the build quality of each machine, its ease of use, its loudness, and other design factors like how simple it was to adjust grind settings.
• Espresso Test: With a few of the top performers, we used them to grind coffee for espresso and evaluated the shot quality.

What We Learned

First, Why a Burr Grinder Is Worth It

A grinder plays a pivotal role in coffee extraction because it determines the grind size, which can affect extraction in two ways. The first is perhaps the most obvious one: Finely ground coffee has more surface area, which makes what's in the beans more immediately accessible to the hot water, speeding up the rate of extraction.

The second thing the grind size determines is the flow rate for certain methods of coffee brewing, such as pour-over, which, in turn, affects extraction levels. The smaller the coffee particles, the slower water can seep down through them; the larger the coffee particles, the faster. Exactly how coarse or fine to grind coffee depends on a complex set of factors, including the batch size, the brewing method, and the coffee beans themselves.

While blade grinders (or spice grinders) pulverize coffee beans into uneven bits that can lead to poor extraction, burr grinders uniformly cut coffee. As we explain here, “As the burrs move together and apart, they create a small gap, and the particles can only leave the grinding chamber once they’re small enough to fit through that space. High-quality burr grinders, like most of the ones we tested, also have precision-cutting teeth etched into each burr. These teeth catch and cut the whole bean coffee, which creates far fewer ultra-fine particles than blade grinders. This allows you to fine-tune the flavor of the coffee you’re brewing: if it tastes strong, has a heavy body, and is overly bitter, the grind is too fine. If it’s weak, watery, and sour-tasting, the grind is too coarse.” In summary, if you care about coffee quality and want to make it easier on yourself to make repeatably great joe at home, a burr grinder is absolutely worth it. 

Which Grinders Ground the Most Uniformly?

We asked Steve Rhinehart, of Acaia, for some of his wisdom on grind uniformity. According to Rhinehart, ideal grind sizes are roughly as follows: 1,000 microns and larger for French press; 600 to 800 microns for drip or pour-over; 400 to 600 microns for AeroPress and moka pots; 300 to 400 microns for espresso. Anything ground smaller than that is referred to as "fines" and is considered undesirable, as it will over-extract quickly and clog filters.

To that end, our favorite coffee grinders were impressively consistent. The Virtuoso and Breville often produced so few fines that our scale couldn’t even register them.

Which Coffee Grinders Ground the Best-Tasting Coffee?

Ah, you’re asking the tough questions now! That’s because, like many things in life, taste is subjective. Our tests at Joe Coffee proved this. Basically, if whoever was tasting the coffee didn’t like the flavor of the coffee itself, they favored grinders that obscured it. These were, arguably, the worst grinders (like the Krups). And when we tried a super dark roast, the results were all over the board and there seemed to be no clear preference.

This tells us that the preferences of the individual taster were important and that the coffee itself had a significant role in determining whether a model’s grind uniformity mattered. It also hinted that the darker the roast, the less the grinder's quality factored in. If anything, the uniformly sized grounds produced by the better grinders were bad for the dark roast, bringing some of the harsher, charred flavors to the forefront.

Should You Buy a Separate Grinder for Espresso?

We won’t bury the lede: If you want the best out of your espresso machine, you should buy a dedicated espresso grinder. When we tried using both the Virtuoso and Breville for espresso, we found that while they were capable of grinding fine enough for an espresso shot, the finest settings were, in fact, too fine, clogging the portafilter and preventing the water from flowing through properly.

Espresso grinders, on the other hand, offer multiple settings in the espresso range, allowing you to finely tune shots. They also often come with dosing cups, which makes it much easier to transfer grounds into a portafilter.

The Best Coffee Grinders Were Sturdy and Easy to Adjust

We didn’t mind coffee grinders with plastic housing as long as they were well-built and sturdy. The best grinders were all easy to adjust and Baratza and OXO had tops you just had to twist to tweak the grind setting. The Breville’s interface was also particularly great. It featured a large dial on the right side and a digital screen that displayed the grind setting and grind ranges for different brew styles.

The Criteria: What to Look for in a Coffee Grinder

We looked for coffee grinders that offered a wide range of grind sizes and produced a uniform result at each grind setting. Exactly how uniform coffee grounds need to be is open for debate, and it's something professionals in the coffee industry continue to explore. If we can say one thing with certainty, it's that we want a grinder that helps us produce a cup of coffee we consider enjoyable and delicious. As Nick Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee pointed out when we spoke to him: The challenge is finding agreement about what that means. "No one has to learn to like strawberries," Cho said at the time. "Whereas with coffee or beer, the things that contain bitterness, it’s an acquired taste—so what kind of taste you acquire is everything." So, we chose grinders that, per our panel of testers, produced good cups for as many types of roasts as possible, were easily adjustable, and were well-built.

