The Search Is On
Is there a better grinder out there for specialty coffee?
by Laurence Cruz

Think of all the things that have to go right to create a great coffee experience in the cup. From optimum growing conditions all the way to a barista's latte art skills, the ingredients of a top-notch espresso include far more than coffee and milk.

But some say even a premium blend, a high-end espresso machine and virtuosic skills at the bar do not guarantee a great espresso—at least insofar as these depend on current grinder technology. They might even say a great espresso drink is created in spite of the grinder used. "We have great coffees that we buy directly from farmers that we roast in vintage machines by people that are obviously in tune," says Kyle Glanville, manager of espresso R&D at Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters in Los Angeles. "We cup them, we taste them, we obsess over them, only to put them through a machine that ultimately will butcher them at peak hours. Espresso machines have a long way to go, but right now grinders are absolutely the bottleneck."

It's a complaint echoed by many in the specialty coffee industry, particularly by baristas in shops that place a premium on quality. Their concerns revolve around a number of grinder characteristics—from the design, size and speed of the burrs to the accuracy of the dosing mechanism to basic ergonomics. "The coffee grinder sector, along with coffee in general, was at a standstill for a while, but recently it has started up with a fervor," says Julia Hendler, marketing manager for Compak Coffee Grinders in Barcelona, Spain. "The world of professional baristas is gaining a lot of ground, and they are the ones that are leading the demand for changes."

But despite the hue and cry from some corners of the industry for changes in grinder design, many manufacturers seem slow or unwilling to act, leaving some baristas frustrated, forced to improvise and/or plain bemused. "It's not rocket science," Glanville says of the quest for a great grinder. "For any established company that makes grinders already, it's completely doable."

GRINDER ISSUE #1: HEAT
It's 11 a.m., and the Intelligentsia coffee bar is packed. Hipsters, low-key movie industry types and other denizens of L.A.'s Silver Lake neighborhood form a line that snakes out of the door almost to the sidewalk of Sunset Boulevard. At the bar, three baristas crank out a steady stream of espressos, cappuccinos and lattes. It's a familiar scene at coffee shops around the world: the morning rush, though it may peak a tad later in this laid-back environment.

It's also the time when the espresso-making machinery, like the staff, is running in high gear. Grinder burrs get hot, and therein lies one of the main challenges facing the industry. "Heat is a big problem," says David George, a barista at a Stumptown Coffee Roasters shop in downtown Portland. "In the morning rush, or if you're pulling shot after shot after shot, the burrs get really hot, and all the coffee beans that are going to be part of your next shot are actually sitting there against the burrs, which starts to cook the coffee and negatively affect the taste."

Viewed under a microscope, a coffee bean resembles a mass of honeycomb-like cells. Sealed within these are some 600 volatile substances—some of them desirable, some not—including the oils and gases that contribute to a coffee's distinctive profile. Heat dissipates some of the desired substances, and for that reason, some baristas are calling for a cooler grind.

Earlier in his career, Glanville did an experiment to gauge the heat generated by a standard U.S.-spec grinder. He placed four thermocouples (temperature-measuring sensors) at different locations on the grinder—one on the side of the motor, one above the burrs where the coffee enters, one where the coffee exits and one floating inside the grinder body. "During peak hours, the coffee coming out of the burrs was reaching temperatures of over 150 degrees Fahrenheit," says Glanville, adding that the effects in the cup are very noticeable. "Your pours get shorter and the flavor starts to thin out."

For a cooler grind, some baristas are calling for a lower burr speed that doesn't sacrifice output so that they can still meet demand at peak times. "They want a grinder that can grind five pounds of beans in a moment's notice yet at the same time not heat up the coffee," says Don Berquist, who handles training in the western United States and Canada for Rancilio North America. "The way to compensate for that is to go for a larger set of conical burrs, a heavier-duty grinder with a higher throughput and a larger motor."

