Coffee grinders

I scoffed, I'll confess, when I read that coffee aficionados nowadays insist on having a burr grinder to prepare acceptable coffee, taking it as a simple ratcheting up of the fetishism that overtakes so much in our pursuit of food today.

However, as I read more, I began to wonder if there was something to it. The argument is that a blade grinder, like my trusty old Krups, chops and chops at the beans over and over again, resulting in uneven chunks and, when continued for enough time, a slight burn taste as the machine heats up. A burr grinder, by contrast, touches the bean just once, theoretically grinding it evenly as it passes through. The speed of passage governs whether it is a fine or coarse grind.

But when I saw the large, clunky grinders at Williams Sonoma I thought I'd never get one because they take up too much room. At Sur la Table, however, they had the Capresso Infinity grinder, which is much more compact. Two different salespeople there on separate visits claimed they had that grinder and used it and loved it. The coffee really is better, they insisted. It was an Amazon reviewer who finally tipped the scale, though, because he said he had tried a different coffee maker (check), a different filter (check), filtered water (check), but it was finally the burr grinder that made the difference in getting a really good cup of coffee.

So I took the plunge, and yes, the coffee does indeed have a cleaner, brighter, fuller taste. In fact, it's pretty amazing how much better it tastes. The new grinder fits right in the spot where the old one was and is in fact much easier and neater to use. At this point, I'm totally happy with it.