The Ratio Four Coffee Machine is the Portland-based brand’s latest brewer. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Over the past 10 years, Portland, Oregon-based Ratio has gone a long way in broadening the niche of beautiful, well-wrought, simple-to-use automatic home drip coffeemakers.

The company’s first two machines, the Eight and the Six, have both earned accolades not only for their good looks and serene user experiences but also, importantly, their effective delivery and dispersal of hot water at a steady temperature over an entire bed of grounds for an even and delicious batch of brew.

Both excel at filling every cup around the Sunday brunch table, but neither is optimized for the average weekday morning or afternoon pick-me-up when just one quick cup is in order. Both also tend to be too tall for use beneath the lower kitchen cabinets found in older homes, and though their value becomes clear as soon as one experiences the build quality and performance, neither is inexpensive.

The Ratio Four evenly wets the bed of ground coffee to replicate a pour-over-style brewing method. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Ratio heard the call. About a year ago the company revealed the Four, a lower-profile Ratio machine built specifically to brew batches ranging from 5 to 20 ounces. It’s also Ratio’s most affordable machine to date, priced at $259 and on sale for a limited-time pre-order price of $225.

As a longtime lover of the Ratio Six, I have been watching and waiting for the Four to touch down. I was fortunate enough to spend a week testing one, and now I’m even more excited.

The Four Scores

I tried every which way to get a single-cup brew out of my Ratio Six. The height of the brewer and its larger-batch-oriented bloom phase ultimately drove me back to manually pouring my single cups every morning. With the Four, I feel taken care of, at last.

Sleek, low-profile and minimalist in design, the Four is Ratio’s first machine to include a mechanical pump, which very quietly drives water through a nimble 1200-watt flow-through aluminum water heater. Together these complete a brew within about four minutes, which is swift enough that to run it twice in order to serve a whole table is actually not out of the question.

Like all Ratio brewers, the Four is dead simple to use. No screen, dials, apps or timers — just add coffee, water, push one button and enjoy. One can easily recommend this machine to any casual coffee drinker seeking a no-brainer, high-quality cup.

The Ratio Four is extremely simple to operate. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Adjusting the brew temperature is also possible by refreshingly analog means. With the basket docked up closer to the 18-hole stainless steel showerhead (which consistently spread water to every inch of the brew bed), Ratio says the brew temperature is a steady 201F.

With the basket on the carafe, allowing a couple inches of open air between the spout and the grounds, the brew temperature lands closer to 195F, according to Ratio.

Another feature new to the brand is the Four’s dual built-in brew profiles. For larger brews, a single light press of the brew button enacts the main profile that delivers a 100-gram bloom pour, pauses for 30 seconds, pulse-pours to the 2-minute mark and shifts into “continuous flow” until all the water is gone.

Smaller brews benefit from pressing and holding the brew button for three seconds to start the brew, triggering a bloom pour of only 60 grams followed by the same rest of the cycle.

The machine accepts standard 8-12-cup basket-shaped paper filters — a common grocery store item. It plays just as nicely with Kalita 185 (the larger size) paper filters, which is an item often found in the cupboards of manual brewing fans, and Ratio is working on releasing its own “faster flow” paper filters that are optimized for the Four.

Fun for Geeks, Too

As a manual pour-over devotee who’s also a chronic over-thinker, I quickly learned to relish the handoff of water-pouring duties to the Four. A vast selection of brewers will fit between the Four’s base and showerhead, either on a mug or on a carafe, which encouraged me to revisit some older conical brewers that I’d gravitated away from in favor of more forgiving basket-shaped brewers.

The Ratio Four comes with a hand-blown, smoke-tinted glass carafe. Photo by Howard Bryman.

My Phoenix 70 conical brewer, for example, had become more of an art piece than a brewer as it languished on a shelf over the years. The Four brought it right back to high esteem for the juicy cup it yielded, as well as its fun look on the machine. My daily driver — an Origami brewer with Kalita paper filter — also delivered excellent cups via the Four.

Key to this joy is the Four’s flexible reservoir system. The attractive crystal-clear standalone cylinder is light enough to detach one-handedly from its weighted base; it’s easy to shuttle to the sink to fill up; and best of all, it’s an excellent size and shape for setting on a scale to weigh out exactly the volume of water for a specific pour-over recipe.

The Ratio Four includes a new reservoir system that attaches to the brewer. Photo by Howard Bryman.

You can also be confident that every drop will be delivered to the coffee for that recipe, as the pump revs up at the end of each brew to purge the line free of standing water between brews. When not in use the whole system is empty and dry.

Small Compromises

There’s a lot of plastic on the Four, including the case, basket and reservoir. This may be off-putting for some, in principle, although in practice, I found the materials to be a worthwhile compromise for the price, given that in all cases there are also benefits.

The matte-black sheen of its case is almost indistinguishable from metal at a glance. The reservoir is made of the same stuff as Nalgene water bottles, therefore certainly safe enough for its short stints in contact with water, plus it won’t break if you drop it. The brew basket, while lightweight, benefits from the material’s effective heat-trapping properties. Ratio also has a ceramic brewer for the Four in development, and I’ll be excited to try that out when it’s ready.

Meanwhile, one might think that a brewer of smaller cups would be smaller than its larger-batch forebears in every way, but the Four is not. If cabinets were the main obstacle to your ownership of a Ratio machine, you can comfortably now join the club. However, for cramped corners where surface area is what counts, the Four may not fit everywhere that the Six does, as its footprint is ¾-inch wider.

The Ratio Four Coffee Machine has a small footprint and will work in most kitchens. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Users willing to forgo the Four’s lovely hand-blown smoke-tinted glass carafe in favor of brewing straight into a mug (one less item to clean) will need a leg up. The distance from the spout to the brew bed in some setups may result in undue turbulence and potentially water cooling. I use a tiny bean storage tin as a stepstool for brewing directly into an Origami brewer atop my standard mug, though my hope is that Ratio will develop a matching brew pedestal to free me from this kludge.

And finally, one of the hallmarks of both the Eight and the Six designs is the wondrous and calming thermodynamic spectacle of water gurgling up a vertical glass tube on its way to the coffee. The Four looks great, sounds nice, brews fantastically, but offers no such theater.

Four For Sure

That said, the space I cleared on the brew bar to accommodate the Four will remain clear until the company has machines fully in stock and I can pick one up for keeps. I’m excited for this to become my new daily brewer, and I can offer no higher praise than that.

Pros:

• Visually appealing
• Simple, fun and flexible use
• Excellent brewing performance
• Two built-in brew profiles
• Fair price

Cons:

• Lightweight materials
• Slightly wide footprint
• Could use a pedestal for mugs

The Ratio Four Coffee Machine can be purchased on the Ratio Website.  Coffee Review does not receive commissions or referral fees for any sales that may be generated from our equipment reviews. However, in some cases, products were reviewed as part of our fee-based service offerings.

The post Equipment Review: Ratio Four Coffee Machine appeared first on Coffee Review.

The OXO Rapid Brewer is designed to quickly and easily brew both hot and cold coffee concentrate. Photo by Howard Bryman

Whether for cocktails, frappes, baked goods or speedy mornings, coffee-as-ingredient is big business these days. The number of bottled concentrated coffee products is on the rise in stores and online, and with the Rapid Brewer, housewares brand OXO delivers a simple means for anyone to create their own fresh hot or cold concentrate using any coffee at home, in minutes.

For aficionados who prioritize quality over convenience, the Rapid Brewer is also a fine choice, capable of producing a nuanced presentation of any bean or blend dialed in on the device.

It easily achieves OXO’s stated goal of brewing in a hurry. And for those willing to explore beyond the bounds of OXO’s instructions, there’s also remarkable potential for excellent longer-style brews through an innovative method using the Rapid Brewer. At $39.99, with all these options plus its lightweight, durable and portable construction, there’s almost no reason not to give it a try.

The OXO Rapid Brewer is lightweight, durable and portable. Photo by Howard Bryman

It’s not without its faults, though these are easily overcome — chief among them being that not only will OXO not tell you how to do the longer brews, but elements of the Rapid Brewer’s design are actually a hindrance to this potential.

We’ll dive more deeply into the brewer’s strengths — and its secret superpowers — in a minute. First, I reached out to OXO to learn more about the brewer as it stands, including where it came from and why.

OXO Then & Now

A classic American story of ingenuity and success, OXO was founded in New York in 1990 by the father and son team of Sam and John Farber, whose goal was to create easy-to-use and ergonomically pleasant kitchen tools.

The Farber family eventually sold OXO to the General Housewares Corporation, which, in 2004, sold it again to Helen of Troy, another family-founded American company born in 1968 in El Paso, Texas, where its operations headquarters remain to this day.

Via email, OXO told me the Rapid Brewer was developed over a recent period of 18 months through a collaborative inter-departmental process involving product engineers, marketing staff, industrial designers, coffee consultants, and others. The leader of the dedicated team overseeing the project was Associate Engineering Director Chris Diskin.

Diskin, a New York-based engineer, has been rising in the ranks at OXO for more than eight years. The company said he “has been instrumental in the creation of many of our coffee products,” adding, “We also collaborated with expert baristas to ensure the brewer meets the highest standards of coffee brewing.”

Indeed, OXO has proven that it takes coffee seriously. Its electric coffee makers are certified by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), and the company makes both manual and electric grinders; its Cold Brew Coffee Maker is beloved by critics and customers alike, and the company also makes the Pour-Over Coffee Maker with Water Tank, a dead simple tool for effective manual brewing at home. Why make another manual brewer?

“We wanted to create a new manual brewer that could deliver an even more versatile and rapid brewing experience,” OXO told me. “The Rapid Brewer offers more versatility since it can be used to make cold brew and hot brew — and it can brew concentrate, which can be used to make lattes, cocktails, or other specialty drinks.”

Quick And Sweet, Right Out Of The Box

Intuitive and forgiving, the brewer is easy to use, clean and store. With coffee ground a bit coarser than espresso-fine and a good tamp with the included tamper, a 5-minute cold brew in the Rapid Brewer is a smooth and aromatic treat. More time might be better, but five minutes gets it done.

The water chamber (and its carafe) is small but allows you to achieve a reasonably latte-esque experience. Photo by Howard Bryman

The concentrated hot brew it produces stands up well as a “bypass brew,” i.e., something akin to an Americano with additional hot or cold water added after brewing.

Instant gratification fans will also love how a splash of cool water on top of the hot brew not only fleshes out the drink to fill a mug but also immediately drops the temperature into the optimal sipping zone — no need to wait for that first morning cup to cool.

Adding hot or cold plant-based or animal milk yields a reasonably latte-esque experience, and there’s certainly no harm in quaffing the Rapid Brewer’s straight shot. It’s less intense and less demanding than espresso, and I had multiple coffees glow in this preparation with a vibrant punch of flavor and the full body typical of brews through metal filters.

