Should You Use The Krups Burr Grinder on Your Precious Coffee Beans?

Author's Rating:

Pros: inexpensive, replaceable, fine control settings, reasonably quiet

Cons: creates more coffee dust than I'd like

The Bottom Line: 
If your coffee snobbery hasn't yet grown to immense proportions, until it does this low-end Krups burr grinder will suit your needs.

Author's Review
Short answer: a qualified Yes. Qualified, because if you have more money to spend on your coffee, there are much better options, but definitely, spend the money for a burr grinder, not a blade grinder.

But this is Epinions, and a longer answer lets me explain, so away we go!

Do it right, from the beginning.

If you enjoy coffee not just for its caffeine, but also for its aroma and flavor, then you've undoubtedly moved on from store-bought big-brand ground coffee, and from dumping sweetener and milk/cream/creamer into that cup of joe. And even if you don't do it yourself, you probably know that the best cup of coffee is brewed from freshly-ground beans.

Good coffee deserves proper care. Sure, you can buy good coffee at a gourmet store -- or better, at a storefront dedicated to sourcing and even roasting their own beans -- but if the store grinds it for you, it's got a shelf life measured in days before it starts going south. Storing your beans whole, in an airtight bag, and grinding what you need just before brewing ensures you're getting the best possible cup of coffee for your preferred brew method.

Having received nothing electric this holiday season, I remedied the situation by convincing myself I needed to start grinding my own coffee beans again. However, my coffee maker, while it does a better job than most basic drip coffee appliances, is not a top-drawer coffeemaker, and I can't quite convince myself to drop serious coin on one. Therefore, I went with an inexpensive burr grinder. For now.

Enter the Krups line, pretty well-known for making appliances that last without costing enormous sums of money. I still have a Krups espresso/capuccino maker that I received for my college graduation, that's still in great shape. Mom has a Krups pizzelle (cannoli shell) maker over a decade old that still works beautifully. With that kind of empirical data in-hand, I chose the GVX2-12 burr grinder.

Does it really improve the coffee?

The proof is in the cup, of course. All the blather in the world about "do This, not That" you'll find online and from friends and well-meaning strangers is meaningless if it doesn't result in a better experience.

Stores certainly have good grinders, much better than this little Krups, but they're used for all different types of coffee (unflavored in one, flavored in another usually, at least) and of course, the whole pound or half-pound you purchase is ground at once, leading to some unwanted aging at home as you work through the coffee. So for that reason, I'm pleased as punch with having this little appliance on the counter now.

And so? There's a distinct difference in what I wound up with in the cup. I noticed it on even my first pot with the Krups grinder. Coffee just tastes fuller, rounder, and has not a trace of bitterness. I've had a French roast and a regular African medium-roast coffee bean through the Krups so far, just to try a little variety. The African beans I am using are even a couple of months old. My typical Ethiopian ground-at-the-store, sit-in-the-cabinet coffee has a little too much bitterness halfway through the pound, (though it's leagues better than your average Maxwell House or Folgers cup). This whole-bean, ground-by-Krups version, even with older beans, is noticeably tastier and fuller, and compares with the first pot or two from freshly-ground beans I'm used to.

So, the specs, and what's good and bad about those.

The Krups GX2-12 -- the 12 is the number of cups it will grind for, max, stands about 10 1/4 inches tall, and takes up a footprint 5 1/2 inches deep, 4 1/2 inches wide. This was, by far, the smallest burr grinder I found in my Internet wanderings in this price range. Since I won't be grinding very much coffee at once - no more than a pot's worth at a time - the quantity grindable at any given time was not going to be a dealbreaker; the Krups will grind well more than enough automatically, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Grind controls. On the left side of the unit, one may choose the coarseness of the grind. If you're using a French press, the coarse grind is far preferable, while a Chemex could use something fairly coarse as well; espresso makers, with a better containment of the grounds, can use the fine setting, and the bog-standard drip coffeemakers are suited for something in between. One thing I appreciate about this dial: it offers good resistance as it clicks at each of the 17 settings around the dial, as the top burr is locked down at smaller or larger clearances with respect to the bottom burr. Feedback rocks.

I've found, through several training runs, that the medium grind comes out a little finer than store grinders, though not as fine as my old, old blade grinder. It's not (yet) created silt in my coffee, as it's fairly decent at not creating that useless coffee "dust". At the finest setting, I get a fair bit of that, however. The coarsest setting created recognizable little chunks of coffee in amongst the more pulverized stuff, so I can imagine it's a useful setting for a coffeemaker with a fairly coarse filtration system.

In front, integrated with the on/off switch, one chooses the number of cups of coffee, from two to twelve, this grind run is intended to brew. Unlike the side dial, this one is a little less discrete, and sort of flutters along the dial. If it's that important to you, though, you can stop directly on each whole number.

