What's the Difference Between Manual and Electric Coffee Grinders? Which One Should Beginners Buy?

Introduction: The Importance of Coffee Grinders

As coffee gradually becomes integrated into people's daily lives, more and more friends are choosing to brew their own coffee. And the most important thing about brewing coffee is selecting the right equipment! The quality of equipment can directly affect the final taste of coffee, among which the most influential factor is—the "coffee grinder."

Understanding the Price Range

Just like other coffee equipment, grinders come in very many styles on major shopping platforms. But compared to other equipment, the selection of grinders requires more caution! First, as we mentioned earlier, it affects the quality of grinding; second, because it... is quite expensive... On shopping platforms, we can see that the price gap of grinders is ridiculously large! The cheapest ones can be bought for just over twenty yuan, while the most expensive ones go up to tens of thousands of yuan? A price difference of several thousand times stops those friends preparing to buy grinders. With such a big gap, how should one buy a grinder?? Therefore, to reduce the "burden" on friends, what FrontStreet Coffee wants to share in this article is the purchasing strategy for grinders~hoping to help friends buy their ideal grinders!

Manual vs. Electric Grinders

Manual and electric grinders have always been a major challenge when choosing, because they each have their own significant advantages. For example, the advantage of electric grinders is that they can grind coffee beans more finely! The main difference in grinding precision between manual and electric grinders lies in the type of burrs used. Electric grinders almost always use flat burrs, with most being flat burrs! The structure of flat burr plates consists of two parallel burr plates, with one fixed and the other connected to the motor, which rotates when the motor starts.

When coffee beans are ground, they are expelled from the gaps on both sides due to the centrifugal force generated by the rotation of the lower burr plate! Because it's motor-driven rotation, there's almost no error from human influence, resulting in more uniform coffee particles with fewer fines. Manual grinders almost always use conical burrs. Conical burrs consist of an annular stationary burr and a conical moving burr!

From the diagram, we can see that the gap through which coffee beans pass is a口径 that goes from wide to narrow, which means coffee beans undergo quite numerous grinding cycles, combined with uneven manual grinding rotation, making the ground coffee particles not very uniform and prone to producing fines! From the perspective of precision, electric grinders have extremely high advantages. But it should be known that manual grinders also have quite attractive advantages: reasonable price, portability, and no electricity needed. This is very friendly for friends who don't often stay at home, you can take it wherever you want to go. So, how should one choose between manual and electric grinders? FrontStreet Coffee suggests: choose according to your wallet and needs!

If your budget is under a thousand yuan, or if you need to travel frequently and need coffee to survive during commutes, then choosing a manual grinder would be more advantageous than an electric one! For manual grinders, FrontStreet Coffee recommends purchasing machines priced above 200 yuan, because although there are indeed grinders priced below 200 yuan, many below 200 are "bean choppers" disguised as grinders, which produce very uneven ground beans, with too high a risk of disappointment! So let's be safe and choose a manual grinder within the 200-1000 yuan range that you like~

Choosing the Right Electric Grinder

If you have a higher budget (no upper limit), have larger placement space, and want a one-time solution, then FrontStreet Coffee would recommend choosing an electric grinder! The selection of electric grinders also requires guarding against "bean choppers," but compared to manual grinders, the chance of getting one is much smaller. The only point to pay attention to is: whether it's an espresso grinder or a single-origin grinder!

Espresso grinders and single-origin grinders have huge differences in appearance and grinding range, and cannot be used interchangeably (except for some extremely expensive ones)! So friends must pay attention to the distinction between the two when purchasing, and then make the purchase, otherwise the trouble of returns and exchanges is quite significant~

FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473