Great In A Sprint, But Not Without Hurdles

Of the five-piece system comprising the pump, water chamber, filter chamber, tamper and carafe, one piece — the pump — cannot be submerged. As it is threaded onto the top while brewing, it takes some mindfulness to remember to remove it and not simply place the entire apparatus in the sink after brewing.

The OXO Rapid Brewer’s pump cannot be submerged in water. Photo by Howard Bryman

Meanwhile, the only piece that does not thread or otherwise attach to the system is the carafe, and woe be to the user who misplaces it. OXO designed the Rapid Brewer to rest securely on its included carafe — and only this carafe.

I’ve tried positioning the brewer atop a wide variety of mugs, tumblers and cups, and it’s somehow either wobbly or too big or small for almost all of them. (Tune into Coffee Review’s Instagram for a simple hack that helps fit the Rapid Brewer onto more mugs!)

Sized specifically to accommodate OXO’s concentrated recipes, the carafe is also quite small and, therefore, prevents experimentation with larger recipes.

The Rapid Brewer’s Secret Superpower

As luck would have it, the brewer happens to sit securely enough atop my favorite red porcelain mug. With this higher-capacity receptacle, the brewer’s real superpower reveals itself to be neither its speed nor its cold capabilities.

It’s actually leagues more versatile than even OXO would have you believe: It’s a zero-bypass pour-over press!

Beyond the confines of OXO’s instructions and the Rapid Brewer’s tiny carafe, my favorite way to use it shifts the baseline recipe up to a coarser grind (in the mid-to-larger end of typical single-cup manual pour-over range) and a pour-over-style coffee-to-water ratio of 1:16, or thereabouts.

It starts with a bloom pour, a swirl, and then the rest of the water is added and drips until the time feels right to secure the pump and bring a fast and gently pressurized end to the brew. (Tune into Coffee Review’s YouTube channel for the recipe and a demo of the Rapid Brewer as a combination zero-bypass percolation brewer with a uniquely pressurized finale.)

Pressed For Success

Particularly in these long-form brews, but also right out of the box, I’m finding that bright, juicy, vividly aromatic and full-bodied brews are easy to achieve with the OXO Rapid Brewer, a tool I’m genuinely excited to continue exploring.

Pros:

• Great for hot or cold brew
• Highly versatile
• Easy to use, clean and store
• Affordable

Cons:

• Pump is not waterproof (cannot be submerged)
• Carafe is small and risks being lost
• Lacks compatibility with other mugs/receptacles

The OXO Rapid Brewer can be purchased on the OXO website.  Coffee Review does not receive commissions or referral fees for any sales that may be generated from our equipment reviews. However, in some cases, products were reviewed as part of our fee-based service offerings.

See our hands-on video of the OXO Rapid Brewer.

The post Equipment Review: OXO Rapid Brewer appeared first on Coffee Review.

The Outin Nano portable espresso maker. Photo by Howard Bryman.

In the competitive market of portable espresso brewers, the Outin Nano, a lighthouse-shaped device with a built-in pump and onboard heat, aims to be a beacon of both convenience and consistency.

Most gadgets designed for brewing espresso on the go are manually pumped and cannot heat water. In smaller handheld formats, especially, this tends to mean a herky-jerky flow as brew pressure drops between manual compressions. The need to heat water externally further sinks the prospect of a few special sips in the wild to an undertaking just too cumbersome and potentially wasteful to be worth it.

With its ability not only to bring a small and precise amount of water up to a consistent and brew-worthy temperature but also to automatically deliver that water at high, even pressure through a bed of finely ground coffee (or a capsule) at the single press of one button and in a package that fits in a backpack water bottle sleeve, the Nano blazes a new trail.

Espresso mise en place: The Outin Nano setup. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Meanwhile, at home, any espresso machine worth its salt rarely costs less than several hundred dollars. Outin sells the Nano for $149.99 and the important Basket Plus accessory for $39.90 — a compelling bottom line for a point of entry to espresso no matter where one intends to brew it.

A Growing Startup

An independent startup founded in 2021, Outin’s mission is to make fresh espresso easier to enjoy in the great outdoors.

Currently headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Outin launched the Nano in January 2023 and has fine-tuned it over several iterations since then. A full team dedicated to the Nano’s continued development and support now rounds out the ranks at Outin, which has also brought in dozens of baristas and coffee professionals for feedback and ideas.

Outin representatives are also showing up in person with booths at trade shows, including the 2024 SCA Expo in Chicago this past April. In June, at the World of Coffee event in Copenhagen, Denmark, Outin was a sponsor of the World Latte Art Championship. Clearly, the company is making every effort not only to appeal to the backpacker set but also to build a brand and products that earn the respect of specialty coffee aficionados and professionals.

The Nano Experience

The appreciably sturdy and waterproof plastic fuselage of the Nano instilled confidence from the moment I unboxed it and gave it an initial rinse. Brewing with grounds rather than capsules brings a couple of the Nano’s included additional bits and bobs into play that are somewhat fiddly at first, and could be confusing for novices, but as the workflow grows familiar, it’s really pretty simple.

Outin provided the Basket Plus accessory for my tests, and for the more experienced or ambitious espresso lover, this is a must-have. The Plus bumps capacity up to a maximum of 18 grams of ground coffee, and as an erstwhile user of traditional espresso equipment, I can scarcely see myself falling in love with anything that holds less.

The steel basket on the right is the “Basket Plus” a must-have accessory, compared with the stock basket on the left. Photo by Howard Bryman.

At the base of the steel Plus basket spreads a traditional array of filter holes, after which, like a spouted portafilter, another layer of steel directs the stream through a single wide hole toward the cup. The quality of espresso and crema are largely dependent on the bean, dose and grind, although Outin asserts that the slight resistance of this constrained exit flow provides some additional stability to the brewing pressure.

Another worthwhile accessory (sold separately for $49.90) is the Nano Dual Stand, a handsome, lightweight walnut holder that transforms the Nano from backcountry brew baton to an attractive stationary brew station. Particularly in my crowded coffee corner where space is limited, I enjoy its look and functionality — it doubles as a pour-over station, holding a pour-over brewer over a mug for drip coffee brewing.

The Nano brewer itself performed flawlessly, and yet the Nano isn’t necessarily for everyone. Its settings can’t be adjusted, nor can a user know exactly what pressure or temperature it’s applying or when. Dialing in a coffee on a black box like the Nano is consequently more about the Nano than the coffee.

The Outin Nano portable espresso maker performs exceptionally well for its price category. Photo by Howard Bryman.

The standard procedure (with the Basket Plus) will be familiar to anyone who’s prepared espresso before. A gram scale is helpful for dosing consistency and precision, and a good grinder is also critical for getting the best results.

I weigh out 18 grams of whole beans, grind finely and load the grounds into the basket through the included dosing funnel. I stir with a WDT (Weiss Distribution Technique) tool to evenly distribute the grounds and break up any clumps, tap the basket on the counter to settle the fluffed-up grounds, press it with the tamper, seal the basket with its cap, thread it onto the Nano, pour some water in the top and press the button.

Outin also sells extra baskets, so the option is there to handle all these steps in advance and carry a few additional prepped-and-ready baskets for brewing on the go.

Cleanup is simple as the coffee is fully isolated within the basket, so the body of the Nano needs only a slight rinse after each brew. One can use the bottom of the included plastic cup for knocking the spent coffee puck loose from the basket, making it easy to toss into a compost bin, and all the other brewing pieces rinse clean in seconds. The Nano’s accessories, meanwhile, do not entirely escape some kvetching. The stand, which isn’t required for brewing but is a nice option, is potentially delicate; a replacement shipped promptly by Outin has held up nicely, but the first one I tested broke during normal use. (The company says it’s developing a sturdier version.)

The Basket Plus’s included single-wire WDT tool is rather anemic; it works, but multi-needle tools work much better. The metal funnel and self-leveling tamper included with the Plus are thoughtful and well-made essentials, but because the tamper is a fixed-depth device, the dose and grind remain the only variables affecting puck density. And the multilayer construction of the filter basket tends to hold a tiny bit of water after rinsing, which leads one to wonder whether it’s ever fully clean or dry.

An Overall Winner

These minor quibbles aside, when paired with a fitting coffee, grind and dose, the Nano undeniably cranks out quality espresso shots.

For beginners and for capsule fans, the Nano is a slam dunk. The basic kit is fun, durable, easy to learn and as packable as a flashlight. The Basket Plus can later provide an educational platform to delve deeper into the craft and yield even more satisfying results.

Pros

● Portable and convenient
● Also appropriate for home use
● Capable of producing very good espresso
● Affordable
● Self-heating
● Compatible with standard-size Nespresso capsules in addition to ground coffee

Cons

● Settings can’t be adjusted
● Requires the Basket Plus for best experience
● Minor quibbles with extras and add-ons

The Outin Nano Portable Espresso Maker can be purchased at the Outin website.  Coffee Review does not receive commissions or referral fees for any sales that may be generated from our equipment reviews. However, in some cases, products were reviewed as part of our fee-based service offerings.

The post Equipment Review: Outin Nano Portable Espresso Maker appeared first on Coffee Review.

An array of coffee brewers and grinders designed by working coffee professionals. Photo courtesy of Howard Bryman.

For all the many beautiful and clever pieces of equipment that exist for brewing coffee, it’s remarkable just how few of them are designed by “coffee people” — people whose primary occupation is within the coffee industry.

Houseware companies and other manufacturers will sometimes consult with specialty coffee pros when developing products for the quality-oriented audience. And of course, electrical and mechanical engineers are perhaps best suited to the task of designing machines with moving parts and complex electronics. It’s also true that running a coffee business leaves little time and energy for additional projects beyond the sourcing, roasting and selling of coffee.

So, while it may not be surprising, it’s still a little ironic that the catalog of coffee gear made by roasters or baristas is remarkably small. But it does exist, and for the Coffee Review Gift Guide this holiday shopping season, we’re shining a light on this admirable niche.

Every entry on this year’s list of items to consider as a gift (or as a treat for oneself) this holiday shopping season is a unique piece of equipment designed entirely by professional coffee people — passionate industry pros whose primary occupation is coffee, and whose primary objective in creating these products is to help specialty coffee consumers get the best experience possible from their coffees.

For each item, we share the stories and/or bona fides of its designer, the coffee-related problem it was designed to solve, and what it is about each one that brings us joy.

There are no affiliate links here. Coffee Review takes no commission on any sales that may result from this list. We aim purely to enlighten and appeal to seekers of high-quality coffee equipment, as well as to show support for the industry professionals whose passion keeps the coffee world moving forward.

Happy shopping and happy holidays to all!

The April Brewer ($29 – $39)

A flat-bottom pour-over brewer that rewards a practiced technique.

Comandante C40 Manual Grinder ($325 – $360)

One of the highest-quality and most attractive manual coffee grinders on the market.

Etkin 2-Cup Coffee Dripper ($45)

Just like the lovely Etkin 8-Cup, but for when you only want a cup or two.