This setting, however, takes practice to find the right number of cups for your coffee brewing method. I've found that, at 1/4 ounce of coffee beans ground per "cup", the Krups grinds a little too much for my tastes at the medium setting - if a quarter-ounce is about half a tablespoon, I'm happier with about a teaspoon. So for a full twelve-cup coffee-brewing run, I don't set the grinder for twelve cups, I set it for eight, and I get closer to what I want. Alternatively, I could probably just opt for a coarser grind, which would extract less coffee goodness per unit volume, but since the filter is decent on the coffeemaker, that would be a waste of good coffee.

The burr hopper easily holds enough beans for a full coarse run; there's a maximum fill line to be mindful of, as stressing the burr will only result in overheating and damaging of the beans and probably the burr to boot.

Noise. Surprisingly, it's not as loud as I expected. Oh, you can't have a conversation with someone in the next room while standing next to the thing merrily whining and grinding away, but it's not annoying enough to wake someone else up through a closed door twenty feet distant. I can hear it in that situation, but that noise level is no worse than running the dishwasher, or what I've experienced in friends' homes where their Machine of Happiness (a $750 Saeco, for instance) grinds the beans to be used immediately to brew you a cup. It's about as loud as the Keurig, that I try to avoid using, when it's starting up or finished with a cup. High marks for being quieter than I expected, but it's not going to compare to most upscale burr grinders.

Other basic specs. The polycarbonate bin and lid where the ground coffee ends up is plenty big for about a quarter-pound of it, and while the static causing coffee cling is not your friend, it's really no better or worse than any other bin, from what I've been reading about grinders. A few taps and most of the usable coffee is out. A quick rinse with hot water, and it air-dries with no real mess. Compare this with cheaper blade grinders: it's cleaner -- and safer, considering that blade is awfully sharp.

The top burr unlocks and rinses sort-of clean (it could use a little more effort on my part), while the bottom burr is going to be an issue in terms of cleaning. The manual recommends a damp cloth and air-drying, but that really isn't going to completely clean it. I suggest running some beans you won't use to brew, through the unit from time to time to help clear out any stale grounds stuck in there, though honestly, the amount left behind each time I grind isn't particularly threatening.

The on-off switch will automatically stop at the prescribed number of cups ground, which I've tested repeatedly with too much bean and too little bean. It stops as expected, though if you wanted more than you asked for, the machine will certainly let you continue grinding. Then it's a matter of (unplugging, and) dumping the un-ground beans back into their original receptacle, or just leave them for the next day, as the top hopper is fairly airtight.

Why, then, burr grinding and not that blade grinder?

The Krups GVX2 line of burr grinders, as well as pretty much every other burr grinder in existence, grind coffee beans at higher level of quality to any electric blade grinder for a couple of basic reasons.

First, the burr minimizes contact between cutting surface and bean, which leads to less friction heat. Blade grinders (which are fine for spices and so forth, incidentally) generate many, many violent contacts with the beans, and the friction heats the beans and causes the bean's oils to also heat up and degrade; this causes the coffee you brew to be bitter and harsh. By contrast, the burr grinder generally grinds the bean very quickly, breaking it down to the desired size and dumping it into the bin, resulting in less contact friction and less deterioration of your beautiful beans.

Second, setting the coarseness in a burr grinder is, well, possible. It's just not really controllable with a blade, short of minimizing the amount of time you slice up the coffee beans. Stopping short, however, typically results in a wide assortment of sizes, so one winds up with some muck in the cup, and an more inconsistent and probably weaker brew.

It's not like it's THAT expensive, anyway.

The Krups GVX2-12 is available in all-black, and black with a silver front panel and dials. While all-black runs $50, the stainless coloration will generate another $10 in revenue for Krups and the store where you buy yours.

If you drink a lot of coffee, however, it amortizes fairly well. I figure I go through fifteen pounds of coffee at home a year. If this level of quality stays consistent, that first year I'll be paying an extra $4 per pound of coffee, or about 40-50 cents per pot, if the unit lasts only a year. I find this eminently cost-effective for an improved pot of coffee, but of course I'm expecting it to last longer than its year warranty.

In a nutshell

The Krups GVX2 is one of the better purchases I managed to make while attempting to stimulate the economy. It wasn't on sale, like a lot of appliances around Christmastime, but the price was low enough that, should it die earlier than I expect, it's not going to break the bank. Well-regarded burr grinders tend to retail well over $100, so I figured if this would be my first foray into grinding at home, I should maybe take it easy. Also, I didn't want to take up lots of counter space, given the lack of that in this apartment.

I'd say the Krups has been a definite win so far. It makes for a better cup of coffee (even using the Keurig reusable filter in that coffeemaker), it's not waking up anyone except the cats, and it's not a hassle or hard to clean up after. I recommend it to budding coffee snobs, and anyone who's thinking their morning coffee ought to taste better than it does right now.