8 GRINDING IT
Keeping it fresh
Choosing the right grinder and grind
Every step of transforming green coffee into hot, brewed coffee makes the flavor essence of the bean more vulnerable to destruction. Green coffees keep for years, with only a slow, subtle change in flavor. But roasted coffees begin to lose flavor after a week, ground coffee an hour after grinding, and brewed coffee in minutes.
Traditional Arab, Ethiopian, and Eritrean cultures still have the best solution: roast, grind, brew, and drink the coffee all in the same sitting. The process takes close to an hour, however, so I do not expect it will catch on with urban professionals. Roasting your own coffee every three or four days is an excellent compromise, but most of us are too busy to take that step either and prefer to let others do the roasting for us.
KEEPING IT FRESH
Roasted whole coffee beans keep fairly well. The bean itself is a protective package, albeit a fragile one. Stored in a dry, airtight container to prevent contamination or contact with moisture, roasted whole-bean coffee holds its flavor and aroma for about a week. After two weeks, it still tastes reasonably fresh, but the aroma begins to slip; after three, the flavor starts to go as well. Whole-bean coffee kept past a month, though still drinkable, will strike the palate as lifeless and dead.
But if the natural packaging of the bean is broken—that is, if the coffee is ground—it goes stale in a few hours. The delicate oils are exposed and immediately begin evaporating. An airtight container helps, but not much. The oxygen and moisture shut inside with the broken coffee destroy the delicate oils, even if you never open the container again.
Canning coffee is one of the useless gestures typical of convenience foods. Essentially, the natural coffee package, the bean, is broken down and replaced with an inefficient, artificial package, the can. Furthermore, canned coffee is not only preground, but prestaled. Freshly roasted and ground coffee releases carbon dioxide gas. If the coffee were put in the cans fresh, the gas would swell even the strongest can and turn it into an egg-shaped time bomb. Various technological solutions have been found for this problem, but none is conducive to ensuring richly flavored coffee. When consumers break open the artificial package, they may find a coffee that is relatively fresh—but not for long. Since the small natural packages that make up a pound of ground coffee have already been broken, the oxygen that enters the can every time you peel off the plastic lid rapidly completes the job the canning process started.
So the easiest and most effective approach is to break down the beans as close as possible to the moment you want to use them—in other words, grind your coffee just before you brew it. Grinding coffee fresh takes very little time. Grinders are inexpensive and range from efficient electrics to picturesque replicas of old hand grinders. Grinding coffee fresh is the single best thing that you can do to improve the quality of your coffee.
STORING COFFEE
The ideal coffee routine for the urban home would be as follows: Buy the coffee as whole beans. Put the beans in an airtight container in a cool, dark place and take out only as much as you want to grind and brew immediately. Airtight means airtight: no recycled coffee cans or cottage cheese cartons with plastic lids. Rather, a solid glass jar with a rubber gasket inside the cap that gives a good seal.
Putting beans in the refrigerator is downright foolish, even if you use an airtight container. Moisture is the enemy of roasted coffee. The flavor “oils” in roasted coffee are not oils, but very delicate, volatile, water-soluble substances that moisture immediately dilutes and odors taint. Recall that refrigerators tend to be both moist and full of odors.
Freezing, however, is an excellent way to preserve whole-bean coffee if you do not intend to drink it within a week. Seal the beans in a freezer bag, put the bag in a part of the freezer that does not lose temperature every time you open the door, and remove only as many beans as you intend to consume in a day, returning the rest to the freezer. Thaw the liberated beans before grinding and brewing.
GRINDING YOUR OWN
Despite the pretensions of modern technology, there are still only four ways to grind coffee. The oldest is the mortar and pestle. The next oldest is the millstone, updated to steel burrs or corrugated plates. The next is the roller mill, which is used only in giant commercial grinders. The most recent is the electric blade grinder, which works on the same principle as an electric blender.