Our Favorite Coffee Grinders

The Best Coffee Grinder for Serious Coffee Geeks

Baratza Virtuoso+ Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

$250 at Amazon $250 at Williams-Sonoma $250 at Sur La Table

What we liked: Baratza's Virtuoso+ coffee grinder is consistently recommended by pros for home use, and for good reason. It's well-built with metal and plastic housing that gives it enough weight to sit solidly on the counter. To operate it, you rotate the bean hopper to select one of the 40 grind settings, add the beans to the hopper, and then either use the pulse setting or the 40-second timer.

All of these grinders, the Virtuoso included, like to claim you can grind a set amount of beans based on the timer duration, but we don't recommend doing that. First, beans grind at different rates depending on their size and density (bean density varies with roast level, among other things), and, second, it's simply not accurate. If you're going to bother trying to take advantage of a higher-quality burr grinder, you don't want to shortchange yourself on something basic by not measuring the beans and water for a proper ratio. Instead, get a good coffee scale and weigh your beans (aim for roughly one gram of coffee to every 16-17 grams of water). In the grinding tests, the Virtuoso+ showed an impressive level of consistency. Only a very small amount of grinds in the 400- to 1,000-micron range seemed too coarse and there were so few fines that our scale couldn't register them. It also produced the largest amount of under-400-micron particles (a mere 1.2 grams out of 20 grams total, but still more than any of the others), marking the Virtuoso+ as the grinder capable of producing the finest grinds of the pack. One other thing worth mentioning about Baratza, in general, is that they have a great reputation for their customer service and that the company sells pretty much every replacement part you’d ever need.

What we didn’t like: Our biggest gripe with the Virtuoso+ (and it shares this flaw with the Encore) is that the hopper and conical burrs are not intuitive to assemble and disassemble. Getting it all to fit properly requires stretching a rubber gasket over a ring, setting that ring into its seating on the grinder such that small tabs are oriented properly, locking the hopper on top of that, and then rotating it into place.  A smaller, second gripe (and one that plagues many grinders): Coffee bean chaff can build up in the chute and then get knocked loose when you're removing the grounds basket, making a mess on your counter. Baratza’s grounds bins are made from anti-static plastic, it just takes 40 seconds of waiting before the static charge dissipates.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 4.7 x 13.7 x 6 inches
• Weight: 8 pounds
• Burr type: 40-millimeter stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings: 40
• Warranty: 1-year
• Features: Digital timer and backlit grounds bin

Our Other Favorite Coffee Grinder (Editor's Pick)

Breville The Smart Grinder Pro

$200 at Amazon $200 at Williams-Sonoma $200 at Sur La Table

What we liked: Breville's Smart Grinder Pro was the Serious Eats office grinder for years, grinding beans for multiple pots of coffee daily, and it did that job admirably. While the Baratza machines in this review are all analog, Breville's offers an appealing digital control interface. A large dial sets the grind level, which is clearly indicated on the screen's grind chart. That chart has some useful labels on it, offering suggestions on which grind setting ranges are best for different brewing methods, a helpful starting point when trying to dial in a grind.

One of the areas where Breville beats Baratza is in its hopper and burr assembly. Taking the hopper on and off and removing the burrs for cleaning is as simple as twisting a very clearly marked spindle and lifting the upper bur by its handle. Not once did we feel the need to consult the user's manual to successfully accomplish this task.

At the finest setting, the Breville sifted similarly to the Baratza Virtuoso, with almost all of the grinds falling into that middle 400- to 1,000-micron zone. That said, the Breville's output looked to the naked eye to lean on the finer end of that range (though, as noted above, the Virtuoso does produce a small amount of even finer grounds). At its middle setting, the Breville also trended toward the slightly finer grind, with most of the results remaining in that middle 400 to 1,000 range. If you want a consistent and well-designed grinder that gives some room for espresso-making without breaking the bank, this one is worth considering. 

What we didn’t like: Even with impressive grind sifting results, the flavor quality from this grinder wasn’t as high as some of the other winners. While brewed coffee ground with the Breville still offered a lot of sweetness and balance, it lacked the flavor clarity of the Virtuoso+, Ode Gen 2, and even the Encore.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.3 x 15.3 inches
• Weight: 6.4 pounds
• Burr type: Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings: 60
• Warranty: 1-year
• Features: Digital timer

The Best Coffee Grinder for Most People

OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

$100 at Amazon $100 at Williams-Sonoma $100 at Target

What we liked: This is the grinder to get if you want to up your coffee game but don't want to shell out for our other top picks. The OXO is also slender and sleek, with an easy-to-read grind-setting dial, a metal grounds container that claims to resist static cling (something all the other grinders suffered from), and an easy-to-remove and easy-to-reinstall hopper and burr assembly for cleaning.

