Huge thanks for making a video about this James! I honestly think it's rather interesting and shines more light on how burrs work. I'm fairly sure this is obvious to some people (burr designers are probably saying duh!), but for most it's going to be an eye opener. The whole bean-by-bean feeding came about when I realised how single-dosing causes a coarsening grind profile ie. you get more fines at the start and the as the burr chamber empties, the grind goes coarser. Trying to minimise this I played around with weights stuck on top of beans, but that made it worse (way finer grind at the start and same coarse grind at the end). So I went the other way and figured out super slow feeding means you always end up with the "coarse" portion of the ground dose. Bean-by-bean feeding is of course taking this idea to the extreme. As for regrinding, I find it produces a much cleaner cup on a 71mm conic when using a V60 / pour over methods. Less silt, less muddy notes, just overall better. Augers are the way to go imho, gravity feeding and single dosing isn't perfect imho. Btw the "disk" on the Niche is "inspired" by the above ideas. As for stacked burrs, look at Versalab, they had this idea absolute ages ago, with a cut down conical to pre-crush and a flat burr for proper grinding, all this to avoid gravity and emptying burr chambers affecting grind quality. Last but not least, as I said on Twitter, huuuge props for proper surname pronunciation!
in a way, that's similar to how roller mill grinders work, multiple grinding stages. And they're known to have a superb particle size distribution, so probably if you can manufacture the multi burr grinder very well it could lead to a better result than a single pass grinder. I reckon the main difficulty is consistency and relatively slow output.
just don't go inventing my coffee teat... this bean by bean grinding... Just don't go and do bean by bean brewing and attach it to a rubber nipple that dispenses coffee when you tongue it
You did the "single bean grinding" with conical burrs. Or did you also test is with flat burrs? Would be interesting if the effect is equal or different depending on what type of burrs you use.
Great post- I second your comments about the Versalab- I have one and it is a spectacular grinder, and its small footprint is a huge bonus that grew on me exponentially over time. I understand that they recently released field installable improvements, but I haven't ordered the upgrade kit yet. I can't say enough good things about this grinder- it is a pleasure to use and is really a classic design.
Being someone who repairs professional espresso machines and grinders for a long time. My thoughts are, re-grinding will mess up your grinder real bad and there will be a lot sticking at the side of the burrs, causing things to fail one way or another. If one is really conscious about the grinds, best bet will be a big hand grinder which can't go any faster in RPM, with large conical burrs. The grinds from conical burrs are more round while flat burrs are elongated, this changes the yield result. The slow RPM generates less heat and keep more of the nice oil in, but the end result whether you love it or not, is up to your preference and the beans you use.
So I don't/can't do espresso at home, but I tried slowly feeding beans into my breville smart grinder (1-2 beans/sec) for my pourover this morning and I was blown away by a ridiculously cleaner tasting cup, as well as/probably due to a very noticeably MUCH more uniform particle size in the grinds! My grinder is getting on a bit and I HAD been thinking it's about that time that I should be looking at replacing burrs or upgrading, even thinking about sifting/sieving and regrinding larger shards (but seriously first thing in the morning? just kill me), but grinding slowly has literally eliminated that need from my mind. Thank you so much for this video I will be doing this every day from now on!
This result makes intuitive sense when you consider grinders output are bimodal and when dialing in the grind setting the best result will land somewhere between those particle distribution peaks and therefore some of the grounds are too coarse and will under extract (sour) and some grounds will be too fine and over extract (bitter). Reducing residual fines by decreasing flow restriction within the grinder is in effect creating a more uniform particle distribution optimizing the amount of coffee that is being extracted correctly. PITA though spoon feeding a grinder.
I actually accidentally discovered similar results the other week, because I had loads of pre-ground coffee that I thought I ought to use rather than waste, but it was too coarse for espresso. So, I loaded grounds into my Comandante at my usual ‘espresso’ setting, and was dismayed to find that the shot I pulled was super fast. I realised that ground coffee sits in a Comandante very oddly such that you have to keep nudging it to dislodge the grounds into the burrs. So I ended up with the result that pre-ground coffee grinds coarser at the same grind setting, and I’m glad I finally have some vindication and explanation!