Grinders Using Steel Plates or Burrs
The earliest coffee drinkers broke up their coffee beans with a mortar and pestle, but very early in its history coffee began to be ground between the same millstones that the early peoples of the Middle East used to reduce grain to flour. Later, the Turkish-style coffee grinder evolved, a portable, specialized device similar in size and function to the contemporary pepper mill. Small, corrugated metal plates replaced the large millstones, creating a grinder technology that has never been improved upon. Many variations have been developed, including hitching the plates to an electric motor, but the principle remains the same.
The heart of the grinder consists of either two little corrugated metal disks or a corrugated metal cone that fits inside a second, hollow, corrugated cone. One element is stationary and the other is rotated by a handle or motor. The coffee is fed, a bean or two at a time, between the corrugated disks, where it is crushed until it drops out of the bottom of the grinder. This solution has never been improved upon because the grind is uniform and adjusting the space between the plates regulates the fineness of the grind accurately and consistently.
Hand Burr Grinders. The cheapest burr grinders are the wooden, hand-held models. The beans are fed through a little door in the top of the box, and the ground coffee falls into a drawer at the bottom. These grinders are adjustable for any except the finest grind. Most look like something out of a Dutch genre painting but are manufactured everywhere from Japan to New Jersey, and range in price from $10 to as much as $60. For a hand grinder that works well, however, you probably need to pay $40 to $50 for one of the Zassenhaus line of grinders. They impose a clean, northern European look on the box grinder and are technically excellent.
The box grinder presents several problems: The cheaper versions harbor small, inefficient burrs. In even the good ones, the crank may be too short for good leverage. Worst of all, the grinder tends to slide around on the table. One of the Zassenhaus designs solves this problem by introducing small indentations in opposite sides of the grinder, thus permitting you to sit and hold the grinder between your knees as you crank.
Hand grinders that can be mounted on the table or wall solve most of the problems posed by smaller, hand-held box grinders. They can be screwed down, have longer handles, and usually produce more uniform grinds because the grinding plates are larger. The best is a wonderful, early industrial-age-looking, cast-iron grinder available through Fante’s in Philadelphia (around $60; see Sending for It).
Electric Burr Grinders. Here a small but noisy electric motor powers the burrs or steel plates. The big grinders in grocery and coffee stores work on this principle, as do the specialized espresso grinders in caffès.
Small household versions of these large grinders are produced by several manufacturers. The less expensive models by Braun, Capresso, Bunn, and others ($40 to $60) work well with all brewing devices except espresso brewers that use a pump or piston to push the hot water through the coffee. Pump and piston espresso machines (Categories 3 and 4 require a more expensive, specialized espresso grinder ($120 to $300) that allows you to modulate the fineness of the grind to match the pressure exerted by the brewing water.
All burr grinders, regardless of size and price, work approximately the same way. A receptacle at the top of the grinder stores a supply of beans. When you activate a timer, beans feed automatically, a few at a time, through the burrs, which spray the ground coffee into a removable receptacle at the bottom front of the appliance. The timer shuts the grinder off automatically. These machines produce a more consistent grind than the cheaper electric blade grinders; they usually do not have to be fussed over while they grind, and they definitely do not need to be cranked by hand. You must be prepared, however, to clean the aperture for the ground coffee after every third or fourth use (some coffee stores sell a brush for this purpose; a small, still paintbrush works fine), and periodically to open the grinder and clean the burrs. If you grind oily, dark roasts, you may find that a brush is not enough for cleaning your grinder; you may have to literally carve the caked coffee from parts of your grinder when you carry out a major cleaning. Finally, burr grinders cannot be used successfully with flavored coffees. The flavoring liquids absorbed in the beans both gum up the burrs and taint subsequent batches of nonflavored coffees.
The warning signs that a small burr grinder needs cleaning are simple. If the coffee fails to come out or the motor seems to be working too hard, you need to clean the aperture where the ground coffee sprays out. If the coffee beans refuse to feed smoothly, you need to run the grinder empty on the coarsest setting or unscrew the top (see the instructions that come with your grinder) and do a thorough cleaning of the burrs and feed channel.