What we didn’t like: In the grind consistency and range analysis, OXO's grinder didn't do as well as our other top picks, but it still held its own. On its coarsest setting, it produced almost comically large boulders, with a smaller fraction of midsize grinds and an immeasurable amount of fines. On its finest setting, it landed mostly in the middle range, with a small but measurable amount of grinds below the 400-micron mark. While it might not be the most precise, it’s still a solid pick for most casual coffee drinkers.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.25 x 12.5 inches
• Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Burr type: Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings: 15 (plus micro settings)
• Warranty: 2-year
• Features: UV-blocking tint

The Best Budget Coffee Grinder for Coffee Geeks

Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

$150 at Amazon $150 at Williams-Sonoma $150 at Sur La Table

What we liked: The Encore is an excellent choice for anyone who is leaning toward the Virtuoso+ but doesn't want to spend quite that much money. In exchange for the savings, you get the same motor, an all-plastic body that's only slightly lighter than the Virtuoso+, and burrs that are just one step down in quality from the Virtuoso's. The Encore kept pace with its pricier sibling in terms of grind ranges and consistency remarkably well. If you start with the Encore and later want to upgrade the burrs, you can.

What we didn’t like: This grinder is loud. With a mostly plastic body, the Encore doesn’t absorb sound as well as the Virtuoso+. It also came just under our two top picks for flavor clarity (though, as mentioned above, the burrs can be upgraded).

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 4.7 x 13.7 x 6 inches
• Weight: 7 pounds
• Burr type: 40 millimeter stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings: 40
• Warranty: 1-year
• Features: Pulse button

The Best Coffee Grinder Under $50

Krups Precision Coffee Grinder

Orig. $66 $53 at Amazon $53 at Home Depot $77 at Office Depot

What we liked: This is as cheap as a burr grinder could ever hope to be, making it a good choice for anyone happy with their blade grinder, except for the fact that they also use it to grind their spices and are sick of their coffee tasting like cumin. Grab this one if all the tinkering and dialing-in of coffee-grind sizes we’ve described in this article sound like your idea of a bad time, but you still want to grind whole beans.

What we didn’t like: The burrs in this thing look dinky compared to the higher-quality ones in our other picks, and the ground coffee they produce backs up that assessment: it's not great. Depending on what coffee you drink, though, that may not be a huge problem. Darker roasts suffered less from inconsistent grind profiles.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 13 x 10 x 6.5 inches
• Weight: 4.24 pounds
• Burr type: Metallic flat burrs
• Number of grind settings: 12 (plus micro settings)
• Warranty: 2-year
• Features: N/A
  

The Best Grinder for Pour-Over Coffee

Fellow Ode Gen 2 Coffee Grinder

$345 at Amazon $345 at Williams-Sonoma $345 at Sur La Table

What we liked: The design of the Ode grinder is ambitious: It’s built around vertically-oriented flat grinding burrs, like high-end commercial coffee grinders. Flat burrs are harder to precisely align because they have to get much closer than conical burrs, but when done well, they can deliver much more consistent grind results.

When particle testing the Ode Gen 2, we found a negligible amount of fines and boulders, making it one of the most consistent grinders we tested. The Ode Gen 2 is an excellent choice for anyone who brews a lot of pour-over coffee and wants to tinker with their grind settings—but we also liked the flavor clarity it provided for other manual brew methods, like French press.

Aside from performance, Fellow packs user-friendly details into every aspect of the grinder. Under the lid is a grind chart to help users ballpark their grind settings, and the adjustment dial itself features easy-to-read icons to show which direction makes the coffee smaller or bigger. The coffee grounds catch-cup features a strong magnet that snaps it into place directly under the grind chute, and inside the cup are volume markings and two metal plates that act as a funnel directing ground coffee into the filter. It’s also the quietest grinder we tested (important for early risers) and has an auto-shutoff when it senses it has completed grinding. And with active anti-static technology (similar to the ionizer in a hair dryer), it left our counters super clean. Its matte black or white modern design looks great, too.