Native Design Expedition Brewer ($49)

The slimmest, lightest-imaginable brewer for refueling in the backcountry.

The Cupping Brewer ($40)

Scales up the traditional cupping brew for something more savorable and shareable.

Simplify the Brewer ($21)

A manual pour-over brewer optimized for a single central pour; no fuss, no muss.

NextLevel Pulsar ($65)

A zero-bypass brewer with a flow control valve that’s as easy or as geeky as you want it to be.

VacOne Air Brewer ($149.95)

With a fine mesh screen and strong vacuum pump to strain brews quickly, this immersion brewer opens a world of possibilities.

Varia VS3 Grinder ($299.90)

Statuesque, compact and meticulously thought-out electric coffee grinder for which a variety of different burr sets are available.

The Full Reviews

The April Brewer

($29 – $39)

www.aprilcoffeeroasters.com/collections/april-brewers

WHO MADE IT:

Patrik Rolf literally wrote the book on transforming from a private coffee nerd into a renowned coffee professional. (His memoir, From Nerd To Pro – A Coffee Journey, is printed on paper made from recycled coffee cups.)

Rolf founded a roasting company called April Coffee in Copenhagen in 2016, although he had competed in professional-level coffee competitions before he’d ever worked in coffee.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

As a competitor and as a roaster, Rolf found that achieving consistency from one manual brew to the next was more challenging than it needed to be. With the right tool, great cups could be easy to repeat, whether for competition judges, for customers or for oneself.

In 2019, Rolf won the silver medal in the World Brewers Cup competition using the brewer of his own original design — the April Brewer.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

The key features Rolf baked into the April Brewer are its large single drain hole, its exterior peripheral vents, and its pronounced interior bottom ridges that prevent the paper of a Kalita-style basket filter from adhering to the base and sealing it off while brewing.

All three of these features encourage a fast downward flow, which shifts more impact onto the other choices made by the barista such as the grind size and coffee-to-water ratio. As a baseline, Rolf suggests a straightforward two-pour technique that he thinks strikes an ideal baseline balance between ease and precision to consistently coax the best from the coffees he roasts. Easy and intuitive to replicate brew after brew, we find ourselves gravitating back to that technique with most coffees, and loving the articulate, well-defined cups that result.

Available in plastic, glass or ceramic, the April Brewer rewards a precise technique, making it a fun and consistent tool in the hands of anyone with a scale, a gooseneck kettle, a quality grinder and a discerning palate.

Comandante C40 Manual Grinder

($325 – $360)

www.comandantegrinder.com

WHO MADE IT:

Father-and-son roasters Bernd and Raphael Braune of the German coffee company Supremo Coffee. From their home base outside of Munich, the Braunes have continued to source and roast top-tier coffees at Supremo while expanding into the grinder business, which at this point has eclipsed Supremo both in terms of revenue and global reach. The C40 has recently been joined by the larger-capacity C60 and the ultraportable C25 Trailmaster.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

It was only a few years after the 2004 founding of their quality-obsessed company Supremo Coffee that Bernd and Raphael Braune started to feel their quest to source, roast and deliver the finest imaginable coffees was being scuttled at both ends of the supply chain by lackluster grinders. Poorly performing grinders were too often a disservice to the proper evaluation of the stellar quality green coffees they cupped on the farms of creative and hardworking producers. The Braunes were also concerned that low-quality grinders in their customers’ homes were pulling the rug out from under all their efforts to source and roast par excellence.

They needed an excellent grinder they could pack with them on sourcing trips, and they needed that same professional-level piece of equipment to be accessible to their customers. By 2013, production of the first generation of Comandante manual grinders had begun, and in the decade since then their designs have continued to evolve and improve. Now in its fourth (product) generation, the Comandante C40 MK4 Nitro Blade features the same house-engineered conical burr set made from martensitic steel introduced with the Mk3 model in 2016, yet in the lightest package so far.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

Many throughout the industry consider the Comandante C40 to have set the gold standard for performance and build quality in a manual coffee grinder, and we can see why. It looks great, it’s a pleasure to use, and it puts out an exceptionally uniform grind that is ideal for pour-over and AeroPress. It performs admirably in the espresso range as well.

Its light weight is indeed a boon to its use on the road, but we also simply love the ergonomics and warmth of its handmade wooden knob and the textured, durably powder-coated body. The beans crunch with a pleasant tenor and its winsome amber glass catch jar is worth the extra weight and potential (but unlikely) breakability.

One also can’t help but feel like a member of the Comandante family when considering not only the heartwarming father-son backstory, but the courteous degree of attention to detail. The wide range of available colors and hand-turned wooden options welcome all personalities. Worried about the glass? The C40 also ships with a lighter and more durable plastic alternative. Is the body not grippy enough? For those willing to accept the impact on aesthetics, it includes a rubber ring that slides onto the body for better grip.

Etkin 2-Cup Coffee Dripper

($45)

www.etkincoffee.com

WHO MADE IT:

The Etkin Brewer was invented by Michael Butterworth, an Authorized SCA Trainer and consultant based in Istanbul, Turkey, who is also co-founder of specialty coffee blog The Coffee Compass.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

With the original 8-cup Etkin Brewer, Butterworth sought to offer an alternative to the conical filter format upon which most multi-serving manual brewers are based by designing a flat-bottom brewer big enough to serve everyone at the table. Recently, Etkin rolled out a smaller two-cup version that allows Etkin lovers to enjoy the same user experience and exquisite cups even when home alone.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

We sang the praises of the original 8-cup Etkin Brewer in a previous gift guide on Coffee Review. While the eight-cup capacity remains a marquee feature of the original, other creature comforts such as its hefty and beautiful white porcelain build, smooth interior walls and heat-hoarding dual-wall construction also contribute greatly to its pleasure and efficacy. All of these features transfer perfectly to the smaller version.

Plus, the Sibarist paper filters we recommended for the eight-cup model are even better suited to the 2-Cup, with no “creative folding” required; the prefold lines on the Sibarist Fast Flat are compatible with the Etkin 2-Cup, resulting in an elegant, fast-flowing zero-bypass platform.

The Expedition Brewer

($49)

https://native.design

WHO MADE IT:

Brian Franklin was an athlete and personal trainer prior to his first experimentation with roasting coffee at home in the late 1990s. He founded the professional roasting company DoubleShot Coffee in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2004, and has had an adventurous career in specialty coffee ever since (adventures he has documented in an upcoming book called The Coffee Purist, slated to start shipping this December.)

Currently, DoubleShot’s operations include not only a roastery and cafe, but also a recently planted coffee farm in Nicaragua called Dos Manzanas. The enterprise expanded again earlier this year when Franklin and other DoubleShot team members rolled out a line of brewing equipment and tools under the brand name Native Design.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

The Expedition Brewer is a very flat, very light brewing kit for backpackers and travelers. Franklin tinkered with the design for over 12 years, aiming for simplicity and portability as well as a product that’s easy to manufacture, durable over time and beautiful to behold.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

The kit involves a handsome duck canvas pouch that stores a wooden support ring and a thin sliver of laminated copper that, when spread out and balanced on a mug or travel tumbler, supports a conical paper filter. The pouch can also store a few extra paper filters as well as an American Weigh Pocket Scale, all of which are also for sale at the Native Design website.

In our experience, this kit does everything it needs to do. It holds a filter while brewing. It packs flatter and weighs less than a pair of socks. It has the rugged good looks of a brewer Indiana Jones might’ve used. And it’s made in Oklahoma by a passionate crew of deeply entrenched coffee people with many a story to tell.

The Cupping Brewer

($40)

https://cuppingbrewer.com

WHO MADE IT:

Josh Taves, a specialty coffee pro since 2006, is the former director of the Rocky Mountain Craft Coffee Alliance and former head of business development at Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Stovetop Roasters. Taves initially launched the Cupping Brewer in 2015 and today runs his own professional equipment distribution service and consulting business called Dialed Coffee Services.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

Cupping is the process used by coffee professionals to evaluate the flavor and quality of coffee. Green coffee buyers cup coffees in order to make purchasing decisions; roasters cup while developing roast profiles and for quality control purposes. The procedure involves mixing ground coffee with hot water in a little bowl for a precise immersion brew in accordance with strict protocols for consistency. The cupper then coats their palate with vigorous slurps from a spoon repeatedly over time as the bowl cools.

Taves, in the course of his duties as a specialty coffee professional, often finds his sips at the cupping table to be the tastiest he gets from a particular coffee — better than any other brewing method. He wishes he could have more of that brew to savor and share with others. The Cupping Brewer is his solution.

Larger than a standard cupping bowl, the Cupping Brewer is a handsome glass piece made specifically to scale up a cupping-style brew and pour it into one or two regular mugs for a more familiar and longer-lasting enjoyment.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

While pleasure is the main goal, the Cupping Brewer can also be used for analytical purposes. It’s particularly handy for home roasters who are interested in a more standardized tasting process but are reluctant to engage with traditional cupping due to the limited quantities they can roast at one time. The Cupping Brewer offers a pro-style tasting platform as well as a satisfying brew — one that does well at highlighting sweetness while clarifying the distinct notes a great coffee can yield.

Simplify the Brewer

($21)

https://simplify.coffee/

WHO MADE IT:

Ryo John Ito, founder and head roaster of Japanese roasting company Bathtub Coffee.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

Ito wanted more people to feel comfortable with manual coffee brewing. He wanted to simplify the brewing process, and figured a single pour straight down the middle would be about as simple as it gets. Yet this tends not to work very well on most brewers, as so many are designed with staggered pours, spiral patterns and other techniques in mind. To support his simplified method, he needed to simplify a brewer.

The result is the clear Tritan plastic device called Simplify the Brewer. Boosted by funds raised with a Kickstarter campaign in 2019, Simplify the Brewer is a single transparent piece into which Ito actually put a deceptively large amount of thought. Structurally, the Simplify takes some of the principles of the April Brewer to their logical conclusion: An even bigger 40-millimeter bottom hole, even less contact between the paper and the device, and even greater airflow between the cup and the brewer to allow pressure and vapor to freely escape.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

The Simplify flow is fast enough that Ito suggests pouring 230 milliliters of hot water right down the middle of 15 grams of finely ground coffee all at once over the course of about 30 seconds. A grind dialed in for the brew to drain within a total of 60 to 90 seconds will supposedly result in a quick and tasty cup.

In our experience, this is true, and dead simple. When time is tight and we need a no-brainer brew, the Simplify is the gadget we grab. Its featherweight durability makes it great for travel, and particularly when paired with a Melodrip accessory, any old kettle will do — no gooseneck required.

The NextLevel Pulsar

($65)

https://nextlevelbrewer.com

WHO MADE IT:

In a tale of true internet coffee geekery come to life, the NextLevel brewer is the invention of two geographically distant roasters who met in an online forum and bonded through discussion of a blog post by a coffee-loving astrophysicist.