At Intelligentsia, as at many high-production cafés, the grinder of choice is the Mazzer Robur. With its 220V motor and three-phase 71-mm conical burr grinding blades that spin at 500 rpm, this 62-pound workhorse fits the bill in more ways than one. But Glanville sees room for improvement. For starters, he'd like to see a design change to prevent coffee that's waiting to be ground from making contact with those hot burrs. He has even engineered a number of modifications to the grinder, including one to the doser to make the ground coffee come out straight. (He says Mazzers tend to throw coffee out to the left so that it piles up on one side of the portafilter basket or ends up on the counter.)

GRINDER ISSUE #2: FRESHNESS
Another concern among some baristas is the freshness of the coffee. At peak times, baristas typically grind enough coffee to fill the doser in order to expedite service. But ground coffee that's left waiting around quickly becomes old. Exactly how long is "too long"—and the impact of this delay on the experience in the cup—is subject to debate. "One of the gold standards for coffee is that it shouldn't be older than 30 minutes in your doser after it's ground," says Cosimo Libardo, vice president of sales and marketing for Nuova Simonelli, a manufacturer of coffee bar equipment in Italy. "After that, the dissipation of gas and oxidation of coffee starts dramatically reducing the quality of extraction, with espresso at least."

George of Stumptown says he notices changes in coffee almost immediately after grinding. "If you let the coffee sit in there for a minute or two, and then you pull the shot, it's not going to be the same as if you use it at once. It has a different color, different profile. Coffee immediately starts to go stale."

Others find that kind of talk irritating. "It's preposterous," says Peter Kelsch of F&O Imports, a Minneapolis-based supplier of imported wholesale coffee grinding equipment in North America. Espresso, Kelsch notes, has been made for more than 50 years in coffee bars in France and Italy using pre-ground coffee in the doser. "Then suddenly you come to the U.S. ... and people have taken it from one fanatical level to the next."

Either way, manufacturers have responded to the demand for fresher coffee with doser-less grinders that instantly grind a single or double shot—whichever they're programmed to do—directly into the portafilter at the touch of a switch. This eliminates not only the need for ground coffee to sit around in a dosing chamber but also the tendency for grounds to get trapped and become stale in the burrs, the chute and other parts of the machine. Examples include the Anfim grinder, the Swift grinder from La Marzocco and the Mythos from Nuova Simonelli.

But not all baristas are impressed with the doser-less options. Glanville says none of them has found a way to counter the tendency for ground coffee to form static electricity-induced clumps, which can cause pinhole channeling during the brewing process and therefore under-extraction of the coffee. "Everybody's trying to build a doser-less grinder, but none of them is good yet," he says, recalling an experiment where he filled a naked portafilter with ground coffee from a doser-less model, fit the portafilter into the espresso machine, then observed the shot from below. "It sent gushes and streams of water in every direction," he says.

As a result, Glanville and his fellow baristas improvise. They've also modified their Robur by installing timers that grind a measured, timed dose—seven grams for a single, 14 grams for a double—and they grind each shot per order. That helps to preserve freshness, but on the downside, the baristas pull the doser lever multiple times per shot to move the coffee into the portafilter as it falls through the doser—a technique that Glanville calls "an ergonomic nightmare."

GRINDER ISSUE #3: ERGONOMICS
On a recent Saturday, Glanville says he pulled 600 shots in an eight-hour shift. For each of those shots, he pulled on the grinder doser lever at least 10 to 15 times. That's anywhere from 6,000 to 9,000 pulls—a recipe for repetitive strain injury over time. And for each of those 600 shots, he also tamped—that is, manually compressed the puck of coffee in the portafilter with about 30 pounds of downward pressure in order to create a cake that offers the right amount of resistance to the water in the espresso brewing process. "A lot of baristas have shoulder problems and lower back pain," Glanville says.

