My New Daily Grind

I've been grinding my own coffee beans for my morning cuppa this week. I'd been meaning to try it since I read an article on coffee freshness a while back.

The fresher the coffee, the more flavour it has. Coffee loses freshness in an increasingly steep slope. Apparently it goes like this. Unroasted coffee beans can be kept for a year or two and stay fresh. Once roasted, beans lose most freshness in about two weeks. Once ground, most of the freshness is lost within a few hours. If you can smell the coffee flavour, then it's no longer in the bean.

So I did some online research into coffee grinders. Blade grinders, while less expensive, can have enough friction to give beans a burnt taste. Conical burr grinders grind coffee between two gearlike plates with less friction. By adjusting the spacing between the plates, you can also control the fineness of the grind; with a blade grinder, to get a finer grind, you just grind longer.

I was intruiged by the idea of a hand-powered grinder: it would be quieter and of course eco-friendly. I found that a coffee shop called The Elysian Room appears to the the only Vancouver supplier of Zassenhaus hand grinders. So last week I got one, and it looks like this:



It's a nice piece of kit. It's hand-made in Germany. The conical burr mechanism of hardened steel is warranted for 25 years. It won't need sharpening or servicing until long after I'm dead. There's only one adjustment, for grind coarseness, and it's integrated into the axle instead of sticking out somewhere else. It's a nicely engineered tool, very good at what it does, with no extra bits. Something that's a pleasure to use, like our Dyson vacuum cleaner or Apple iMac and iPod. I could pass it on to Sarah, and she could pass it on.

So how much better is my morning cup? Not a night-and-day difference, but much tastier. I did take a few days to make adjustments: at first I was grinding too finely, which means the grounds are not trapped by the plunger's screen of our French press. I'm also learning not to let it steep too long to avoid bitterness.

I'm also ashamed to realise that I've spent most of my adult life in the Pacific Northwest, where coffee is worshipped, and have only just now begun handling beans. To see how beans shatter, see what they look like inside, and to chew one.

I'm looking forward to trying coffees I'm familiar with, like the local Caffè Artigiano, and Portland's Stumptown, and tasting them all over again.

And I could of course spend tons more money further improving the taste: an espresso maker, a reverse osmosis water filter. But I won't be. I figure I'm at the 80/20 point, that the biggest possible difference has been made. I'm sure I've got further tuning to do, and lots of coffee to enjoy.