It was 2019 when Richard Unruh, the founder of roasting company Free Space Coffee in Galva, Kansas, met Darren Schmidt, who at the time was roasting and selling coffee in Kentucky under the company name Back Porch Coffee. The article they’d both read was a deep dive by scientist and author Jonathan Gagné that zeroed in on the coffee brewing phenomenon known as “bypass,” which refers to water that circumvents the bed of ground coffee instead of flowing through it.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

Water that doesn’t flow through coffee doesn’t contribute to the extraction; if it winds up in the cup, it’s just watering down the cup. The unaccounted absence of that water in the brew bed slightly throws off the intended coffee-to-water ratio and may result in a net under-extraction, while a channel of over-extracted grounds could be left behind in the path water takes as it flees. Either way, the heart of the problem with bypass is that it is generally uncontrolled. When precision is a goal, anything that happens by accident is bad.

Schmidt and Unruh put their minds together to design a brewer that makes it simply impossible for bypass to occur. This is the NextLevel LVL-10 Brewer, a “zero-bypass” brewer whose flat, circular filter lines the bottom of an otherwise impermeable Tritan cylinder. Unlike conventional brewers with paper filters that rise up along the walls, liquid in the LVL-10 has nowhere to flow but straight down through the coffee. At the top is a showerhead lid that disperses any untrained pour of hot water from any type of kettle into an even array of precise droplets for a consistent and thorough saturation of the coffee bed.

The rate at which water flows through the coffee bed in an LVL-10 is dictated entirely by the grind, the dose and the pour. Yet as a percolation brewer, the one thing beyond the LVL-10’s control is the ability to stop the water completely. Schmidt and Unruh, geeks to the end, wanted to be able to play with phases of full immersion, as well as the ability to extract more from coarser grinds that drain fast. This time, in direct collaboration with Gagné himself, the team created the NextLevel Pulsar: an LVL-10 brewer with a flow control valve at the bottom for the user to open and shut as they please.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

In our opinion, the Pulsar is easily one of the most versatile manual brewers on the market. It’s as handy for a slapdash steep-and-release brew as it is for a studied recipe executed with lab-grade surgical precision, just for kicks. It’s also big enough for multi-cup brews, sturdy and easy enough to use while traveling, and works well for an overnight cold brew.

The VacOne Air Brewer

($149.95)

https://vaccoffee.com

WHO MADE IT:

The VacOne is the result of a collaboration between Colombian engineer and product designer Eduardo Umaña and Luis Fernando Vélez, head of the Colombian coffee roasting company Amor Perfecto. Recently, Umaña sold the rights to his design to a Minnesota-based kitchen appliance manufacturer, allowing him to focus entirely on Origin Roasted, a company that ships roasted coffees to U.S. customers from roasteries operating at or near the Central and South American farms where coffees are grown.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

Finely ground coffee can yield a full and complex extraction very quickly. But in Umaña’s opinion, the existing methods of brewing with finely ground coffee extract too much and are just too inconvenient. Crema generated via espresso, moka and Turkish methods generally imparts bitterness, despite its beauty. All these methods can also be finicky to perform if not costly to equip.

In collaboration with Vélez, Umaña created the VacOne to provide a flexible platform for fast brews using finely ground coffee that also mitigates the bitterness of crema. The user adds hot (or cold) water to ground coffee in the top part for what is essentially an immersion brew, then presses one button to activate a strong vacuum force that rapidly draws the liquid down from below. Crema that may form on the surface of the slurry remains on the surface of the grounds after draining, and a fine mesh screen at the base of the brewer filters out the grounds.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

While its genesis focused on a fine grind, grounds of virtually any size can be brewed in any number of cycles in the VacOne, resulting in a wide range of possible cup styles. This makes it a simple and flexible daily driver shareable by people of differing preferences and skill levels. We’ve had great results with straightforward full-cup immersion brews as well as with concentrated cold brew.

Its flexibility also widely opens a door to creative experimentation. For example, the VacOne can be used to perform a series of quick immersions/agitations/filtrations that mimic the method of a cutting-edge new professional coffee system called the Ground Control that is currently making waves on the commercial specialty coffee scene.

Varia Brewing VS3 Grinder

($299.90)

https://www.variabrewing.com/collections/varia-vs3

WHO MADE IT:

Prior to launching Varia Brewing, founder Ramsey Gyde roasted coffee professionally in Wellington, New Zealand, and was at one point a sales associate for 25-year-old Australian specialty coffee company Toby’s Estate. Toby’s Estate founder Toby Smith is also a co-founder of Varia Brewing. Robin Lin, who founded the company Ultimate Coffee Roaster in Shanghai in 2013 and currently roasts and sells coffee under the brand AOKKA, is a partner in Varia Brewing.

WHY THEY MADE IT:

Gyde and company are passionate about taking classic methods and upgrading them with better materials, enhanced features and meaningful design tweaks. In the field of electric home coffee grinders, they saw many flimsy poor performers taking up too much counter space with their less-than-sexy fits and finishes. The VS3 addresses all of these concerns with powerful performance, head-turning good looks, a surprisingly small size and robust construction.

Varia also makes four different burr sets users can swap into the VS3 for different brew methods and other benefits. Having recently introduced the model’s second generation, the VS3 is now built to tighter tolerances, with higher precision alignment and an upgraded motor and stainless steel gearbox, among other subtle improvements.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

The gestalt of the VS3’s features punches well above this tiny grinder’s weight in terms of the quality of its grind and the sheer joy of using it. The deliberately slow RPM at which its 38-millimeter conical burrs spin encourages a more evenly sized output, generates less mess- and retention-inducing static electricity, and keeps the grounds cool and flavorful. While downright petite compared to other countertop electric coffee grinders for home use, the VS3’s all-metal construction still gives it a heft and a presence while minimizing vibration and instilling confidence in its longevity.

Its appreciably stiff adjustment collar has yet to let us down while making tiny tweaks in the dialing-in process for pour-over or espresso, and we also simply can’t get over what an attractive little monolith it is, saving precious inches in our crowded coffee corner with a minimalistic profile that seduces like functional sculpture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – HOWARD BRYMAN

Howard Bryman is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance journalist and photographer who focuses on the specialty coffee industry, which he has either worked in or written about for the past 10+ years. He is the associate editor of Roast Magazine’s Daily Coffee News website, and an occasional contributor to the print magazine as well. With experience as a barista, manager, roaster’s apprentice, origin tourist and equipment tinkerer, Bryman’s fascination with specialty coffee’s tools, trends and challenges is matched only by his enthusiasm for the beverage itself.

The post 2023 Holiday Gift Guide: Coffee Makers Made by Coffee Makers appeared first on Coffee Review.

Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

If Black Friday passed you by, black coffee can save the day, as both fuel and theme for holiday gift shopping. Besides all of the splendid coffees reviewed here, the unprecedented boom in new coffee brewing tools and accessories entering the market over the past couple of years has made it easier than ever to bring more excitement to a well-crafted cup, be it your own or a loved one’s.

When gifting for a fellow coffee lover, it’s a good idea to start with this fact: People brew the way they brew because that’s how they like it. Change can be fun, flexibility is healthy, yet while coffee is a delicious destination to which there are many routes, not everyone wants to go off-roading.

There’s no wrong way to enjoy a great coffee, although there may be a better way. Here, we’ve compiled a list of thoughtful gift ideas that will help any coffee lover up their game — even while staying in their lane. Everything on this list is less than $100, and there are no affiliate links here, just a variety of effective upgrades and hacks we’re confident will make the recipient’s coffee journey smoother, more effective and more fun this holiday season, and beyond.

* Coffee Review does not use affiliate links and does not receive a commission for sales from links in this report.

For the Generous Entertainer

Etkin 8-Cup Dripper — $55

The large and lovely Etkin 8-Cup Dripper. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

For people who take pride in manual brewing when company comes, the only beautifully crafted multi-serving brewers available until now have been designed around cone-shaped filters. And yet, commercial batch brewing machines are universally flat-bottom brewers. The Etkin 8-cup Coffee Dripper arrived this year to level the playing field, so to speak.

While taste is always subjective, at least one scientific study has determined that an even depth across the bed of grounds is beneficial to an even and thorough extraction when brewing higher volumes of coffee, i.e., more than just a cup or two. The Etkin — a lovely, hearty porcelain brewer with ergonomic indentations on the outside and dual-wall construction to trap heat on the inside — comfortably handles up to a one-liter batch.

It works with common paper basket filters and provides a new platform on which pourover lovers can show off for friends or family, or simply prepare for their own multi-cup-guzzling days. I find it works particularly well (although requiring some creative filter folding) with Sibarist Flat Fast specialty filters.

For the Manual Brewing Novice

Glass Clever Coffee Dripper — $49.95

The easy and classy Glass Clever Coffee Dripper. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

No fancy kettle or technique is needed for this classic immersion dripper. Simply stand it on the counter, combine hot water and coffee, steep for a few minutes and then place the brewer on a mug. The eponymously clever bottom valve then automatically opens, and down your ambrosia flows.

If the recipient eventually wants to experiment with spiral-pouring and percolation, they need only keep the brewer on a mug from the beginning and it acts like any other standard pourover cone.

Though the original Clever is made entirely of plastic, we find the glass version to be a worthy upgrade. While not altogether plastic-free — the outer base is made of a coffee-tinted Tritan — many of us avoid petrochemical materials wherever possible, and the Germany-made Schott glass is a sturdy pleasure to handle and behold.

Pro tip: Adding hot water first and ground coffee second with a gentle stir results in a faster drawdown for a sweeter, more articulated cup.

For the Advanced Pourover Practitioner

Melodrip — $36.50

Even the heavy-handed can pour gently with the Melodrip. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

It’s exciting when the water hits the coffee — literally. The bed of grounds is disturbed, causing divots of ground coffee that promote channeling while also sending more fine particles lower in the mix, potentially clogging the filter. This phenomenon, known as “fines migration,” is inevitable to some extent, but if you can control the agitation that occurs when adding water to your coffee, you might enjoy the outcome more.

The Melodrip is an attractive, well-made and precision-oriented hand-held tool designed to interrupt the stream of water from your kettle, splitting it into an array of tiny gentle droplets that don’t disturb the bed of ground coffee when they land. Pourover devotees seeking to one-up their own steady hands will delight in this new level of control, potentially finding greater clarity, sweetness and mouthfeel in their Melodrip-assisted cups.

For The Cold Brew Compatriot

Vinci Express Cold Brew — $79.99

Vinci Express goes with the flow for quicker cold brew. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

Through the magic of a patented recirculatory pump inside this 1.1-liter borosilicate glass carafe, a hearty batch of cold-brewed coffee is finished in minutes — not hours.

Somewhat similar in principle to an old-fashioned stovetop percolator, the Vinci Express drives water (and eventually brew) again and again through ground coffee. Unlike the stovetop percolator, however, the heat-free flow won’t over-extract. The pump won’t cook the brew, and the movement coaxes the goods from the grinds for a ready-to-drink delight in as little as five minutes.

