Interesting thing about grinders…while on my current “Aeropress journey,” I’d gotten several admonishments for using a cheap blade grinder, so I was in the market for a decent burr grinder.
I found a quite lengthy coffee grinder review from ATK, whom (as you know) I generally trust, as I’ve rarely had anything they’ve recommended turn out bad.
They reviewed burr and blade grinders, with the intention of comparing them as separate categories, with the assumption that burr grinders are naturally superior to blade grinders, but during their testing, when it came to blind tastings, just as many people chose the blade-ground coffee as did the burr-ground.
Hmmm…so they called in some industry experts, coffee bean buyers, shop owners, and baristas, and had the same results - just as many people chose the blade-ground coffee as the burr-ground.
In talking with the professionals, they learned that what was really important to restaurant/shop workers and owners was that with a burr grinder, they could fill the hopper with a lot of beans, turn it on, and go do something else - something vital in a hectic, busy shop environment. There’s no time for standing there and shaking a blade grinder - takes too much time when they could be multitasking.
They also liked that the burr grinder yielded a consistent grind time after time, and that made the final product more consistent…not better, just more consistent.
That resulted in ATK revising their original assumption, and they ended up recommending three grinders: an overall winner (burr, at I think $160US), a best buy (burr, at I think $100), and a top blade grinder, which was…the Krupps that I posted to start this topic, listed at around $20, which I got on clearance for $10!