I've done this before as a strategy to grind for espresso using manual grinders but never stopped to analyze the differences in the tasting. Seems like an interesting experiment for the weekend :)
I'd be interested to see a prototype of a sort of 2-stage grinder. One stage for a rough and coarse grind, a second stage for a smooth and fine grind, regulated by some orifice that disallows excess flow while also preventing internal "popcorning" like you described. Also James, I think it'd be a worthwhile idea to test this principle on drip/perc brew styles. Does it make a difference? Is it notable? Maybe, maybe not.
I would really like to see the different grinds measured using a Kreuve to make a histogram of the grind distribution. There must be a measurable physical difference between these variations. I’d volunteer to do the measurements but I live just a bit too far away I’m afraid. 🤓
Too bad I brewed my morning coffee before watching this video! I will try this with whole beans. But did you do a blind test tasting slow grind vs. normal grind? You always should when trying to do an affect on coffee flavour!
I tried the slow feed method with whole beens on my Gaggia MDF grinder ($200) and there was a staggering improvement in sweetness. I did have to go down 1 click in the grind (which is now the finest grind size) to get a nice 30 second shot. However, now I'm left wondering if it's worth it to consider buying a better grinder anymore; if there are almost no fines, will I really get a more consistent grind in a grinder 3x the price?? There are NO comparison reviews using the slow feed method!! :-( So here's to looking forward on that :-)
It sounds like you need to take the two different samples and run them through a set of laboratory sieves to see if the results contain different particle sizes.
Mmmmmmm long slowly reground espresso I'm going to be caffeine buzzed all day your fault, James. Confession time I'm one of those who has to have sugar in my coffee but I play with the sugar levels depending on the coffee used. With the regrinding, I'm finding it is sweeter also so as such using less sugar in the consumption.
Ok. My report. I'm using a Baratza Virtuoso and v60. I noticed less fine grinds on the top of the grounds after brewing. I would need to repeat to confirm. I'm a heathen that likes sugar and cream in his coffee. But this is very nice. I might need to do a side by side comparison. There is more pleasant notes almost like a very slight cinamon. But I can't be 100% certain. When I tasted it black I almost thought ever so slighty over extracted. But now that I've had half of the coffee it's quite pleasant.
Buy an electric bur grinder so that you could grind coffee faster and more convenient and then feeding it bean-by-bean Maybe we just need better grinders😅
Hi, I would really like to have the same poster as James in the video (the ultimate French press technique). I can’t find it anywhere... at least the source image so I can get it printed... any idea? Thanks
I did this! I set up my beans in a funnel with a little arduino gadget blocking the opening to regulate the "bean flow rate" for a really consistent drop time (extra I know) and overall I noticed a super super consistent grind more so than just filling the hopper and tested this with 3 different coffee I get from Trade. I was able to use nearly a 2 stop finer setting without choking and my crema and flavor was so much Richer across the board! Really interesting concept.
It may be why EK43 is so good. Given it's speed and single dosing it is by default equivalent to grinding few beans at a time. Hence why it need very fine setting for espresso...
The EK43 has a feeder so it’s basically feeding those massive burrs a few beans at a time, secondly there is never bean pressure on the burrs this is both an effect of the beans fed behind the burrs and the orientation of the burrs. It has therefore close to no effect to feed it slower.
I've been curious about this topic ever since Kruve released their sifters. I mean, what else to do with the boulders? But luckily I live in a world where James can do the tests so I don't have to. Keep up the good work!
Maybe James can do a Battle of the Kruve. VS a vibrating sifter used in labs. {with Sieves up to 1200 Micron} {Since the Lab equipment serves the same purpose but it is only automated, and has more sieve choices}
Avid Kruve sifter user and data recorder here. For about 80% of coffees (light roasts), they're clearer and sweeter as a V60 with the grounds sifted, and then the boulders re-ground one time. I toss about 2-3 grams of fines per 15g dose.
hey james, I would like to know if you would be intrested to make a video on how you clean your equipement. Maybe talk about the effect of different cleaning methodshave on your extraction. I do believe that most people (me included) do not maintain our tools well enough.