Run it for 10 or 15 minutes for stronger brew, or 25 minutes for a concentrate, and the result will likely earn the status of a once- or twice-weekly ritual for the cold brew lover in your life. The electronics and delicate filters warrant careful handling, though the durable carafe doubles as an attractive fridge-friendly server.

For the French Press Romantic

American Press — $79.95

Make tasty, showy, maverick immersion with the American Press. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

The American Press brewer is not a French press. In fact, there’s no other brewer quite like it. Its appearance and operation will be very familiar to French press fans, though, making for an easy transition to broadened brew horizons.

Rather than allow coarsely ground coffee to steep passively before pressing down a filter through the brewed coffee, ground coffee in the single-serve American Press is sealed in a filter pod that’s attached to the plunger. The user presses the pod down through the water in order to brew the coffee. This combination of immersion, pressure and flow makes the American Press more like an Aeropress than a French press, though rather than pressing water through the coffee as the Aeropress does, it’s the coffee that travels through the water.

Ratio, grind, temperature and time are all still variables one can play with, and the result is always a visually arresting transformation: A column of clear hot water becomes a column of dark brewed coffee like magic as the pod descends. This product got a lot of “wows!” around my Thanksgiving table this year.

For the Budding Home Barista

WDT Tool by LeverCraft — $43

This little tool by LeverCraft makes a big difference in your espresso. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

WDT stands for Weiss Distribution Technique, named after the enthusiast who invented this simple handheld array of needles used to stir freshly ground coffee in an espresso portafilter before leveling and tamping.

Beginners may skip this step or use whatever they have lying around to get it done — a piece of wire, a toothpick, who knows? But a proper WDT tool does a far better job of gently and evenly breaking clumps and spreading the grounds and should be a pleasure to handle.

The WDT Tool by Austin, Texas-based LeverCraft Coffee is sturdy and versatile. Its CNC-machined and -anodized body comes with eight built-in food-grade stainless steel needles, each .4mm thick, and it can hold fewer or more needles up to a maximum of 16. Their splayed orientation is very effective, and my shots are decidedly more consistent with much less channeling when I use this tool.

For Your Grab-and-Go Amigo

W&P Porter Drink Through Insulated Bottle, 16oz — $45

Street-level savoring is simple with ceramic in the W&P Porter. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

Effective insulation, ceramic lining that includes the lip, and a wide, aroma-friendly opening — these are the top features we seek in a travel mug. The lightweight and attractive Porter by W&P ticks all those boxes, with a grippy silicone exterior that makes it easy to twist off the cap even while wearing gloves, and that will also prevent the unsightly dings and scratches to which more rigid exteriors are prone.

It’s nice that the Porter also comes with both a threaded cap and an optional flip-open sip-through lid. My preference for sipping from a ceramic rim is so great that I’m happy to forego the flip-top convenience, but it’s nice to have options.

The Porter is too narrow at the top to accommodate brewing directly into it with an Aeropress, but it can be used with many pourover brewers, and its slimness is a boon for cup holders, coat pockets and backpack bottle sleeves.

For the Avid Home Roaster

Showroom Coffee Gift Card — $20-$200

Help a happy hobbyist haul in heaps of green this season. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

Roasting coffee at home is not only a pleasurable craft but also a great way to buy and enjoy more coffee for a lower price per pound. With a gift card, some might treat themselves to a fancier, truly exceptional green coffee, while others might simply buy the usual in a higher volume that brings the cost down even further.

Showroom Coffee is an excellent resource for both of these scenarios. The website is easy to navigate, the information provided is thorough yet concise, fresh crop is always rolling in, and the selection ranges in price and cup score from easy-access blend fodder up to rare and exciting gems. For the friend roasting at home for the holidays, a gift card to Showroom widens the world of possibilities.

For the Stovetop Revivalist

Varia Pro Moka Pot — $89.90

An oldie but a goody made even better-y by Varia. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

The stovetop moka pot has made something of a comeback in recent years, although there still hasn’t been much innovation where the hardware is concerned. With several important tweaks to an otherwise classic platform, the Varia Pro Moka is a significant upgrade.

Its high-quality steel brew chamber has the feel of a precision instrument. Laser-etched steel filters both above and below the bed of coffee promote even saturation and a cleaner cup. Additional silicone gaskets fully seal the brew chamber for higher and more uniform pressure, and its insulated upper steel portion keeps the brew hot.

For a gift that really goes the extra mile, consider the award-winning full Varia Pro Brewer bundle. It includes the Pro Moka as one configuration among a set of additional components that can alternatively be assembled into either a French press with an innovative filter system of its own, or a pourover brewer and carafe.

For The Coffee Lover Who Has It All

21st Century Coffee: A Guide, by Kenneth Davids — $34.95

Kenneth Davids’ latest and most comprehensive book about coffee. Courtesy of Howard Bryman @studiobrynamo.

One thing no coffee fan can ever have enough of is knowledge. The latest book by Coffee Review co-founder and editor-in-chief Kenneth Davids, 21st Century Coffee: A Guide, offers a comprehensive exploration of contemporary coffee from seed to cup, including detailed sections on tree variety, farming, processing, brewing equipment and techniques, roasting and beyond.

In frank and engaging prose, Davids guides readers through the latest developments in coffee producing countries, environmental issues related to production and consumption, even adding a thorough chapter on coffee’s health issues and benefits. The large-format 289-page soft-cover volume includes 170 photographs and dozens of maps, tables and infographics. The index alone is 10 pages.

Our understanding and approach to coffee’s cultivation, preparation and enjoyment is constantly evolving. The industry is always shifting. No matter what your experience level with coffee may be, there is always more to learn, and 21st Century Coffee: A Guide is bound to enlighten.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – HOWARD BRYMAN

Howard Bryman is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance journalist and photographer who focuses on the specialty coffee industry, which he has either worked in or written about for the past 10+ years. He is the associate editor of Roast Magazine’s Daily Coffee News website, and an occasional contributor to the print magazine as well. With experience as a barista, manager, roaster’s apprentice, origin tourist and equipment tinkerer, Bryman’s fascination with specialty coffee’s tools, trends and challenges is matched only by his enthusiasm for the beverage itself.

The post Everything But the Beans: Coffee Gear Gifting Guide for the Holidays appeared first on Coffee Review.

The Fellow Ode Brew Grinder, center, flanked by four burr grinders reviewed in Coffee Review’s June 2020 report “Four Mid-Range Burr Coffee Grinders Tested & Reviewed.” Photo by Howard Bryman.

Note: A Version 2 of the Ode grinder is now available.

Home kitchen appliances don’t usually enter the market wafting on hype. Yet, when it comes to an ambitious new product from the young and media-savvy California-based coffee equipment manufacturer Fellow, we’ve come to expect nothing less. The hype has been especially intense in the run-up to the debut of the Ode Brew Grinder, the company’s most complex product so far, and one for which the brand has made some lofty claims regarding features and performance.

Through its various media channels, Fellow has been promising a user-friendly machine of compact footprint, exceptional quietness, near-zero grounds retention, stylish appearance and trailblazing particle size consistency, designed specifically for single-dose, non-espresso brewing (which in itself puts the Ode in a category all its own). Yet as clever and good-humored as it is when ginning up the crowd, Fellow also has legitimately earned a reputation for making good on its promises.

To stoke excitement in the run-up to its latest reveal, Fellow undertook a sci-fi/conspiracy theory-themed P.R. campaign, enticing fans, bloggers and journalists to speculate about what sort of Sasquatch- or UFO-caliber mystery the hip brand was concocting in the shadows of its top-secret underground laboratories. This paid off when it pulled the curtain at last on the Ode Brew Grinder Kickstarter campaign, which sailed past its $200,000 funding goal in about 90 minutes and ultimately roped in over $1.2 million in pledges from roughly 5,000 backers. We put a pre-production review unit of the Ode Brew Grinder through its paces over the summer, and found that while it may not pull the sword entirely from the stone — alas, Bigfoot may still be out there somewhere — we were nevertheless very impressed with all that it does bring to the table.  For the review, read on. For a little context, see our June 2020 report for reviews of four burr grinders currently competing with the new Fellow Ode.

The Fellow Ode Brew Grinder. Photo by Howard Bryman.

EQUIPMENT REVIEW: FELLOW ODE BREW GRINDER

OVERALL RATING: 9.5

Pros: The Ode’s outstanding grind consistency alone is reason enough to get on board, while this compact, stylish grinder’s groundbreaking additional features add welcome convenience to the creative challenge of precision single-dose brewing.

Cons: We’d prefer a bit more room at the finest end of the dial, and the Ode’s sensitive electronics are issue-prone, pending solutions Fellow says will appear in future production runs. For consumers considering buying their first burr grinder, the Ode may appear expensive. For more experienced users who are committed to optimizing their small-batch or single-cup brewing technique, it may seem, if not a bargain, certainly a very good value.

MSRP: $299.00

Reviewer’s Take:

The Ode Brew Grinder’s array of inventive features is impressive, although pulling off these innovations did not apparently distract its engineers from what really matters — the grind.

Particle Size Consistency: As with our previous grinder reviews we sent samples of coffee ground by the Ode to our friends at the Horiba Instruments particle science lab in Irvine, California, for particle size distribution analysis by laser diffraction.

When comparing the Ode’s best (most particle-size-consistent) grind to that of the peak performer in our previous round of grinder reviews (the Breville Smart Grinder Pro), the Ode sample demonstrated 6% better grind consistency. (For an explanation of how we evaluate grind consistency, click here.

A comparison of grind consistency test results for the four best-performing grinders recently reviewed by Coffee Review, based on laser particle size distribution analysis conducted by Horiba Instruments. Shown here are best performance results for each machine. For each, the blue column represents the percentage of the sample within a particle size range we identified as optimal; the red column the percentage coarser than optimal, and the green finer than optimal.

That excellence gap grows wider, however, when we abandon the “best vs. best” idea for a closer look at each machine’s performance in specific use scenarios. Keep in mind that the Ode is designed for precision non-espresso brewing, whereas the grind-consistency runner-up Breville Smart Grinder is designed for all brewing methods, with a particular focus on espresso. If we accept the Ode’s more limited focus, and disregard the Breville’s versatility, our laser diffraction results indicate that when grinding specifically for a single-cup pourover, the Ode actually grinds almost 20% more consistently than the Breville.

A comparison of results from laser particle size distribution analysis conducted by Horiba Instruments of coffee samples ground at settings we found appropriate for a single-cup Kalita Wave pourover brew. For each machine, the blue column represents the percentage of the sample within the particle size range we identified as optimal; the red column the percentage coarser than optimal, and the green finer than optimal.

High-Tech Motor: While its sturdy alignment and large, commercial-grade 64-millimeter flat burrs contribute to this success, part also has to do with what Fellow calls its Smart Speed PID motor that directly drives the burrs at a consistent speed despite variations in resistance as beans feed between them. Sensors in the motor perceive fluctuations in RPM due to the resistance as a load of beans enters and diminishes during grinding, triggering automatic adjustments in the power sent to the motor. The result is a consistent 1,400 RPM, without slowdown at first or acceleration at the end － variations in burr speed that, according to Fellow, promote inconsistency in particle size in other grinders.

