My coffee drinking has always been pretty minimal. SWMBA has recently made the move from instant coffee to appreciating fresh coffee. I've bought coffee from Steve at Hasbean who delivers freshly roasted & ground coffee and I find it a big difference to the bags of pre ground stuff at the supermarket. Whilst I don't have much of an opinion on specific types of coffee I do know I enjoy the freshly roasted and ground stuff, after a week or so has passed and the bag is not finished it stays not finished. The first few days I'm enthusiatic about coffee.
I'm pretty happy with the french press method but would like to be able to order freshly roasted beans, grind them on a pot by pot basis, and generally avoid week old coffee dust. My dad uses a Whittards ceramic hand grinder and it desn't seems to do a very good job. My brother in law has been using the same little Braun mini food processer/grinder/spinning blades contraption for years and through some sort of use of 'the force' & many years of intimacy with it gets a pretty good grind. I have the same widget and failed to get a decent grind after one or two shots, I'm reluctant to try further as the widget will soon become a coffee only device and SWMBA will not be amused if everything else comes out of it coffee flavoured.
I tried mortar & pestle, I was sad.
Decent coffee grinders seem rather expensive. Good coffee seems cheap, making it is easy, grinding it well seems to be expensive.
Any ideas on going from bean to ground on a budget?
I'm pretty happy with the french press method but would like to be able to order freshly roasted beans, grind them on a pot by pot basis, and generally avoid week old coffee dust. My dad uses a Whittards ceramic hand grinder and it desn't seems to do a very good job. My brother in law has been using the same little Braun mini food processer/grinder/spinning blades contraption for years and through some sort of use of 'the force' & many years of intimacy with it gets a pretty good grind. I have the same widget and failed to get a decent grind after one or two shots, I'm reluctant to try further as the widget will soon become a coffee only device and SWMBA will not be amused if everything else comes out of it coffee flavoured.
I tried mortar & pestle, I was sad.
Decent coffee grinders seem rather expensive. Good coffee seems cheap, making it is easy, grinding it well seems to be expensive.
Any ideas on going from bean to ground on a budget?
). One of the least expensive, well regarded, non-hand crank grinders designed for drip or French press also happens to be one of the best. Baratza's Encore is $130 and produces just about the best large grind you can get short of spending several hundred dollars on a giant Bunn G3 grinder. You can get a used one off of coffeegeek.com in their B/S/T forum for about $80.