This would be great. I’m a relatively new V60 brewer, and desperately trying to figure out why my it is taking twice as long as it should to finish brewing. The only way I’ve been able to get reasonable results given this brew time is setting my Baratza Sette 30 on the coursest setting (30). I have attempted to clean it many, many times, but maybe it’s not sufficient. If a proper cleaning doesn’t yield better results, then, we’ll, I have no idea what else to try.
@@ericrogers4690 Hey I can probably give the assist on this one-- Are you stirring/swirling your v60 too much? I found there was a sweet spot for how much you want to agitate your v60 brew around. His v60 tutorial video has tons of depth but.. Try giving this a shot for a comparison: when you brew next time try not swirling/stirring and avoid running water on the sides. You'll see the brew time go down quite a bit. I personally got into pour over about two weeks ago; realized I was stirring too much and it was okay to be a little more aggressive with the first half of pouring. I don't make a perfect cup, but it's definitely gotten better with practice. 😀 TL;DR- swirl lightly. use hot water. pour faster in the first half of the brew and level for the second half!
I made a comment as I sat down to watch the video that Jame was doing the work so we don't have to. I've finished watching and it ends up, I was wrong. We've been given homework! Time to grind...slowly.
@@Koorstag I hadn't thought about that, but it's interesting to think about it. I wanted to get a hand grinder for travel, but now I have another excuse, scientific comparisons!
I just tried this with filter coffee, and it was interesting but probably not worth the effort. My grinder is a Baratza Encore, and i used a plastic v60 with unbleached tabless filters. I did 20 grams of coffee to 330 grams of water using Hoffmann's ultimate technique (45 second bloom). Before doing this, I thoroughly cleaned the burr chamber and the chute that leads to the grounds bin. I had to put 20.5 grams in to get 20 grams out of a totally clean grinder for this. I usually grind on 13 for this coffee, and for this I ground on 11. My coffee was a medium roast Colombian. Grinding was PAINFUL. In the Encore, beans spin around between the burrs for a second before actually grinding, so it took 5-10 minutes (not sure exactly) to grind 20 grams. Upon a cursory visual inspection, the grounds looked about the same as usual, maybe a bit finer and with fewer fines, but it's hard to say. i brewed as normal, and the coffee drew down in about 3:20, as opposed to the usual 3:23 with this coffee. As far as taste goes, it was a little bit sweeter than usual, but that wasn't the main thing that I found interesting. The tasting notes on the bag are green apple, mandarin orange, and toffee. I find those to be pretty accurate, so they are what I will use to describe this coffee. Usually when I brew, the most prominent note is green apple, but with this new technique, the mandarin orange note became far more prominent, and the green apple sank into the background. The toffee note was also more prominent. It was also less bitter than usual. The bitterness wasn't a problem previously - it was the good kind of bitter, and was not too prominent - but this was nonetheless quite interesting. I'm tempted to try this again, but I've already had too much coffee and I need to be productive now. I hope this was interesting. Thanks for making this video, James. Super interesting.
Calvin Rey Hey Calvin thanks for sharing. I have this exact same set up. Wondering what brand of colombian you use. I've been using the scott rao method for my v60 just because it seems easier. To follow the Hoffman method do you use any app or just rewatch the video? For the Scott Rao method I use his app called Brewtime.
@@henlolneh I grind at 10-11 for my Melitta - but I'm using cheap beans from Aldi. [For their cost, they're the best cheap beans you'll ever find. Not excellent, but good enough.] I use 29 grams per 500g water.
@@henlolneh i have also found 13 a good grind setting for medium roast. However, my encore is new and i was wondering which setting u use for a medium roast coffee for a v60?