Ergonomically speaking, a clear benefit of doser-less designs is that baristas don't need to manually dose at all. Some models also automate tamping. The Mythos has a dynamometric tamper—a lever that the barista pulls down, slot-machine style, which exerts far less strain on the wrist than fully manual tamping. The Swift grinder performs grinding, dosing and tamping at the touch of a switch—a level of automation that makes it easier for coffee bar owners to ensure quality even if they have high turnover of staff. "This way, somebody walks up to the machine and in five minutes they're actually making a latte with no training whatsoever," Berquist says. "There's no micromanagement of the coffee."

Some espresso purists object to such a high degree of automation on the grounds that it blurs the man/machine line in a process they feel should be hand crafted. Some argue that even a super-automatic machine can only do what the barista tells it to do—by adjusting grind and dose settings, for example—and that no amount of automation therefore can eliminate the risk of a lousy drink.

Baristas are almost constantly readjusting the grind to accommodate changes in ambient humidity, burr temperature and other variables. "Every couple of shots, we readjust it a little bit finer or a little bit coarser," Glanville says. "Grind adjustment for a top-tier coffeehouse is something that you're always, always dealing with, and you're never right on. You're always just a little off."

It's worth pointing out that concerns about grind adjustments, freshness, heat and other issues mentioned here depend at least in part on the type of barista and coffee bar in question. Most demands for changes in grinder technology come from that small percentage who have elevated the preparation of espresso to a virtual art form—"the barista extraordinaire," in Berquist's words. (George and Glanville are cases in point: George won the first-ever Mid-Atlantic Regional Barista Competition in 2006; Glanville placed second in the Western Regional Barista Competition in March 2007 and fifth in the U.S. Barista Competition in May 2007.)

At the other end of the spectrum are coffee bars with a high turnover of staff who care little about such niceties. "In some cases, I've had owners tell me they have five shops and have turned 100 percent of their employees in the last two months," says Berquist. "So they need training wheels."

GRINDER ISSUE #4: DOSING ACCURACY
Another major concern is dosing accuracy. Ideally, when the barista pulls the dosing mechanism, it releases seven grams of ground coffee for a single shot and 14 grams for a double.

But dosers are horrendously inaccurate, says Berquist. "I've seen very large chain accounts that have all the systems in place for accuracy and such, and the franchisee owner is standing there and saying, 'OK, I'm just going to pull this lever twice and I'm supposed to be getting the correct amount of dosing,'" Berquist says. "I'm looking at it, and I know for a fact we're varying between 10 and 16 grams per double shot of espresso. So on two pulls I've got a 50-percent variance between shots of espresso, and that's what the industry's been giving them."

Part of the problem rests with the operator. "Some baristas don't realize that if they pull that arm at a different speed, it's going to dose differently and fall differently into the portafilter," says George. "Sometimes as the coffee's grinding, they'll pull the arm very leisurely and dose the coffee in there, and on the next shot they're whacking away as fast as possible." And part of the problem is the grinders themselves. Berquist says 1990s-era models were the worst offenders because many were made with cheaper materials and smaller motors—a consequence of the growing strength of the Euro, rising commodity costs and other economic factors.

The issue of accuracy is another argument for doser-less grinders, which deliver doses at a consistent rate and distribution. Ditting's KE640 on-demand grinder uses computer boards to electronically control single and double shots. The Mythos has a threaded mechanical "worm" that rotates, pushing the coffee between the blades to ensure delivery of the same amount of coffee to within less than half a gram of variance in the programmed time, assuming the same blend is used. And the Azkoyen Capriccio, like Compak's upcoming A8 automatic grinder, grinds and doses on demand and includes a dispense-on-demand feature that grinds a measured, timed dose and holds it. "When you put a portafilter into a slot, it instantly delivers whatever you set up for that portion, so there's no waiting for it to grind," Kelsch says.

But here, too, some baristas see shortfalls. "There have been a few attempts to address one particular issue but it's always at the cost of something else that's important," Glanville says. "Some companies have built grinders that weigh out your dose, then grind, but for whatever reason the quality of the grind itself is very low."

