29 Aug 2025
A lot's changed in three-and-a-half weeks in the coffee world.
Since I last posted about making coffee, I got a bunch of advice on stuff to do and learned better techniques. I’m still not at Full Coffee Making Potential, but compared to a few weeks ago I’m now in a much better position for a morning cup of joe.
One of the tips I got was getting a better grinder. I picked up an electric grinder that was pretty good for what it was, but still hit a limit of quality for the grounds. For pour-over, you want to avoid getting fine grounds since those’ll give off a bitter taste. The more coarse the grounds, the more pleasant a taste you get with a greatly reduced amount of bitterness.
The issue with the electric grinder is that it doens’t have grain control. It has a large thick metal blade with some bends on it that spins around and mashes everything at one speed. You can get an overall coarser grind if you don’t grind for as long, but due to the indiscriminate mashing of the thick metal blade, you’ll still end up with fine particulates. When I tried coarser grinds with the electric grinder, even though they had bitterness they still tasted way better than the longer grinds. I had to pick up a better grinder.
More expensive coffee grinders are machined to ensure that when coffee beans are ground in them, the grounds exit in a uniform size without being too fine or too coarse. These also cost a couple hundred dollars. What I picked up was a better budget option, the $55 Hario “Mini-Slim Pro” Ceramic Coffee Mill. This thing uses ceramic burrs on a central cone that can be spaced closer or further from the outer walls. Turning the crank catches the coffee beans between the burrs and the outer wall to be ground down, but don’t get ground into finer particulates than that spacing. Now we’re getting some uniform grounds.
I spaced the grinder out enough so the grounds were a bit coarse, poured in about two cups worth of beans, then started grinding at it. The grind took a minute or two to get the bean hopper clear, much longer than the 5-10 seconds of the electric grinder. I heated up some water, got the V60 and filter prepped, then poured myself a cup. Phenomenal. It’s one of the first cups I’ve brewed that isn’t immediately bitter. I’m getting loads more flavor on an increase in grind quality alone! I’m anticipating this thing being a pain in the ass to clean, but for a cup of coffee that isn’t bitter it’s worth it.
My current kettle is a Chefman that holds like one and a half liters or something. It’s great at its job of heating up a bunch of water. It also has the issue of not having a gooseneck spout. If it did, I would be able to pour a calmer, more controlled stream of water onto the grounds. With the Chefman electric kettle, there is no long spout that restricts flow. You have an immediate open spout at the top. That lets the whole mass of water in the kettle push hard against the exiting stream, causing more agitation in the grounds.
Speaking of agitation, that’s another source of bitterness! I was trying to do a swirl to get the grounds to flatten out, but doing that introduces agitation that creates more fine particulates which increase that bitter taste. I only needed to do that though because I don’t have fine control over the exit flow of the water from the Chefman kettle. With a gooseneck kettle, I’ll be able to pour water on the grounds without them moving around everywhere and get an even smoother cup of coffee.
I’m split on whether I want to dunk a lot into an Electric gooseneck kettle, or buy a standard metal one and use the Chefman to refill that when needed. I may side with the cheaper option since I don’t think I want two electric kettles on my counter, but I am tempted by those fancy electric gooseneck kettles where you can dial in a temperature. I’ll be eyeballing them for a while.
I’ve long since finished those first two bags of bags of coffee, the Ladro blend from Caffe Ladro and a Breakfast blend from PCC. Now I’ve got a couple bags! The first new one was a bag of Dunkin’ whole-bean which is hitting the Dunkin’ Donuts nostalgia receptors (there’s none around here), but I don’t need to have one of these on hand all the time. I picked up a second bag of the Ladro blend because I really enjoy the flavor of it and aroma of it. It was also the test cup for the new grinder!
Waiting in the wings for one of those bags to expire is an unopened bag from Mercurys Coffee Co. called Rising. Mercurys is another local coffee chain and I stop by there enough that I could use a bag at home. I’m excited to find out how it is once I run out of one of the other bags (very likely the Dunkin’ first). I’m not going to have more than one unopened bag waiting though, I don’t have the room and I want the roasts to be fairly fresh; Ladro nicely enough labels the date they were roasted. Although, if (when) coffee prices spike, I probably should have an extra bag or two to wait out some of the storm.
I’ve still got more to go on my coffee journey, but I am glad I’m learning more and getting tangible results out of that learning. One day, I’ll have the perfect cup of coffee on-hand every morning.