Specialized Espresso Grinders. The ultimate benefit of the electric burr grinder can be gained only by spending $100 to $300 on one of the large machines intended for use with home espresso machines. For committed espresso fanatics and owners of home pump or piston machines, these sturdy, reliable grinders are a necessity. For the general coffee enthusiast, they can grind coffee for all brewing needs. The least expensive is the Saeco MC 2002. The heavier home espresso grinders from Rancilio, Gaggia, and other Italian manufacturers all cost $200 or more. All of the machines I have tried in this class are strong, well-made appliances. I have used the same Saeco MC 2002 daily for years without problem.
Electric Blade Grinders
The third and most recent development in coffee grinding is original to the age of electricity. Two steel blades powered by a small electric motor whirl at extremely high speed at the bottom of a cuplike receptacle and knock the coffee beans to pieces. With the burr method the fineness of the grind is controlled by the distance between the burrs, whereas with the blade method fineness is controlled by the length of time you let the blades whang away at the coffee. This makes the whole process a little hit and miss, unless you are so systematic you start timing the process.
Top, electric burr grinder. Middle, hand box grinder. Bottom, electric blade grinder.
If you aim for a fine grind with blade designs, grind in spurts of a few seconds each. It also helps to bounce the bottom of the grinder gently on the counter between spurts to tumble the partly ground coffee back down around the blades.
Blade Grinder Minuses. The disadvantages of blade grinders? Above all, they grind less consistently and predictably than do burr grinders. Even the less expensive burr grinders hold their setting well and give you the same grind day after day. Only the most attentive and compulsive among us are capable of achieving the same consistency with a blade grinder. For brewing methods using paper filters, minor inconsistencies in grind do not matter much. For plunger-style brewing, drip-brewing without filters, open-pot brewing, and espresso, all of which demand a more consistent grind for success, anyone who has taken the trouble to read this far will probably want the more predictable results obtainable either from the best hand grinders, like the Zassenhaus coffee grinders, or from a good electric burr mill, like the Capresso, Braun, Bunn, or Pavoni. Committed enthusiasts will want to go a step further and purchase one of the specialized $100 to $300 espresso grinders extolled earlier.
Blade grinders also cannot produce the extremely fine, powdery grind required for Turkish- or Middle Eastern-style coffee, for which, again, you need either a good hand grinder, such as the Zassenhaus, or one of the specialized “Turkish” hand grinders that look like large pepper mills. The best electric espresso grinders usually work for Middle Eastern coffee as well.
Another minor drawback to the blade grinder is the difficulty presented in getting the coffee out from under the little blades and into a brewer. You face the same problem when you clean the grinder.
Blade Grinder Pluses. The advantages of blade grinders are more succinctly stated: they are cheap, grind quickly, and don’t take up much space in the kitchen. You also can use them to pulverize nuts and similar cooking ingredients, and, unlike burr grinders, they can be used with flavored coffees. Blade grinder features: replaceable blades (worthwhile), and a transparent top with a magnifying feature to help you see the grind (in my experience, useless).
HOW FINE THE GRIND
In general, grind coffee as fine as you can without clogging the holes of the brewer or turning the coffee to mud. The finer the grind, the more contact there will be between coffee and hot water, and the faster and more thoroughly the essential oils will be released, without activating harsher, less-soluble chemicals.
On the other hand, you do not want to grind your coffee to a powder because completely pulverizing it destroys the essential oil, which is partially vaporized by the heat and friction of the grinding process. Nor do you want to clog the holes in a coffee maker or filter, or fill your cup with sediment.
Some brewing methods have special requirements. Both Middle Eastern coffee (powdery grind) and espresso (extra fine grind) are special cases, as are open-pot (medium grind) and French press or plunger-pot coffee (coarse to medium grind). See the sections on these brewing methods in Chapters 9 and 11.