Several times a year, Cary Wong, a member of the Partners Coffee education team, attends trade shows to try lots of new products. The machine even has a button that shakes out any residual chaff” - the leftover coffee skins that mostly come off during roasting but usually not all the way - “into the cup instead of blowing them out onto your counter, which happens with other grinders.” (For what it’s worth, when I checked back in with Cheslaw, he noted that he did sometimes find excess grounds on his counter but that he might have misunderstood the correct button - and, regardless, that it’s a “small price for quieter grinding.”)īlade style: Burr | Noise level: Quiet | Price: $$$ The cup that catches the grind is magnetic, so it clicks into position tightly and easily. “The dial that adjusts the grind size is very intuitive. “They really thought about every detail,” says Jerad Morrison, co-founder and co-CEO of Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco. The Ode combines fast, consistent, and typically commercial-grade flat-burr grinding technology with a compact size and the thoughtful design details that Fellow’s other tea and coffee products are known for (here at the Strategist, we’re particularly fond of the company’s electric kettle).
Encore electric professional#
When it came out a little over a year ago, Fellow’s Ode grinder was all the buzz among professional and amateur baristas alike - so much so that it prompted associate editor Louis Cheslaw to try it out and write an extremely favorable review, noting in particular that at its very loudest, the grinder sounds “like crumpling up a newspaper.”īut its appeal goes beyond noise control. “It’s intuitive and performs wonderfully,” he says, “grinding from fine espresso to the most coarse setting for French press or cold brew.” (The Encore has 40 grind settings, so you can easily adjust to whatever you’re looking for.) While he acknowledges it can be a little loud - or a “touch chatty,” in his words - Foos says that’s to be expected for a grinder made of plastic and designed for the home.īlade style: Burr | Noise level: Quiet | Price: $$ “When you have to replace the burrs every few years, they make it incredibly easy to do so,” he says.Įlliott Foos, director of coffee at Daymoves in Brooklyn, told us he used the Encore at work when he used to run the coffee shop attached to chef Flynn McGarry’s Lower East Side restaurant, Gem. “I’ve had one for almost three years now, and it’s still amazing.” Humberto Ricardo, founder of Third Rail Coffee, adds that Baratza machines are “designed to be repaired instead of thrown away should something break, which is good for my wallet and for the planet.” And speaking of repairs, Pratt noted Baratza’s great customer service. “It’s simple to use and super-consistent,” Lareau told us.
Some favor its higher-end models (more on a couple of those below), but nearly a dozen of the coffee aficionados we spoke with recommended this more affordable option, highlighting its quality performance and solid build - especially for the price. If you’re still not quite convinced a coffee grinder is something you should put so much hard-earned money toward (ahem, me), don’t worry: We’ve included a few more affordable options that are still very much pro-approved.īlade style: Burr | Noise level: Loud | Price: $$Īs a brand, Baratza came up in our reporting more often than any other. So to figure out which models are worth the investment, we asked baristas, roasters, and coffee-shop owners about the versions they keep on their own kitchen counters (and sometimes in their suitcases because apparently good coffee never takes a vacation). Unfortunately, most decent coffee grinders, even those made specifically for home use, cost a very pretty penny - we’re talking hundreds of dollars. And your beans won’t be any good at all if you’re not grinding them yourself right before brewing. And as any actual coffee snob will tell you (trust me, I’ve talked with a lot of them), your coffee is only going to be as good as your beans. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a particularly good one. Give me a cup - pretty much any old cup - and I won’t complain.
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