Do You Know Your Coffee Grinder Isn’t Supposed to Have a Blade?

Does everyone know this? Maybe.

“When you mess with Kurt, you go in the grinder.” Mm, yes. It’s true that everyone remembers that classic line from the 1997 film Good Burger, but does everyone know your coffee grinder isn’t supposed to have a blade if you want the coffee you make with it to be good? Apparently this is true.

Recently, my friend Matt Scottoline stayed at my apartment because his band was opening for Nada Surf, a group you might remember from their 1996 hit “Popular.” For his other job, Matt is the Director of Coffee at Philadelphia’s ReAnimator Coffee. He is a coffee expert and has done a number of interviews about coffee and can talk to you about coffee for an incredible length of time even if your face is telling him to stop.

Like any very good host, I made coffee for Matt and the rest of the band in the morning and began by grinding the coffee beans, an act to which Matt immediately took great offense. He shook his head and put his head in his hands.

“You aren’t supposed to grind your coffee with a blade,” he said, or something. “That’s why your coffee never tastes as good as when you get it from a cafe,” he continued, rudely, as I had offered no such opinion of my own coffee though I do think so privately.

Apparently you’re supposed to have a “burr” grinder. “BIRD?” I said. “Burr,” he said. “BIRRR-D?” I said, to be funny. Self deprecatingly, I offered that it probably didn’t help that I’d been using the same blade grinder for about 13 years. “No, that doesn’t matter,” he told me, explaining that I’d started out at the very bottom and could not sink any lower. Incredibly rude.

I realize this is little more than me just writing about a conversation I had with my friend at this point, but then he asked me what my “grinder budget” was and told me I should spend $200 on a burr grinder??????????????????

Anyway, I asked him, Matt Scottoline, Director of Coffee at Philadelphia’s ReAnimator Coffee, to give me a quote about why you shouldn’t use a blade and here’s what he said:

Basically, the issue with the blade is inconsistency. It’s just wildly chopping the beans, and there’s no consistent particle size being achieved. You can shake it around and everything, but at the end, you’ll always see the tiny grinds with the big boulder grinds. To brew coffee well, we want the most consistent grind possible. We want the water to interact with every particle the same way.

OK, fine. I guess that makes sense and also is true.

Fine.

Maybe you already knew this, about coffee grinders.

Anyway.

Can I borrow $200?