A beginner's buying guide to grinders

If you are choosing between spending more on a machine or more on a grinder, spend it on the grinder. A modest machine with an excellent grinder makes better coffee than the reverse, and it is not close.

Burrs beat blades, and that is the whole of that argument

A blade grinder chops; a burr grinder mills to a size. Chopped coffee contains both dust and boulders, and they extract at wildly different rates, so the cup is simultaneously bitter and sour. No brewing technique recovers from that.

What matters, in order

• Burr alignment - the single biggest factor in consistency, and the one nobody puts on the box.
• Adjustment fineness - stepped is fine for filter; espresso wants stepless or very fine steps.
• Burr size - matters for speed and heat, much less for quality at home volumes.
• Retention - matters if you switch coffees daily, otherwise it is a rounding error.

Hand or electric?

A good hand grinder at 120 currency units will out-grind a bad electric at twice the price. The trade is effort: about 40 seconds of cranking for an espresso dose. If you make one or two drinks a day, that is nothing. If you make six, buy the electric.