I mean, there are plenty of shirts made to not wrinkle so you don't need to iron them... Non-iron shirts I think they are called, even though that sounds like you can't iron them and not that you don't need to.
I really appreciate how transparent you are, how you admit and make up for any mistakes, and respect conflict of interest issues etc. Not enough youtubers do this, and it really speaks to your high level of ethics.
Changing the amount of coffee that goes through the burrs affects the load of the burr, its speed, and therefore the ratio between cutting,shearing and compression forces,resulting in different grind profile. A higher load produces a "finer" grind, with more fine particles, while a lower load leads to a coarser and more uniform grind (it obviously depends on how you measure uniformity. Controlling the feeding rate of coffee mass is one way to manipulate particle size distribution. multi stage grinding also has a similar effect and its based on a similar principle. Splitting the load of the grinding process into multiple progressive stages produces a more uniform grind,with lower temperatures and higher output. multi stage roller mills used in coffee industry have this kind of features, with controlled feed rate, 2 or plus stages of grinding, adjustable rolls speed, various rolls teeth profiles,densifying stage etc. allowing for a complete control of particle size distribution.
I totally believe that this comment should be higher up the list. From my side I'd just add that you can try to measure and control the particle distribution in the final load of coffee being used for brewing. By using tools like KRUVE Sifter or any other sieve set of known sizes and a scale, you should be able to tell how many (in terms of weight) particles of given size range are in the load. Different particles distribution profiles will effect the extraction during the brew and of course the final taste of coffee. I would be happy to see someone (hopefully James himself) digging more into the subject.
Multi-step grinding isn't new, but it is new in the hand grinding industry. It is a game changer, opening a whole new world of coffee grinding. The challenge is how to produce uniform particles fast without too much fine
When I worked on a brewery I used to run my grain through the mill twice. The first time the rollers were set so they would just crack the grain. The second pass the rollers were a set a touch finer than normal. I ended up with little bits of malt with less flour than in a single pass. By doing this I got a higher extract effiency and faster lauter.
@@NeoAkira101 Well, we don't know what the impact of the burr speed is. Maybe this "undesirable" regrinding effect is negligible at slower speeds such as those you might produce in a hand grinder.
Now I understand the "KEEP WATER AWAY FROM GRINDER" warning that is so blatantly displayed on my Barista Express. I wonder if I could regrind espresso though...
Two months ago I didn’t really care about coffee. My coffee tasted like burnt tires and so I just didn’t drink it 😬 Now I’m using the right water, measuring things, timing the shots, trying to taste different coffee, investing in better equipment and pulling shots just to improve my technique. James, what have you done 😂
James new scientific method, take something we've done one way for decades, assert it could be wrong, then spend 15 minutes proving the answer is... possibly.
You could make a multi-stage grinder as some have mentioned- you could also refine things and have a grinder that only allows one bean in at a time to REALLY slow things down while letting you "set it and forget it."
One *could* do all kinds of things, but first we need to know *if* it works, and if so, *why* it works. Asking thousands to test it is the right way to start. Innovation will happen if it's needed.
@@worawatli8952 I can see such a thing working for people who are really, really adamant about getting the perfect espresso. Most mainstream grinders are intented to have high throughput because they will also be run in coffee shops. Such a grinder would be a huge... niche... market. The Niche Quantum?
After watching this, I tried feeding my beans into a hand held grinder a few at a time. V60 pour over method. Definitely a slightly sweeter result with the same beans and method that I had been using everyday, for at least a week. The conundrum: knowing my coffee could taste better...but having to grind for ten times longer to achieve it. For some maybe an easy answer:grind longer. Makes me question just how far I will go or how much of a perfectionist I am. My coffee making has become an S & M experience. LOL!
Hey James, I've recently come across your videos and since watching them, the coffee i'm making at home is the best I've ever had anywhere. I hope people realize that you have brought world-class barista coaching to every day people, using every day language people can understand in some super entertaining videos! Thanks heaps! Luke
2 years too late but I tried slowly grinding my coffee beans in my hand grinder, I didn't add the beans slowly I just ground a lot slower, and I'm genuinely blown away by the results. An amazing cup of coffee! Everything else was the same. Same grind setting, same beans, same ratio, same brew method, same timing.
