This quality electric coffee grinder is the sort of conical burr grinder you’d find in a hipster coffee house. It offers a staggering 60 different grind settings and the option to adjust the grind time by one second increments, so your taste satisfaction is guaranteed.
The heavy burrs used in this coffee grinder turn more slowly to minimise heat transferring to the grinds and affecting flavour. Granted, it’s the most expensive electric coffee grinder on our list by a long (double) shot and a fair bit heavier too, but for true coffee geeks, it should hit the spot.
Related: The best coffee machines you can buy, all based on user recommendations on our forums.
What should I look for when buying a coffee grinder?
You can choose from three main types of coffee grinder: electric blade, electric burr or a hand grinder.
Blade coffee grinders
Cheaper and more readily available than electric burr coffee grinders, blade coffee grinders make up the majority of our list. These coffee grinders feature a spinning blade (or blades) that slice coffee beans into smaller pieces.
Often more compact and portable than their burr counterparts, blade grinders are an excellent choice for coffee lovers who are new to grinding their own beans.
They’re good for producing the medium grinds used in filter and cafetière coffee. However, experts reckon that the blades heat up the coffee beans, affecting taste. Electric blades also don’t generally produce a grind fine enough for espresso.
Electric burr coffee grinders
The mechanism within burr coffee grinders doesn’t slice beans – it crushes them to produce finer grounds. Coffee fans credit these types of coffee grinders for producing a fresher brew than others because they don’t heat up the beans during the crushing process.
They can produce large quantities of grounds fine enough for espresso coffee, but do tend to be priced a fair bit higher, so they’re more of an investment buy than electric blade grinders or hand grinders.
Hand coffee grinders
A more traditional choice, a hand grinder does what it says on the tin – it lets you do all the hard work by grinding the coffee using your own arm power.
Most hand grinders contain a burr mechanism but are much cheaper than electric burr grinders. This means that hand grinding is a more affordable way of achieving the fine grind required for espresso.
A hand grinder is also a good travel coffee grinder choice as it tends to be fairly compact and you only grind small amounts of coffee beans at a time.
Other features to consider
Capacity – how many beans can your grinder accommodate?
Weight – is your coffee grinder easily portable or is it a weightier model?
Settings – some electric grinders offer a range of grind settings to consider while others only allow you to determine grind size by the length of time you press the grind button
Speed – electric grinders will grind beans automatically in mere seconds whereas a hand grinder will take longer and the effort will be all yours
Noise level – some grinders produce more noise than others. It’s a good idea to check, especially if you’re sensitive to sounds
Material/durability – lower priced grinders tend to be encased in plastic which may not last. You will probably have to pay more if you’d prefer a metal-encased grinder
Related: The best steam irons to eliminate creases
Are burr coffee grinders better?
Coffee experts tend to prefer burr grinders over blade or manual coffee grinders as they’re widely acknowledged for their ability to produce a finer grind size and maintain the freshness of the bean.
That said, there’s no denying that a burr grinder is a more expensive investment. If you’re only whizzing up beans to pop in a cafetière, you may find that an electric blade coffee grinder does the job just fine.
What is the best coffee grinder for home use?
The Bodum 11160-01UK-3 Bistro Electric Blade Grinder is the best electric blade coffee grinder for home use. Achieving high scores on looks, results and price point, we think it’s the best overall electric coffee grinder on the market for 2021.
We rate the compact and speedy Duronic Coffee Grinder as the best budget electric coffee grinder. Our best barista-level burr coffee grinder is the Sage The Dose Control Coffee Grinder which offers an impressive 60 grind choices. For the traditionalist, our best hand coffee grinder is the Hario Coffee Grinder.
How we chose our recommendations
Our coffee grinder suggestions came from recommendations on the Mumsnet forums and from consumer reviews on the web. We consulted independent review sites for opinions about products to ensure we were bringing you an honest summary of coffee grinders in 2021.
Why you should trust us
Mumsnet has been helping parents make their lives easier since 2000 and, in those years, we’ve seen, tried and reviewed thousands of products.
We work hard to provide honest and independent advice you can trust and we spend hours scouring the Mumsnet forums and online bestseller lists to find products that real parents rate.
Transparency is really important to us and that's why we're always upfront about where we find our recommendations. We write about products that we feel offer the best value to most parents – the ones that our users would recommend to their own friends and family.
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Read next: The best personal blenders as recommended by families, find the right one for your kitchen.
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