GRINDER ISSUE #5: MAINTENANCE
Sometimes, the quality of espresso is compromised by a failure to correctly maintain the grinder—for example, by regularly changing the burrs, which wear down over time due to the type of blend used, the impurities present, the burr material and other factors. Conical burrs typically need replacing every 2,500 pounds of ground coffee, while flat burrs should be replaced every 1,000 to 1,500 pounds for larger blades and every 500 to 1,000 pounds for smaller ones. Titanium-coated burrs like those used on Nuova Simonelli's newer grinders last about three times longer and should be changed every 2,500 to 3,500 pounds, Libardo says.

But ignorance of this essential maintenance procedure is rampant. "There are so many people who don't realize when they should be changed," Berquist says. "I hear that every single time, even from people who sell them. ... But why are the drinks so bad corporately? A lot of the time it's because they have not changed the burrs in the grinder. Period."

Although conical burrs can deliver a higher-quality grind, impurities such as small stones can cause them to get stuck. This can be tricky because the burrs must be realigned and coupled perfectly in order to work. "They can become a nightmare for a technician," Libardo says, noting an industry trend toward flat burrs that are much easier to put back together and that are designed to reproduce the effect of conical grinders.

"Low maintenance is critical," says Nancy Wideman, vice president of sales at Ditting USA in Michigan. "Not only should a grinder require very little maintenance, but routine procedures must be simple and fast." In that regard, Ditting's new KR905 model uses a new design of magnetically positioned grinding discs to hasten the cleaning and changing process while also eliminating extra parts to be lost.

THE BIGGER PICTURE
Glanville may be even more of a grinder geek than most in the barista extraordinaire category. At one point, he even tried to design a grinder himself but lacked the capital and the smarts to make it happen, he says. But he's no purist when it comes to automation. "I am 100 percent for automation, right up to the point where it starts to compromise quality," he says. "What I want as a barista is to take my portafilter out, knock out my puck, dry my basket, shove my portafilter under something and have the coffee automatically grind, dispense, level and tamp, then put it into the espresso machine. . . . It should really be a five-second operation."

As for manufacturers, Libardo says they need to know the many differences in the market, which vary between continents, and even from region to region and bar to bar. "We segment the market depending on what the customer is looking for," he says, noting that grinder prices run as low as $400 to more than $4,000. "Selling a high-end grinder to a barista who doesn't know how to set it or use it doesn't make any sense. Would you sell a Ferrari to a guy who doesn't know how to drive it?"

Sometimes matching the right grinder to the right customer means educating the customer to the intricacies of the espresso-making process. Discussions about the heat-related impacts of burr speed, for instance, mean little if isolated from the impacts of blade design because the latter also plays a major role in how coffee heats up during grinding, Libardo says. (Blades that rotate relatively slowly can transfer more heat to the coffee than faster-rotating blades if their design increases their contact time with the beans, and vice versa.) Nor are cooler, fresher grinds always a good thing. (Blends that have a high gas content or have not de-gassed long enough may in fact benefit from grinders with high heat transfer or with mechanical dosers where the coffee rests for a while before brewing—otherwise "it's going to foam up," Libardo says. "Not crema, but foam, which is a big difference.")

Yet some still feel the manufacturers aren't listening. Berquist puts it down to basic supply and demand: "When you have five percent of the clientele interested, that leaves 95 percent that aren't raising a voice, and if the voices aren't loud enough, changes aren't made," he says.

Glanville agrees but thinks the manufacturers are missing the boat: "What we have now is a lot of cynicism from the manufacturers; they don't believe that there's a real market for (the changes we're calling for)," he says. "Everybody I've ever talked to has said, 'Oh, you just represent the top .001 percent, and nobody else is interested.' But right now I think we're seeing a very clear tide shift in specialty coffee. . . . More people are super-focused on quality and willing to pay for it."

Do other baristas see things his way? "If you handed any barista in any of the maybe 100 top coffee bars in the U.S. a new grinder that could do what I'm looking for, they would be absolutely ecstatic," he says.

 

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