Another late response but still: does this mean that potentially slower settings for the grinder's motor would do the same job without need to slowly feeding the beens?
Wonderful video, James. I love the content you produce. Now I’m waiting for an inventor to produce a two stage, single dosing grinder. Can you imagine? First chamber produces the “unusable” coarse grounds that it is slowly fed downward into a second grinding chamber to be made into espresso grounds. Sounds crazy, and expensive, but what is coffee without ridiculous innovation and technology pushing the boundaries?
I've built what I call a small feeder to feed beans into my Baratza Encore I noticed that like this I can get a much more uniform grounds. But I need to select a much lower grind setting.
Nothing super fancy I just 3D printed a funnel like device with a small hole that allows feeding 1 bean at a time. With smaller beans feeds more than one and bigger one do not work but anyway it works for me for sure you guys can think about something better suited
I am seeing people complaining about how this experiment is amazing but so time consuming. Just buy a sloth and train it to drop beans into a hopper - great coffee, saves tons of time, and a new pet.
I personally would prefer building a Rube Goldberg machine over a sloth. Especially as the former can include a sloth or a dozen if one wanted. And as you know, the more sloths the merrier!
I just tried a variation of this as a pour over. I'd been wondering about double grinding for a while, but this idea of feeding the beans slowly was intriguing enough for me to finally try it. I slowly ground a 22g dose at the coarsest setting on my Baratza Encore, then set the grinder about 3 clicks finer than usual and fed the grinder slowly, about a pinch at a time. Then I brewed a V60 at 16:1. I don't want to comment on quality until I've tried it a few more times, but even at a significantly finer grind setting the brew finished about 30 seconds earlier than planned, and drawdown didn't slow near the end like I'm used to. This would seem to indicate a much lower amount of fines.
The Austrian/Hungarian roller mills for grain were invented in the early 1800s, I believe? (They were the first mills to give fine, uniform, wheat flour, and are the main reason Vienna was where a lot of modern pastries and white bread was invented.)
Hey James, I'm a barista from Aus and drink almost exclusively filter coffee at home. I use a commandante hand grinder, and I have taken to grinding with it on its side to slow the coffee down before it goes in. I find that it gives much cleaner and sweeter coffee profiles. I know hand grinders are a different, much slower beast then electric but I think that it still hold merit. Thanks for your videos!
Dude I love this stuff! Will I ever try it, probably not but at least I know about it now. Thank you for making your curiosity public, this channel keeps getting better !
I'm wondering how this ties in to grinding at a colder temperature - if part of the equation is that the grinding process inherently increases the temperature of the beans, and breaking up that process might allow the bean temperature to come back down. Also, consider the process of bruising mint and other herbs. Damaging the cell walls releases bitter compounds while only bruising the exterior allows the oils to be extracted more sweetly. Perhaps the extended grinding of whole beans when the hopper is full serves to extract more bitter compounds. Take a page from Dave Arnold and employ liquid nitrogen.
There's been a long-standing myth that grinding frozen espresso beans will lead to a more consistent grind. I wonder if someone actually ever tested it in a more scientific manner.
This was exactly the thought, which came up in my mind when I watched this video: What impact has the (increased) temperature, when the beans are "stressed" in the grinder for a longer duration? And vice versa: Could this effect be compensated by using deep frozen coffee beans? Any experiences with that?
I took the challenge. Brew Method: James's Ultimate French Press Baratza Encore grinder set at 12 39g Intelligentsia El Gallo Peru blend 656g NYC water Brita Filtered I turned on the grinder, then slowly fed the beans into the chamber. I didn't time it, but it did take longer, though not as long as I expected. Result: The foam sitting on top of the cake was a bit smaller than usual. More central rear-tongue engaged in the flavor. Less complex in a nice way. Sweeter and cleaner taste. No doubt, fewer fines. The acid test, so to speak, was the 2nd cup, some 20 minutes later. No overextraction and souring. Next time, I will carefully inspect the ground coffee. The only negatives: extra work, time and noise. Conclusion: Big improvement. and worth the effort.