The large, stationary 64mm flat burr inside the grind chamber of the Ode Brew Grinder. Photo by Howard Bryman.

While this innovation does apparently contribute to outstanding grind consistency, it is also the mechanism at play in another clever, though less foolproof, feature: auto-stop.

The Auto-Stop Feature: When all the beans have been ground, the motor automatically shuts off, so if you weigh or measure your beans before you grind, you are freed from fooling around with a timer in order to attain hands-free operation. It’s an excellent feature when it works, but there are occasions when this brainy motor can be caught off guard.

The more common of such occasions is when a few beans straggle behind in the hopper after the motor has automatically stopped. When reactivating the grinder just for those final few beans, the tiny amount left often won’t provide enough initial resistance to trigger the auto-stop mechanism, in which case you will have to stop the grinder manually.

A more serious glitch can occur if the Ode shares an outlet with another power-hungry appliance such as a toaster oven, blender or, in our case, a standing mixer. After plugging in, using and then unplugging a standing mixer next to the Ode, its auto-stop feature started failing consistently and the grinder would make an odd stuttering knocking sound until manually stopped.

Fellow engineers informed us that this failure was due to “intermittent noise in the electrical control system, often caused by other high voltage electronics or appliances on the same circuit.” The issue corrected itself after simply unplugging the grinder, letting it “reset” for a few seconds and then plugging it back in again. Fellow promised that a solution will be worked into future production runs, though it will also include a recommendation that users plug their Odes into dedicated circuits that are not shared with other high-voltage products.

A couple of flicks of this lever on the side of the Ode helps knock loose grounds left behind in the grinder due to static cling. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Retention and Usability: These are truly minor and preliminary glitches, though, in a package that otherwise makes good on virtually all its other promises. With its low profile and compact footprint, the Ode is tiny compared to other machines in its class. With an average noise output of 85 dB while grinding, this pygmy powerhouse is also substantially quieter than average.

Another convenience: The catch cup for the ground coffee centers easily and is securely held in place under the chute by magnets. This magnetic alignment is particularly handy considering the narrow clearance for the cup between base and chute. Grounds-funneling fins inside the catch cup also make pouring the grounds into even the narrowest of filters easy.

The huge grind adjustment knob is a pleasure to use, although we found ourselves wishing the Ode would go just a tad finer to provide even more flexibility in slowing down flow through the coffee bed when brewing a pour-over with very light-roasted beans.

Dose accuracy in our tests was dependable enough, as what came out of the Ode was generally within +/-0.2 grams of what we put in. When we emptied the machine for cleaning, we were only able to mine roughly 0.3 grams of retained ground coffee from its grind chamber and chute, which is practically nothing compared to other machines in its price range we have tested.

The Bottom Line: These ancillary but important perks are welcome icing on the cake of Ode’s grind consistency. The Ode may not be the most versatile grinder on the market given its dedication to single-dose, non-espresso brewing, and there may still be a wrinkle or two to iron out as the design matures, but for its grind quality, its striking good looks and other features, the Ode Brew Grinder has already set an impressive new standard.

Key Specifications:

Hopper Capacity: 80 grams (2.8 oz)
Dimensions: 9.4″x 4.2″x 9.5″
Weight: 4.5kg (10 pounds)
Burrs: 64mm stainless steel flat
Burr Speed: 1400 RPM
Grind Settings: 31
MSRP: $299.00

Manufacturer’s Website: www.fellowproducts.com

The post A High-Quality Grind, One Brew at a Time: The Fellow Ode Brew Grinder appeared first on Coffee Review.

As the number of cups of coffee enjoyed around the world flies north of two billion every day, it’s clear that humanity’s love of the beverage runs as deep as December nights run long. And yet like winter solstice snowflakes, no two coffee lovers are exactly alike in habits and preferences.

Consequently, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to gifting for the coffee lovers in your life, and in these topsy-turvy times, especially, it’s worth a little forethought to achieve a genuine gift-reception smile rather than a merely polite one.

The key may be avoiding both randomness and any presumption that change is always welcome. For many, brewing coffee can be an act of solace in a world gone mad. Our quiet morning rituals are among the few things we can predict and control, so maybe this is not the year to shake things up.

We therefore recommend against giving a caffè latte lover a pour-over cone, or a pour-over lover an AeroPress, this year at least. Any new system foisted by surprise upon a habitual home brewer is liable to wind up hogging space in a seldom-used kitchen drawer.

The safer and more considerate move is to accessorize your loved one’s existing interests, rather than introduce new wildcards. Not only is the message conveyed that you know them well and you’re paying attention, but also that you want to make life easier and you love them just the way they are.

For spreading warmth and joy among all walks of coffee this holiday season, Coffee Review offers the following gift guide with a little something special for everyone.

For the French Press Traditionalist

Fellow Clara French Press– $99

https://fellowproducts.com/

Fellow always brings a little something extra to the table, and its upcoming Clara French Press is a worthy upgrade. This just-announced product should appear on the Fellow website around November 17 and begin shipping before Thanksgiving. [Update: Fellow has postponed the release of this product until mid-December, 2020.] To the classic French Press method, Clara brings the sleek aesthetic and counterweighted handle of Fellow’s Stagg kettles, looking remarkably handsome on the counter and enhancing the ergonomics of the pour. Markings on the nonstick interior coating of the insulated steel pitcher make the grinds-to-water ratio easy to eyeball, and the company contends its ultrafine 230-micron (no. 60) mesh filter yields a cleaner-than-average cup.

For the Manual Brewing Beginner

Oxo Pour-Over Coffee Maker – $15.99

https://www.oxo.com/pour-over-coffee-maker-with-water-tank.html#

Adding hot water to ground coffee is a lot like telling a joke — it’s all in the delivery. A gentle, steady flow and even saturation of the ground coffee are important for best results, and the Oxo Pour-Over Coffee Maker makes both as easy as can be. Simply dump the right quantity of hot water in the top and the device spreads and showers it onto the ground coffee for you, gently, steadily and evenly. The perfect first step for someone curious about brewing by hand, but not quite ready to enroll in barista school.

For the Pour-Over Aficionado

The Origami Dripper – $34

https://www.slowpoursupply.co/collections/origami-dripper/products/origami-dripper-m

Though less familiar than similar brewers made by Hario or Kalita, the Origami Dripper is a beautiful, colorful, and arguably more versatile pour-over option that accepts both Hario conical-style and Kalita flat-bottom filters, opening new worlds of possible techniques. Passionate pour-over people are already accustomed to occasional adjustments in grind, dose and pouring, so a lateral move to an alternative filter-holder shouldn’t rock the boat too much. Be sure to buy the handsome wooden dripper-holder along with the dripper itself.

For the Espresso Maven

The Espazzola – $37.95

https://prima-coffee.com/equipment/protonea-senger/espazzola-red

Cleaning the group head on an espresso machine is nobody’s favorite aspect of the craft. The most commonly available tool for this task, a stiff-bristled nylon brush, tends to make more of a mess than it resolves. The Espazzola scrubs the screen, gasket and even the portafilter grooves with a few wiggles back and forth while locked into the group, and directs its discharge straight down into the drip tray. It may not be as sexy a gift as a custom wood-handled tamper or a hand-thrown demitasse, but your resident home barista will love it. To see a visual demo of the Espazzola, click here.

For the Cold Coffee Chugger

HyperChiller – $24.99

https://hyperchiller.us/products/hyperchiller%C2%AE-v2-iced-coffee-maker

In a household where some like it hot and others cool, the HyperChiller can mend your mornings. It’s also handy for an individual who likes a toasty morning cup and then some cold stuff to go, or all cold, but with the full sensory character of hot-brewed coffee. Just brew whatever quantity you normally would and send half or all through the Chiller, which keeps the ice and the coffee separated while turning hot drip frosty in about a minute without dilution. It’s also handy at the end of the day for chilling wine and spirits.

For the Frequent Flyer

Brentwood Dual Voltage Collapsible Travel Kettle – $28.85

Coffee-loving travelers will likely have a brewer they enjoy using on the road, although the missing piece is almost always the kettle, given how bulky they are. The Brentwood KT-1508BK Dual Voltage Collapsible Travel Kettle quickly and safely heats enough water to brew a substantial volume of coffee and then squishes down to roughly the size of an extra couple pairs of socks. No longer must your loved one rely on a seldom-cleaned and underpowered hotel room coffee maker or wait in line at an airport kiosk just for hot water.

For the Perennial Host

10-Cup Glass Handle Chemex – $47.50

https://www.chemexcoffeemaker.com/ten-cup-glass-handle-series-coffeemaker.html

Chemex also offers a 13-cup hand-blown glass brewer for more than twice this price that claims to accommodate brews up to 65 ounces. Melitta, meanwhile, offers a much more utilitarian (meaning less beautiful) system of a plastic cone and metal carafe that holds 60 ounces for about $33. But for a good balance of attractiveness, brew volume and price, the 10-cup Chemex is a fine way to offer coffee-loving hosts a tool that lets them show off their pour-over skills and share their fragrant coffees when company comes.

For the Evergreen Backpacker

Orphan Espresso Flatpack – $65

https://www.oehandgrinders.com/Flatpack-Classic-Travel-Coffee-Dripper-with-Waxed-Canvas-Case_p_122.html

Lightweight and packable are the two most important features for anything a committed backpacker carries. Outdoorsy pour-overs don’t get much more portable than the Orphan Espresso Flatpack, a thin sliver of silicone that rolls into a cone for holding a coffee filter. The Classic version comes with a classy waxed canvas wallet and titanium cone-holding disc, or for when every last gram of packing weight really matters, there’s the Flatpack Ultralight with a Tyvec wallet and carbon fiber disc.

For the Roasting Enthusiast

Akiva Cupping Spoon – $14.95

https://www.akiva.io/lang-en/shop/coffee-flower-spoon

To evaluate green coffee quality prior to purchasing in bulk, and to craft and evaluate roast profiles, professional roasters obsessively “cup” their coffees in a procedure that involves slurping from a certain type of deep-bowled spoon. Roasting hobbyists, particularly as their hobbies grow, might (or perhaps should) also be cupping their coffees. If and when they do, a unique or even personalized cupping spoon would bring new beauty, intimacy and personality to the task.

For the Coffee Lover Who Has It All

Coffee Gift Cards and Gift Certificates

https://www.coffeereview.com/advertisers/

No matter how many brewers, gadgets, doodads and accessories coffee lovers accrue over the years, there’s one thing they’ll always need more of… coffee. But as tastes can shift over time or on a whim, better to leave bean selection to the palate you’re trying to please. Follow the convenient links on our advertisers page for access to gift cards at many of the best roasters in the United States; choose a generous amount and let your loved one bask in the possibilities like a kid in a coffee store.

