I agree with this disagreeing part. I may have mentioned that I parted ways with America's Test Kitchen when they had "The Perfect Biscuit"episode, and after "trial and error and hours in the kitchen" came up with some "secret twist on the old classic." I did not write down the recipe as I watched and later went to their website to get it, only to discover that I had to pay to access that episode. So I searched the web to see if someone had reposted it. My search led me to a picture someone had uploaded of the side of a 1950s box of flour. There was that exact recipe with the exact "secret twist" that they "discovered." Posers.
Yeah, and when it comes down to it, reviews are just opinions and everybody has one. I like to hear how noisy the grinders are and the complaint about static was a new one on me. Never even thought of that but I can see where it would be annoying to have all your freshly-ground coffee stuck to the sides of the container.
The Krups grinder and bag o' beans came earlier today and I have already tried them out. The little grinder is decent for the money. It's weighty and well constructed, and did a good job of grinding quickly and evenly. I followed the tips from the CI video and did several short grinds with shaking the grinder to redistribute the beans between each grind. My only complaint with the grinder is the very short electrical cord. The first attempt was a bust, as I expected. I didn't grind the beans fine enough and the coffee was "thin" and weak. Second attempt much better; I ground the beans longer and got a decent coffee. The grinder instructions recommended 7 grams of coffee per 5 oz cup, which is a little skimpy in my world. (Though I had never in my life WEIGHED coffee grounds, I was curious about that ratio today. ) I will never bother weighing again; I have the best success with a heaping coffee measure of grounds for each cup. So I believe the grinder is more of a novelty item for me, and I'm glad I didn't spring for a more expensive model. I prefer the McCafe ground coffee and k-cups; I like the taste and the convenience of those.
I got my Cusinart coffee grinder. I has 18 different settings, from Most Fine to Most Coarse. Here the two extremes are: Of course, there's a difference. It's just not as dramatic as I expected from a scale of 1 to 18 (tough to tell in the pics.) I'm not certain how coarse I should expect Most Coarse to be. I'm still paying around with things, but at least have settled in on the Most Coarse grind as I adjust everything else. At least this is coarser and more consistent than my Mr. Coffee grinder produced.
It sure is loud. It is louder than my Mr. Coffee grinder, but I thing that's because the large hopper/receptacle/base all act as echo chambers. I really don't mind. It's not an appliance that runs for an extended period of time. If my dishwasher were this loud, it would be an issue. I'm struggling with the universal recommended "Medium" grind for drip versus Bonavita's "gotta be coarse." I'm also still struggling to understand how my manual tea kettle pour-over can yield a better coffee than the Bonavita's hot drip. On a side-note (and this is why I love reading lots of reviews) on guy commented that the short product life some others observed is because of blow-back of the coffee dust into the machine's internals. He recommended routine dismantling and cleaning:
@John Brunner Last year I experimented with an old #2 meat grinder to grind coffee. It worked. I was surprised how soft coffee beans are. I thought they would be like pinto beans. It would come out coarse. Then an old fashioned stove top percolator. It tasted good to me, but I probably wouldn't know what really good coffee tastes like. They still sell these, if you don't have one.
Hmmm...thanks for that. I actually have one of those. Regarding the taste of "really good coffee..." This all reminds me of food critics. Unless they feel rodents scurrying across the tops of their shoes at a given eatery, they have nothing of value to say to me.
I've been following the instructions on my machine that say to weigh the coffee, starting at 10 grams per cup. edit to add: I reread those comments of folks who worked with Bonavita to dial-in their coffee, and I misunderstood their "coarser is better" comments. I thought they meant "maximum coarseness" when the one commenter went from Fine Grind to Drip Grind to get a good cup.
On a slightly different facet of "all things coffee..." A friend's daughter is in college, and a group of them went to Coast Rica for a business class excursion. She said they went to a coffee farm and picked coffee. Apparently the good coffees are hand-picked so that you only get ripe beans. The beans that are indiscriminately picked by machines (and not sorted later) are what goes into "dark roast" to disguise their unripened, inferior quality.
Haha. I saw that guy's pics somewhere. That was one review that made me decide to wait and see how you like the grinder.
I drink lots of coffee, unless I get a better brew out of this that extracts more caffeine. I'm probably in the top 10% of residential consumers, so should be a good test case. But I would think that all of these machines would be subject to that same issue (my Mr. Coffee has the same set-up regarding the way the grounds are dispensed into the container), and I've not had a failure in the 4-5 years I've been using that grinder. My $5 Mr. Coffee failure is better than a $45 Cuisinart failure would be which is better than a $100 Whomever's failure would be. Did you see Nancy's suggestion? Pretty clever.
Does the Cuisinart have a recommended amount of coffee per cup? My little Krups suggests 7 gm per cup but for my taste that is way too weak. I wasn't paying close enough attention when reading the description for my Bunn machine. It says "will brew large 20 oz mug or full 50 oz pot." In my mind I'm picturing a travel mug but in reality (duh), that's 4 cups of coffee at the 5 oz/cup measure. So my reading comprehension needs a little tune up.