It was James' initial review and the fact that it kept popping up on subsequent videos that led me to order one. Only shame is that I have to wait until August to get it!!
Hey James, just a question - do you think this experiment would translate to hand grinders? Would grinding slower using the hand grinder produce a similar effect?
I don't see why not. Just load the hand grinder with a few beans and grind them before putting in the next few beans, etc, etc. Would probably be easier on your arm muscles too.
I know a lot of hand grinders don't like to grind espresso/turkish level grinds in one pass. You can do it but the beans don't feed well and you end up with a lot of work and fines. What a lot of people do is pre-grind their beans coarse (could use a cheap grinder or even a blade mill for this) and those smaller pieces will feed into the burrs faster and easier, which pushes out grinds faster so they don't "regrind" And this makes sense. Asking any device to turn a half-inch bean into a powder in one step is a tall order. But crushing beans into coarse grounds? simple. Grinding coarse grounds finer? fairly simple. And with the ease of cleaning out a hand grinder, Why not test it? For grinders that are easily adjustable, you will probably spend the same time grinding because that first coarse grind will go very fast. And the second grind should be quicker and easier than normal.
I just tried this with my morning brew. The results are definitely interesting and noteworthy. I use a plastic v60 pourover, Baratza Virtuoso, and a locally roasted Colombian coffee, prepared using your pourover method. On the Baratza, I typically find myself grinding somewhere between 16 and 20 on the dial, depending on the beans, but for this experiment I took it down to 10. I performed the experiment by dropping 2-3 beans in at a time and letting them grind the whole way throigh. 20g beans in, 250g liquid out. The Virtuoso is pretty consistent as is, but I was genuinely surprised to see how much more consistent the grind particles were. As for taste, the resulting cup was just about perfect for this roast. It was significantly juicier and more balanced then my previous brews.
I absolutely love how this guy is 100% ready to question and put to test his own ideas again and again. To me this is the signature of scientific integrity. As a porous media scientist myself, I sometimes feel that this kind of approach is frequently lacking in much of the scientific community. Not many people have the guts to question their own beliefs and claims, and the lack of this questioning halts much scientific progress. In a world where people are ready to question their beliefs, science moves faster and coffee tastes better. Thank you again James!
Just did a nice cup of coffee in a V60 slow fed beans into my grinder nearly bean by bean at the usual grind settings. I would like to not have tried that... Because it made a great cup of coffee, if not one of the best one!
@@pp-xu3rm I don't know if the brand is particularly good or popular but its a Graef electric grinder. Does a decent grind for me (no espresso machine)
@@gpmenga single grind pass yes. Though I'm thinking (to avoid jamming) if I could not do first pass in the electric and second pass in hand grinder...
this reminds me of Jia Ning Du's winning recipe for 2019 world brewer's cup. Granted it was a pourover not espresso but she also grounded her coffee twice, once coarse and then again finer.
I was wondering if this was applicable to those of us who are primarily pour over people. His comments about the end of the grind being coarser make me want to give the "slower bean feed" option a try.
I actually found out about regrinding from Jianing Du, the brewer champion from 2019. She recommended grinding at the coarsest setting, then SIEVING the fines through a 1000micron mesh, then regrinding it at the desired setting. That might have your desired effects without the problems of creating extra fines (since you sieved it away) and not having to worry about the slow grinding.
In the end, it is all about grinding the beans with a high uniformity and consistency - a very narrow, but high gauss curve. Everything you do, needs to be better for at least one, and equal for the other. I am very curious to try this with my mini moca but I would also like to use the grind size software you used earlier to see if you can see a difference instead of tasting it (I trust your taste buds more than mine). We could even do a small design of experiments to see how robust the system is - yes, I gonna try!
