Coffee Grinders Maintenance Check

Need help for your coffee grinders service and repair? At KoffeeOne, we can give you advice / assistance on these. The two important requirements for good quality espresso are soft, clean water and a good quality grinder. Unfortunately, these are often neglected resulting to a not so good tasting coffee. The coffee making process essentially entails passing water through ground coffee and therefore close attention should be given to these two items. Regardless of how expensive your espresso machine is using stale or bad tasting water or poorly ground coffee will result in poor tasting coffee.

A good quality grinder will produce consistently fine grind. Without this consistency even the most expensive coffee machine will not be able to make a good cup of coffee. There are several high quality home and commercial grinders that are capable of delivering high quality and consistent grinds.

It is important to note that even after adjusting your grinder to produce grinds that suit your brewing method, those settings will need to be changed from time to time. This is because factors such as humidity affect your espresso shot time. When the humidity is high, it will require a fine grind coffee and when it is low you will require a slightly coarse grind to achieve great tasting coffee. This will therefore mean that you will need to keep adjusting your grinder regularly.

The grinder burrs which are responsible for grinding the coffee beans do wear out. To maintain a consistent grind therefore requires that you adjust the burr settings regularly. Depending on the surface area, shape and material used to make the burrs; they will grind about 600 to 3000 pounds of coffee beans and then require a replacement.

Here are some of the recommended grinder guidelines from Koffeeone:

Do not leave coffee beans in the coffee hopper for several hours or overnight especially for home machines. This will adversely affect the taste of your coffee and the oil from the beans will coat the burrs and the inside of the hopper reducing the grind quality produced by the burrs.

Disassemble the coffee hopper, top burr and adjustment ring at least weekly for commercial grinders. Wipe any bean oil from the hopper and clean the burrs including the area around the bottom bar. (Do not use a scratch pad as it will damage the hopper permanently).

Thoroughly clean the burrs before switching to a different bean type. Ensure you remove all bean grinds of the previous grind from the bean chute (this is the area below the burrs to where the grinds emerge). This will make it easier to evaluate a new roast.

When cleaning the burrs, test whether the burrs are sharp by lightly running your thumb against the sharp edges. If they are sharp they will grab your thumb and if dull they will feel smooth.

Observe your coffee grinds regularly for consistency. Consistent grinds will mean the burrs are sharp and inconsistent grinds means the burrs are dull. Also ensure that the grinds do not have a burnt smell.

When replacing the burrs, do it in pairs so that you maintain grind consistency.

If at any time you use flavoured beans, do a thorough grinder cleaning to remove the flavour oils otherwise your coffee will taste strange. To achieve the best flavour, use the ground coffee within ten minutes of grinding.

For best results call Koffeeone at 02 9818 4677.