The post Holiday Gift Guide for Coffee Lovers appeared first on Coffee Review.

Four burr coffee grinders, from left to right: Oxo Conical Burr Grinder With Integrated Scale, Baratza Virtuoso+, Breville Smart Grinder Pro, and KitchenAid Burr Grinder. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Grinding whole beans immediately before brewing is one of the single most powerful upgrades you can make to the quality of the cup you brew at home. No matter what grinder you own, it’s better than owning no grinder at all. Yet when examining the differences from one coffee grinder to the next, and contemplating the sheer variety of products available on the market, it quickly becomes clear that what we ask grinders to do, and evaluating how well they do it, is neither simple nor easy.

For this report, Coffee Review thoroughly tested four popular burr coffee grinders: the Baratza Virtuoso+, the Breville Smart Grinder Pro, the KitchenAid Burr Grinder, and the Oxo Conical Burr Grinder With Integrated Scale.  The MSRP for these grinders currently ranges from around $200 to $270. From our point of view and our general experience, grinders in this price range and class have the potential to represent a reasonable balance between quality and affordability for a lover of fine coffee. They tend to perform best for brewed coffee – drip, French press, AeroPress, and various immersion methods. Some also can be used for espresso brewing (see the individual reviews), although a specialized espresso grinder is generally best for that demanding method.

Reviews of each machine can be found by clicking on the grinder names in the preceding paragraph, but to understand what we were looking for and what sets machines apart, in general, it helps to first understand what happens when beans are passing through any grinder, and then what it is we want from the grounds that come out.

The Journey from Beans to Grounds

Coffee beans are dense, brittle little packages. When a bean comes in contact with a grinder’s burrs or blades, it doesn’t get sliced like a melon or even chopped like a nut. Coffee beans tend to explode upon impact, resulting in an array of what we call boulders and fines, meaning big chunks of bean and tiny powder-like particles.

All this friction and speed inevitably generate both heat and static electricity. Too much heat is bad for your brew because it cooks away the volatile aromatic and flavor compounds in your coffee, promoting a subtly drab and underwhelming cup. Static is also a nuisance because it sends grounds fluttering messily out onto your countertop and clinging to surfaces both on and inside the grinder, including inside the grounds-catching bin or container, making it harder to pour or spoon grounds out into your filter.

Grounds stuck inside a burr grinder can also lead to maintenance issues eventually, while more immediately they can foil the freshness of subsequent brews by coming unstuck and getting swept out along with fresher grounds, thereby imparting off-flavors and changing the character of your cup. Different designs of grinder typically include different strategies to mitigate both heat and static, with varying success, as described in our reviews.

After the bean’s initial explosion, as heat and static are potentially mounting, the particles that are bigger than your ideal grind size are hopefully further broken down to something close to an optimal average size for the brewing method you choose.

The Importance of Particle-Size Consistency

When you dunk something porous under water, the time it takes for water to soak all the way through it has a lot to do with its size. If it’s bigger, water takes longer to get to its center, and vice versa if it’s smaller. This is true of each individual particle of ground coffee.

Coffee releases different substances into the water at different points in time, and the best way to control that reaction — to get the stuff you want out of coffee and avoid the stuff you don’t — is to brew with coffee particles that are as close as possible to a uniform size and shape.

We know that after a fresh-roasted bean’s interstitial CO2 is nudged out upon initial contact with water (i.e. the bloom phase), the first chemical compounds drawn out of coffee are its acids, oils and more pleasant aromatics such as fruity and flowery notes. Next come the sugars, which are major players in the overall yum factor of your cup, and after that come some bitter and astringent qualities contributed by the actual cellulose stuff of the roasted seed.

An “under-extracted” brew is the result of water passing through too quickly, or perhaps at too low a temperature; it may taste peanutty, shallow or sharp. Similarly, an “over-extracted” brew will be regrettably bitter and astringent due to water mixing with coffee for too long, or at too high a temperature. To craft an ideally delicious balance of acids, fats and sugars, full of complexity and character and relatively free from bitterness, you need to keep the mix of water and grounds within the ideal temperature range (around 200 ºF), and you need to be able to separate the brew from the ground coffee at the right moment.

Better Grinder = More Control

Managing water’s ability to flow through coffee in order to time that separation successfully comes down to a matter of dose and grind. A subtle change to the ratio of water to coffee in your recipe is one way to alter the brew; another way is to grind the coffee either more coarsely or finely in order to adjust its resistance to the water, bearing in mind that these variables are especially closely linked in non-immersion methods such as drip, pourover and espresso.

“Dialing in” these variables takes a bit of trial and error. What’s always true, though, is that better grinders give you more control over your adjustments to the grind, and however it is you like your coffee, the closer the particles in your filter are to the same size, the easier it is to control the flow of water.

Summary grind consistency test results based on laser particle size distribution analysis by Horiba Instruments for the four grinders reviewed for this report. Six samples were tested from each grinder representing various grind settings (coarse, medium, fine) and two degrees of roast (light and medium-dark). Shown here are results for the best-performing sample among the six produced by each grinder. The blue column represents the percentage of the sample reduced to a range of particle sizes we identified as optimal; the red column the percentages produced coarser than optimal, and the green finer than optimal.

For an explanation of how we determined our optimal range of particle sizes click here.

Blades vs. Burrs

A deep and irrevocable line in the sand exists between grinders built around a spinning blade that whacks beans into wild smithereens, and grinders with one spinning and one stationary serrated burr that, by feeding beans through the space between the burrs, are far more likely to reduce whole beans into a tidy pile of more uniform grounds.

Top view of the conical burr mechanism on the Breville Smart Grinder Pro. Photo by Howard Bryman.

Even the worst-performing burr grinder is built with some consideration of the alignment and calibration of the burrs, which are themselves engineered with some consideration of the sharpness and geometry of their teeth. The fast-spinning blade of a blade coffee grinder meanwhile acts more like a hammer than a scalpel. There’s no accounting for how many times a chunk of bean will come into contact with a spinning blade, and every time it does, it only gets clobbered into another unpredictable spray of different-sized particles.

Horiba Help

In the course of evaluating grinders for this report, we reached out to our friends at Horiba Instruments, a Japanese manufacturer of precision instruments for measurement and analysis with offices and labs in various locations internationally. We sent samples of ground coffee to their lab in Irvine, California, for particle size analysis by laser diffraction. Our samples included grounds generated by the four burr grinders we review for this report, as well as two samples ground by blade grinder.

The popular, top-selling spinning blade grinder that we bought brand new for this test predictably produced the wildest variety of particles by far; the furthest from what anyone could call a consistent grind. While not every blade grinder is exactly alike, we find them apparently similar enough to be comfortable in issuing a blanket recommendation against their use for grinding fine coffee. They’re better than buying pre-ground, but if you can manage it, get a burr grinder.

Conical vs. Flat Burrs

The two main shapes of coffee grinder burrs are conical and flat, and the speed at which they spin is determined by the manufacturer based on their size and geometry, the torque of the motor, and other factors. The shape, size and RPM of burrs in a grinder do make a difference in the consistency of the grind, although raw specs alone don’t always tell the whole story.

Conical burrs consist of a central cone-shaped inner burr with teeth on its outer surface that spins within a stationary ring-shaped burr with teeth on the inside. Flat burrs are two discs serrated on facing sides, one spinning and one stationary. While most burr grinders built for home use employ conical burrs, there are also many that go with flat, and while there are potential advantages to each, there are also drawbacks. The average coffee drinker probably won’t notice any difference in the cup, but as manufacturers almost always specify which type they’ve built into their machines, it may help clear up some confusion to know the arguments pro and con for each shape.

Conical burrs, which are cheaper to manufacture, can also more efficiently pull beans into their teeth and process them down to size. Therefore they can produce an effectively consistent grind at lower RPMs, which in turn means the grinder can potentially operate more quietly and produce less heat. Yet the geometry of conical burrs is such that they also tend to produce a bimodal or varying size distribution of grounds.

Flat burrs, on the other hand, have a greater potential to produce a more consistent particle size. Therefore the more obsessive home or cafe baristas seeking the highest level of precision and control might gravitate towards flat burrs. But in reality, only the very best grinders on earth come anywhere close to uniformity. So in machines designed for affordability and casual home use, the difference comes down to something more theoretical than actual, with neither flat nor conical burrs staking claim to superiority by default.

Further Issues and Features

Grind consistency trumps all, but in cases where differences in that category are relatively small, as is the case with three of the grinders we review for this report, there remain other important features that impact a machine’s usefulness and the user’s experience. The smoothness and precision of the grind setting adjustment system is very important, as is the machine’s overall build quality and style. The design of the cup that catches the grounds is important, as is the noise level of the machine when it’s in action.

Most grinders offer a timer that automatically stops the grind after a user-designated period of time has elapsed, while others, including one grinder we review here, the Oxo Conical Burr Grinder With Integrated Scale, weigh the grounds to determine when to stop the process. In either case, we test these functions for their convenience and accuracy. We also take note of a grinder’s hopper capacity, how much coffee builds up on the inside of the machine in normal use (grounds retention), and whether the machine makes it convenient to load and grind just one dose at a time to accommodate those who prefer to store all their beans in air-tight containers and only expose enough for one brew or batch at the moment they make it. And finally, of course, there is the question of whether a grinder’s overall performance and features ultimately merit its price.

All too often, coffee-gear shoppers relegate the grinder to an afterthought. Yet beans have to pass through a grinder before they come anywhere near a brewer. While the way you brew your coffee is largely up to you, it’s your grinder’s job to lay the groundwork, so to speak, for success.

Read Reviews

Baratza Virtuoso+

Breville Smart Grinder Pro

KitchenAid Burr Grinder

Oxo Conical Burr Grinder With Integrated Scale

The post Equipment Report: Four Mid-Range Burr Coffee Grinders Tested & Reviewed appeared first on Coffee Review.

Closeup of coffee grinder burrs. Photo by Howard Bryman.

There were a number of ways we could have approached the evaluation of the four grinders reviewed this month with regard to producing consistent particle size. We could have judged the machines based on the results of brewing with the grounds they put out, or simply through visual inspection of the grounds, or by manually sieving each sample to separate particles by size.

Instead, we decided to send samples of coffee ground by each machine to our friends at the Horiba Instruments particle science lab in Irvine, California, for particle size distribution analysis using laser diffraction equipment, because that appeared to represent the clearest, most objective route to evaluating the grind consistency of the four machines reviewed in this report.

Yet even with that decision made, there remained a number of ways we could have gone about selecting the samples, as well as various ways to approach the resulting data. Here’s what we did, and why.

Settings vs. Brew Methods

First, we decided not to get too bogged down in the particular requirements of specific brew methods, as these can be quite subjective as well as influenced by complex, interacting variables — brew water temperature, darkness of roast, green coffee character, filter material and construction, etc.