What we didn’t like: It’s expensive and is almost $100 more than our top pick. With a grind performance that was on par with the Virtuoso+, the Ode Gen 2 mostly offers usability and aesthetic upgrades. Another downside is that it can jam up easily. We found if the grind cup isn't oriented directly under the chute, the lid closes off the chute and grounds back up into the burrs. To top it off, you can only clean them by disassembling the grind chamber. Luckily, the instructions for disassembling were easy to follow (though mechanically complex), and after making sure the cup was always aligned on the magnet, we didn’t have any other jamming issues.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 9.4 x 4 x 9.8 inches
• Weight: 10 pounds
• Burr type: Stainless steel flat burrs
• Number of grind settings: 30
• Warranty: 2-year, or 3-year with registration
• Features: Anti-static technology; quiet grind

The Best Manual Coffee Grinder

1Zpresso J Manual Coffee Grinder

$129 at Amazon $139 at 1zpresso.coffee

What we liked: Fast and simple to use, this is a fantastic handheld coffee grinder. For those who make pour-over, especially, it offers a compact grinding solution that takes up barely any storage space. We liked its rubber upper portion, too, which was nicely grippy, and found it easy to adjust the grind settings.

What we didn't like: It's not a workhorse like, say, the Baratza Virtuoso+. If you want to try a variety of brew methods, we still recommend a motorized grinder.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 7.28 x 2.24 x 6.69 inches
• Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Burr type: Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings: 30
• Warranty: 1-year limited
• Features: Foldable handle

The Best Coffee Grinder for Espresso

Baratza Encore ESP

$200 at Amazon $200 at Williams-Sonoma $200 at Seattlecoffeegear.com

What we liked: For many looking to invest in an espresso grinder, the Baratza Encore ESP will be the right choice (and if you want to spend even more, we have our recommendations for that as well). With 40 grind settings and 20 micro-adjustments, this grinder ground coffee that we got excellent shots from. It also comes with a dosing cup. As we said in our espresso grinder testing, "It’s an affordable, no-frills grinder that delivers excellent grind consistency."

What we didn't like: If you're really into espresso and want a grinder with extreme precision, this model might not be enough for you. Instead, check out the Baratza Sette.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 4.7 x 13.7 x 6.3 inches
• Weight: 7 pounds
• Burr type: Stainless steel conical burrs
• Number of grind settings: 40
• Warranty: 1-year limited
• Features: Dosing cup

The Best Coffee Grinder with a Built-In Scale

OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder With Integrated Scale

Orig. $300 $205 at Amazon $210 at Oxo $300 at Macy's

What we liked: We’ve been fans of the OXO Brew grinder for many years, and it outperforms every grinder at its price point, hands down. This model takes things a step further by integrating a digital scale where the grind cup sits. That means you can program the exact amount of coffee you want in grams, and the grinder will stop automatically, saving you from having to weigh out the coffee yourself. It also has a setting that portions coffee out by the number of cups you select, which defaults to eight grams for every five ounces of water and can be adjusted for strength preference. It’s ideal for people who are used to eyeballing their coffee, adding consistency and convenience to your morning coffee routine. 

What we didn’t like: For one, it’s pricey—you can buy a high-end grinder and scale for the same amount, as long as you don’t mind measuring your coffee manually. The other issue is that built-in scales can be finicky. In our testing, we found that the OXO's scale was often off by two grams. While two grams isn’t a huge difference for larger drip coffee maker batches, it’s definitely enough to throw off a pour-over ratio.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 11.1 x 7.3 x 16.4 inches
• Weight: 7 pounds
• Burr type: 40-millimeter stainless steel burrs
• Number of grind settings: 38
• Warranty: 2-year warranty
• Features: Built-in scale

