I’ve been using my grinder (Baratza maestro plus) for ten years now, and I got it used. I’ve replaced some parts (e.g., burrs), but I’m wondering if it’s finally time to let it go. It seems like it’s not grinding as consistently as it once was, but I’m thinking it would be good to quantify it.
I’ve seen sieves used to classify ground coffee, specifically, the brand Kruve seems to be a nice implementation. It’s $90 for the cheapest version, though, which doesn’t quite seem worth it to me. It seems like it’d be better to just spend the money going towards a new grinder, but I figured it would be good to ask for anyone’s experience here.
You can use a methodology from soil testing for this that doesn’t require extra gear. Sieves (like with soil texturing) will give you a faster more accurate answer. Here it is:
Get a narrow glass jar. Fill it a little way with ground coffee. Fill with water. Shake. Set on shelf and wait a few hours up to a day.
The larger pieces will settle first and the finer settle last. You can see the sorting of them through the glass. If you use consistent amounts of coffee and the same container, you can measure depth of layers. I.e. this grinder makes .5cm of fines to 3cm of ideal to .2cm of too large.
Bonus is you can use this method for making cold brew, so you don’t waste the coffee or water.
https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/soil-texture-analysis-the-jar-test/ a better description and photos
Ooh, that’s a good idea. I’ve seen that used to get clay from soil. Part of why I think my grinder has gotten a little inconsistent is that I’ve noticed the bed of grounds after making a pourover appears to be a little more “silty” than it used to.
I even have a skinny graduated cylinder that would make it easy.
That would perfect for sure! It pays to keep lab equipment around some times :)
In school, I had to buy an organic chemistry set (separatory funnels, condensers, round flasks, etc.), and then sell it back to the campus bookstore at the end of the semester. Too many people broke pieces that the school was losing money on just doing rentals or having a deposit. The amount of money I got back at the end of the year was really small, though, compared with the worth of the set. Like with textbooks, I guess they just assumed no one would want it afterwards, so they’d give it up for cheap.
To this day, I still regret selling all that equipment back.