We did consult the settings for various brewing methods recommended by the instruction manuals provided by each grinder-maker. We also consulted material on grind size produced by the KRUVE company, which produces a set of sieves for isolating a specific micron range of coffee particles for more refined brewing. (KRUVE recommends you toss out the particles that are too large or too fine for optimal brewing.)

The instructions provided by grinder manufacturers could suggest a starting point for an optimal range of particle size, but they are simply too vague and are often specific to the performance of one machine. If anything, they lean toward recommendations coarser than used by many professionals and aficionados for most brewing methods. This may be because manufacturers predict a coarser setting on their machines will result in fewer fines that clog up a filter or flat-out stop a brewing act; the trade-off being that while a coarser setting may produce a weaker, more listless cup, at least the consumer will get a cup.

The KRUVE recommendations for specific brewing methods, meanwhile, present an impossible ideal for a grinder, veering substantially finer than the norm because the KRUVE system eliminates the very fine particles that other brew guides assume you’re brewing with.

What’s universally true, though, is that a more consistent particle size makes for better brewing, no matter how you brew. So we decided to evaluate grinders based simply on the consistency of the particle size they produce, regardless of the brewing method to which that particle size is best suited.

Choosing the Sample Settings

So without focusing on brewing method, and without straining the grinders to their extremes of either coarseness or fineness, we simply twisted the dials and knobs on each grinder to produce: 1) a sample at one or two notches finer than the coarsest setting on the grinder; 2) a sample one or two notches coarser than the finest setting, and 3) a sample at the center setting. We did this with a light (but not aggressively light) roasted coffee, and a darker roasted coffee (just nudging into second crack but not too far into it). This netted us a total of six grind samples from each machine, ranging from what the grinder setting proposed as fine through medium to coarse, in each case tested at two different roast levels.

Note that we are not proposing that any of these particle size ranges is any more appropriate to any given brewing method than any other range. All we wanted to know was to what degree each grinder generated a consistent grind size at various settings, and to what degree it did not.

“Generally Optimal Range”

This is where our friends at Horiba really helped us out. Horiba provided mountains of data, packaged into a wide variety of stats and calculations. They provided wavy-lined graphs that gave form to the vast range of particle sizes. They identified and charted for each sample the mean, median and mode particle sizes, the standard deviations, coefficients of variation and so on. Particle size distribution analysis has application in a huge variety of fields, from pharmaceuticals to ceramics, construction to food & beverage, and yet no one had ever collaborated with them on a comparative analysis of particles generated by coffee grinding machines amid the quest for a better cup of coffee.

In the end, we had to ask ourselves: At what point does variation in particle size become detrimental to brew quality? Given that absolute uniformity is impossible, just how tight a range do we really need? Even the Specialty Coffee Association’s official Cupping Protocol is stunningly generous in this regard: It only requires that the grind for cupping be of a particle size of which 70-75% passes through the standard #20 mesh sieve (with holes of 841-micron diameter). That’s an acceptance of 25-30% oversized particles with no limit at all for undersized.

The 400-Micron Window

Extraction scientists could perhaps provide an answer to our question, but have not, at least so far as we can tell. We do know that the need for consistent particle size is different for different brew methods; for example, the window for acceptable consistency is much slimmer for espresso than for drip.

We also know that KRUVE established its grind size recommendations based on their own research of coffee extraction times in relation to the water-to-coffee contact time, pressure and temperature. For most methods, the ranges they recommend are in windows 400 microns wide. So, somewhat arbitrarily, we decided to adopt a 400-micron window as the basis for our evaluations.

With Horiba’s help, for each sample we zeroed in on the mode particle size, meaning the particle size that occurs most prevalently within a given sample. We then set boundaries 200 microns larger and 200 microns finer, creating a 400-micron range with the mode size at its center. We then calculated what percentage of each sample landed within that range, and used that key metric to compare grind consistency among samples and grinders.

Particles that measured larger than the 400-micron window we called “coarser.” Finer than that window “finer.” Particles that fell inside the 400-micron window we called “optimal.”

See the graph below for a look at how the four reviewed machines compared when tested using the metric of the 400-micron window.  You can find similar graphs with more detailed results for each grinder in the separate reviews of those grinders: the Baratza Virtuoso+, the Breville Smart Grinder Pro, the KitchenAid Burr Grinder, and the Oxo Conical Burr Grinder With Integrated Scale.

Summary grind consistency test results based on laser particle size distribution analysis by Horiba Instruments for the four grinders reviewed for this report. Six samples were tested from each grinder representing various grind settings (coarse, medium, fine) and two degrees of roast (light and medium-dark). Shown here are results for the best-performing sample among the six produced by each grinder. The blue column represents the percentage of the sample reduced to a range of particle sizes we identified as optimal; the red column the percentages produced coarser than optimal, and the green finer than optimal. For an explanation of how we determined our optimal range of particle sizes see earlier in this article.

A Note of Thanks

We would like to extend a  special thanks to the extraordinarily helpful team we worked with at the Horiba particle size analysis lab in Irvine, California, including Horiba Vice President Mike Pohl, Applications Lab Supervisor Amy Hou, and Particle Science Liaison Julie Chen Nguyen.  Over the course of several weeks, multiple conversations and long email chains, they made some pretty complex concepts much easier to understand and shed light on possible approaches to data they gathered using their Horiba Partica LA-960V2 Laser Scattering Particle Size Distribution Analyzer. Those readers interested in the application of particle science to coffee can learn more about it here. The Horiba team’s flexibility and assistance has been invaluable to our goal to help consumers make better and more informed buying decisions, and we hope to continue this partnership long into the future.

And, special thanks as well to the generous Portland roasters who contributed beans for use in our grinder tests: Coava Coffee Roasters, Nossa Familia Coffee and Torch Coffee Roasters.

The post Minding the Grinds: Our Approach to Sampling and Judging Grind Consistency appeared first on Coffee Review.

Overall Rating: 8.5

Pros: A smart design, simple operation and excellent serviceability make this machine both a reassuring long-term investment and a pleasure to use.

Cons: Beans tend to popcorn around as the hopper empties, and its once class-leading grind consistency has been overtaken by competitors.

MSRP: $269.00

How to Interpret Equipment Ratings    |   Read complete report: Four Mid-Range Burr Coffee Grinders Tested & Reviewed

Reviewer’s Take:

The Baratza Virtuoso+ is an unassuming workhorse you can trust to break your beans with reasonable precision and with refreshing attention to detail and design.

Build, Static and Serviceability. The sharp corners of its sturdy plastic grounds bin make it easier to pour grounds directly into smaller single-cup brewers or filters, an appreciable bump in convenience over the wide-mouthed grounds containers of many other machines, from which users are expected to scoop rather than pour.

The bin also nests snugly and completely enough into the body of the grinder beneath the output chute to keep any swirling bit of static-charged coffee neatly contained. No other machine in our report lineup controlled staticky bits as effectively. The nonessential but fun LED that illuminates the pile of ground coffee as it accumulates is also a nice touch.

The Virtuoso+’s smoke-tinted plastic hopper and mostly plastic exterior may not be to everyone’s liking, yet behind its modest facade hides an internal design that’s as efficient as it is impressively user-serviceable. The grinder’s efficiency is confirmed by exceedingly low grinds retention. The short grind path from the hopper through to the bin and the compact design of the burr chamber nets a grounds retention of only 1.5 grams when emptied for a cleaning — far less than average.

Its excellent serviceability is confirmed by its easy disassembly, the comprehensive selection of spare parts for sale on the company’s website, the many step-by-step repair guides also available online, and Baratza’s reputation for excellent customer service.

Particle-Size Consistency. Baratza introduced the original design of the Virtuoso in 2005, offering grind consistency that at that time was significantly ahead of the competition. Because Baratza machines are built so solidly and are so easy to repair and maintain, the Virtuoso’s reputation continued to grow, even as other manufacturers started catching up in terms of burr and motor quality, and therefore in grind consistency.

Today the Virtuoso+ remains a solid performer in regard to grind, although our tests revealed that in relative terms, it’s no longer leading the pack. Interpreting the laser particle analysis data provided by our friends at Horiba Instruments, we found that the Virtuoso+ came in a very close third in particle-size consistency among the four machines we tested for this report, about 6% less consistent than the top performer, the Breville Smart Grinder Pro. For detailed test results, see the bar chart at the end of this review.

Yet with results from three different grinders in the same class coming within surprisingly close range of one another, what the particle size analysis also revealed is the importance of details beyond grind consistency alone that point to a product worth owning, and the promise of a quality experience in the kitchen.

The Virtuoso+’s low grinds retention and well-designed bin are examples of such details, as are the generous and smooth forty clicks of adjustability for finding the sweet spot in an immersion or drip brew. For dialing in a finicky espresso, these clicks are relatively broad and can be limiting, but the Virtuoso+ is certainly capable of grinding finely and consistently enough to at least get you started down the espresso rabbit hole, if that’s where you’re headed.

Popcorning, Single-Dose Grinding, and Noise. Our only other real complaint regards single-dose grinding, which we recognize is a task for which the Virtuoso+ is not specifically designed. Nevertheless, its low grounds retention, respectable grind consistency and accessible, no-frills approach make the Virtuoso+ an attractive choice for aficionados who enjoy switching among a variety of coffees frequently enough to want to grind only a single dose of beans at a time.

The problem is that the Virtuoso+’s burrs and hopper together allow the final beans of a dose to bounce or “popcorn” around for some seconds before finally feeding down into the burrs. A few pulses at the end of a dose are sometimes needed to snag those final bouncy stragglers, which stretches out the grind time as well as the duration of the 90-95dB racket the machine makes in the morning (no louder than average, but still loud enough to penetrate a later sleeper’s last wisp of dream).

The Bottom Line. Judged by grind consistency alone, the Baratza Virtuoso+ may no longer be the superstar it once was, yet it remains one of the better options in its class, designed and engineered by a small, Bellevue, Washington-based company that makes nothing but coffee grinders and stands by its products. This single-minded pursuit of quality in one particular species of appliance is unique among the manufacturers whose products we’ve reviewed for this report, a dedication that radiates beyond the respectable grind consistency to other thoughtful features, making it an easy machine to recommend without hesitation.

Key Specifications:

Hopper Capacity: 8 ounces
Dimensions: H 13.8″, W 4.7″, x D 6.3″
Weight: 8 pounds
Burrs: 40mm stainless steel conical
Burr Speed: 550 RPM
Grind Settings: 40
MSRP: $269.00

Manufacturer website: Baratza.com

Grind consistency test results for the Baratza Virtuoso+ grinder based on laser particle size distribution analysis by Horiba Instruments. Six samples were tested from each grinder representing various grind settings (coarse, medium, fine) and two degrees of roast (light and medium-dark). Like other grinders we tested, the Virtuoso+ was at its best producing fine grinds. For an explanation of how we determined our optimal range of particle sizes click here.

The post Equipment Review: Baratza Virtuoso+ Coffee Grinder appeared first on Coffee Review.