The Competition

• Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder: The Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder is a simple machine that would meet the needs of casual coffee drinkers. However, the range of ground coarseness that it produces is much more narrow than our top picks. At a similar price point, the OXO grinder offers more finesse and control, allowing you to better dial in your grind size depending on your preferred brewing method.
• Fellow Ode Gen 1 Burr Grinder: Most grinders we tested had fairly simple removable burrs for easy cleaning, but cleaning the Fellow requires you to use a screwdriver to remove the faceplate and access the burrs. A couple of Serious Eats editors do own this model and note that it seems to produce more static than other burr grinders, spewing a lot of grounds on the countertop. The updated version of this grinder—the Fellow Ode Gen 2—addresses these issues and is now one of our top picks.
• Zwilling Enfingy Coffee Bean Grinder: When attempting to grind coffee on the finest grind setting, the Zwilling Enfingy Coffee Bean Grinder wouldn’t work. As in, it didn’t grind the coffee—at all. We even tried cleaning this model’s burrs multiple times and grinding two types of beans at different roast levels.
• Cuisinart's DBM-8 Supreme Grind Automatic Burr Mill: Like the budget Krups, it comes with dinky burrs and grinds inconsistently as a result. It's also deafeningly loud and too expensive for the results it produces.
• KitchenAid's KCG0702 Burr Coffee Grinder: This is one of the more handsome grinders we tested; its body appears to be solid metal, and both the bean hopper and grounds container are glass, not plastic. However, it suffered from poor grind consistency, and the glass grounds container does not sit securely in place below the chute; it would be very easy to accidentally knock it off while using the machine and break it. It also seems to be discontinued.
• Ariete-Delonghi Electric Coffee Grinder: This grinder appeared to be of very poor build quality and exhibited subpar performance during our grinding consistency tests.
• Bodum Bistro Burr Coffee Grinder: This grinder performed so-so in the taste tests and its plastic body felt cheap. And even though the Bodum grinder is more expensive, it was outperformed by the OXO Brew grinder in every test.
• Fellow Opus Coffee Grinder: The Fellow Opus claims it can handle both drip and espresso grinds, but in all of our brew tests we found the coffee lacking. The grinder produced a lot of fines (likely helpful for restricting espresso flow), which added bitterness to the cup and prolonged brew times for any auto drip and pour-over coffee we made.

FAQs

How do you clean and care for a coffee grinder?

You should clean your burr grinder regularly. Over time, fine grinds and oils in the coffee will build up throughout the inside of the grinder. If left unclean, the buildup of residue can spoil and add off flavors to your coffee.

There are a couple of ways to go about this, both of which we detail here:

• Coffee grinding cleaning tablets: These are easy to use—just add them to the hopper and run them through the grinder as you would coffee beans.
• Take apart the grinder: For a deeper cleaning, you'll want to take apart the grinder, the process of which will differ depending on the model at hand. You'll want to research what the manufacturer says to do and possibly look up some videos on YouTube.
  

How do you grind coffee for a French press?

When grinding coffee for a French press coffee maker, select a coarse grind setting. As we note in our guide to making French press coffee, "The particles should appear somewhere between coarse salt and steel-cut oats."

Why should coffee be ground fresh before brewing?

Coffee beans are full of volatile compounds that contribute to the flavor and aroma of a freshly brewed cup. These compounds degrade over time, especially when exposed to moisture, heat, or air. And grinding coffee pulverizes the beans and increases the overall surface area, causing the coffee to oxidize and degrade much faster. In short: Grind fresh and use the beans right away to maximize freshness and get the best flavor.

How long should you grind coffee for?

If you're weighing out your coffee beans for each go (as you should be), you can turn the grinder on and let it go until it stops or until it sounds like the grinder has finished grinding. We do recommend weighing your coffee beans before and after grinding to ensure you're brewing the correct amount.

Should you moisten or spray coffee beans before grinding?

A few drops or a light spritz of water before grinding can help reduce static while grinding, but too much moisture can cause coffee to clump, clogging the grinder. We don't recommend moistening coffee before grinding because the risks outweigh the benefits. Instead, we suggest letting coffee sit for 30 to 45 seconds after grinding to let the static dissipate before emptying the grounds into your filter.

Can you put ground coffee back in a burr grinder?

If you've ground your coffee and found the setting was off (read: too coarse) for your brewing method, you should not re-run it through a burr grinder. Attempting to grind already-ground coffee will cause the grinder to clog. It's best to just cut your losses and grind some new whole beans.

Why We're the Experts

• Daniel Gritzer is the editorial director of Serious Eats and has worked for the site since 2014. He's a previous restaurant cook, has worked on organic farms, and is responsible for many of your favorite recipes on this very site. He's written a lot of equipment-related content for Serious Eats, including reviews of coffee grinders and cast iron skillets.
• Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm is the associate commerce editorial director of Serious Eats. She’s been with the site since 2021 and has been reviewing equipment professionally for more than six years.
• Jesse Raub was the commerce writer for Serious Eats and helped to update this article. He's worked for 15 years in the specialty coffee industry. He tackled numerous coffee-related stories for the site.
• For this review, we tested 17 coffee grinders. As new coffee grinders have come on the market, we've continued to test them and update this review. Most recently, we evaluated the Zwilling Enfingy Coffee Bean Grinder and Fellow Ode Gen 2 Coffee Grinder. Our favorite coffee grinders have been used and evaluated, consistently, for more than six years. We also separately tested espresso grinders.
• For this review, we worked with the folks at Joe Coffee Company and interviewed Steve Rhinehart of Acaia (formerly of Prima Coffee Equipment) and Nick Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters.