Blogs • Posted by Charlotte Dibble • 18th May 2022
Best Manual Coffee Grinder UK
Be a true barista and learn how to grind coffee beans by hand!
Grinding coffee at home… it isn’t just great fun. Or a mini workout. Or uber on-trend.
It’s a great way to get fresh coffee at home!
Coffee is always best when fresh, and grinding before you brew with a hand coffee grinder will help you bring the freshest, tastiest coffee to your cup!
Ready to get cracking with grinding at home? Then you need to know the best manual coffee grinder device on the shelf. Keep reading, groovy home grinders, keep reading…
What is a Manual Coffee Grinder?
A coffee grinder is an essential piece of coffee kit. Grinders feature mechanisms that turn and break the whole coffee beans into smaller pieces called grounds. You can then use these grounds to brew coffee in your fave device.
You can get two sorts of coffee grinders: manual and electric. Grinders powered by electricity are great if you want larger amounts of ground coffee at the push of a button (and don’t mind paying a bit more…). Manual coffee grinders, meanwhile, give you all that grinding goodness in a more compact, muscle-powered form. Gives you the chance to really get to grips with your coffee, if you get what we mean? Awesome!
Why Grind Coffee Beans?
Grind coffee beans at home with your manual coffee grinder, and you’ll take your caffeine experience to the next level. The clatter of freshly roasted wholebeans, the whir-whir of the grinder, the smell (oh my!) of fresh grounds…
Cripes! I’m officially on Cloud Nine!
Okay, back to business with your Best Manual Coffee Grinder UK guide. Let’s work out whether grinding coffee beans at home is worth it.
Grinding at home isn’t essential for top-tasting coffee, but is a great next step for coffee fans. Whole coffee beans keep all the lovely coffee flavour safe because they have a smaller surface area. Once they are ground, the surface area of the coffee increases. This makes it easier for the flavour molecules and natural oils to escape. The oxidation process (when the coffee’s compounds react with the air’s oxygen molecules) occurs much faster in grounds than whole coffee beans, which is why ground coffee loses its fresh flavour before wholebeans wave cheerio to theirs.
Grind at home, and you’ll keep all the freshness and flavour locked in. Whoop whoop – go you!
Hario Hand Grinder
Now you know why you might wanna grind at home, you need to know how. What’s the best manual coffee grinder you can get?
We’ve done a fair amount of grinding in our time (call us your grinding grannie…). We’ve used some pinpoint-perfect home hand grinders, and some pretty poxy ones. And we’re guessing you want to know which one made it into Camp Perfect?
If you’re looking to grind coffee at home, we recommend a Hario hand grinder. Specifically, the Hario Skerton Plus Hand Coffee Grinder. This brilliant hand coffee grinder combines A-Star materials with brainy Japanese design to create the best manual grinder for your kitchen!
The Hario hand grinder sits smart ceramic burrs atop a 100g-capacity glass container. Its compact design makes it perfect for every kitchen, while those easily adjustable burrs make bespoke coffee grinding a breeze. It’s awesome value and – yes, it gets better – entirely dishwasher safe!
Hold on; I just need to make another trip to Cloud Nine…
You’ll hear a lot about Burr vs Blade grinders when chatting home coffee grinding. The ‘blade’ or ‘burr’ simply refers to the part of your hand grinder that turns to grind the wholebeans into smaller pieces.
Blade Grinders
Think of a blade grinder a bit like the food processor you use to make your smoothie. Blade grinders feature a regular metal blade that rotates, cutting up the coffee beans as it does so. Blade grinders are okay… ish. Inconsistency is their main problem. Blade grinders are pretty haphazard and give you a jumble of differently sized grounds. Think tiny grounds, very large grounds and everything in-between.
This higgledy-piggledy sizing is unlikely to give you great coffee. Why? Because coffee pieces of different sizes will extract at different rates. Smaller pieces can lead to over-extraction, while big, chunky pieces might under-extract if not paired with the right device (more on grind sizes and devices in a mo!).
Less coffee grinder and more coffee smasher, we’d say?
Burr Grinders
We put burr grinders in Camp Perfect! Burr grinders grind beans using two abrasive cutting surfaces called burrs. As one spins against the other, they grind your wholebeans into… equally sized pieces! Yippeee! This is what we want.
The ground coffee particles will be the same size because each piece needs to match the width of the opening to pass through the burrs. To change the size of the grinds, you simply set the size of the opening. Easy!
Why Are Ceramic Burrs Better in a Manual Coffee Grinder?
Ceramic wants to be your material of choice when looking at burr materials. Ceramic stays cooler than some other metals, which prevents your coffee from overheating and losing some of its precious natural oils. This makes sure your final cup has maximum body!
Choose the Hario Hand Grinder, and you’ll treat your coffee to some mighty fine ceramic burrs! Awesome home coffee, coming up!
Coffee Grind Size for Grinding Coffee at Home
Each coffee device prefers a different grind size. No device likes a mismatched jumble of big and little grinds. This is why burr beats blade in the Manual Coffee Grinder contest!
Here’s the only Coffee Grind Size Chart you’ll ever need…
Intrigued by all these brew methods? Why not get your FREE Two Chimps Coffee Making Guide? Simply click the button, and we’ll pop one in the post just for you!
The Benefits: Is It Better to Manually Grind Coffee?
Both pre-ground coffee and grinding at home have their benefits. Here are a few of the good things that happen when you treat yourself to a hand coffee grinder…
Meet the chimp behind this article!
Charlotte joined Two Chimps after completing her BA Hons in Graphic Communication and Illustration at Loughborough University. She also earned two diplomas: Art and Design Foundation and Professional Studies.
What Charlotte does outside of the treehouse:
In her spare time, Charlotte is a keen baker and loves to bring delicious treats for the team to enjoy during their Monday tea break. Charlotte likes to practice her drawing and painting skills to relax, usually with one of her cats sitting on her lap to keep her company!
Charlotte says…
“I’m thrilled to join the Two Chimps Troop after five years of studying. I get to write blogs, design, manage social media, and connect with our amazing customers every day. It’s always exciting, and I learn something new every day!”
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