Yeah, after *making* coffee with it, the next thing to try is either filter sampling, or just "spread one gram out on some white paper and photograph it" and get some idea of the grind size distribution. (A single-bean-at-a-time grinder could have some very different design approaches...)
Back when i was competing in a local filter coffee throwdown, I was told by my instructor to regrind my coffee. The purpose was to remove the chaffs so it doesn't bring any unwanted flavours into the coffee. We ground our coffee in the courser setting, blow away the chaffs and reground it to the desired setting, and the result was... negligible, I would say.
Interesting, I recently started using my grandma's old manual grinder to make Turkish coffee. The only real way to use it is to hold it horizontally and knock a few beans into the burrs while continuously turning the handle. Too much at once and the grinder just seizes up and is impossible to turn. However, it only took fingertip amounts of grip on the handle once I got the hang of feeding beans at a slow enough rate. Not exactly a scientific report, that's just what this video made me think of.
A surprising result is an understatement haha. This is so strange yet it is what it is. If the shot was tasty then it's hard to say otherwise. Thanks for the video James!
James, thank you so much for sharing this. I tried using my comandante ironheart hand grinder tilted at an angle to limit the feed rate. Huge difference in grind and taste. Used to do this to decrease resistance when the lido 3 was my daily driver per orphan espresso's recommendation.
I continue to be happy to report that the time spent putting ten or so beans into the chamber at a time yields a superior brew. When it's my time to go, I will not regret the perhaps few extra days in total it took me to grind coffee properly. Those will be remembered as grinding days well spent.
I watched half this video and realized I had no clue what he was talking about. So, back to grinding my beans and making plain coffee with it as usual,
Jon Gagne wrote about this in this thread www.google.com/amp/s/coffeeadastra.com/2019/04/12/grind-quality-and-the-popcorning-effect/amp/ Grinding bean-by-bean emulates a higher quality grinder, having a lower particle size distribution
this might be related to my problems with hand grinding for filter coffee, i usually put the amount of coffee I need in the grinder, but because of the difference in pressure due to the lack of beans as described in the video, there is a huge disparity between the grinds at the beginning and the end of me grinding. Any thoughts? (this was very flow of consciousness sorry for grammar)
Yep, I use similar equipment, specifically Hario Skerton & CleverDripper so am interested in any results from similar hand grinder & paper drip filter experiments.💯
I have a similar issue. Granted, I use a slightly cheaper hand grinder. But i find theres a pretty big difference, at times, between the grinds i get at the beginning and the end. I'm curious how you may be able to implement this type of "slow grinding" process in a hand grinder.
Yeah, I think the video shed some light on why that is the way with the grind. After grinding coffee for many years, it is surprising to realize the unknown details.
@@Steenar123 Maybe you could grind a few beans at the time? If you grind without the lid on (assuming your grinder has one in the first place), it should merely be _somewhat_ annoying to keep feeding in a few beans at the time.
What's your opinion on blowing out the papery bits after the first grind, but before the second? I just tried that for the first time today, and I think it made the coffee better.
Those are generally just parts of the husk or leftover accumulated film from the processing depending on what that is, haven't found particular differences in less husk-y coffees myself but ymmv depending on what you're using.
I wonder how your Niche was initially dialled in at setting 25! That's very high for an espresso grind. Normally the setting is less than 15 and often below 10. And especially as you have the FCD. Just wondering!
Just had a go - full beans fed slowly. Grounds were visably coarser and I pulled an 8 second shot rather than my usual 25-26. It was underextracted (as expected) but still tasted ok and I think I also got more sweetness but you may have just made me imagine that with your analysis. Will try again at a finer setting.
I tried this with my v60 just now. I preemptively set my grinder finer in anticipation for a drastic change. It seems I didn’t set it fine enough -maybe one or two clicks short- because this method provided a much courser overall grind than I was expecting. Still, there were visually less fines in my brew and the grind seemed consistent enough. My biggest finding was how my final product -my drink- was noticeably less acidic than normal. It’s important to note here, my brew time was also 40 seconds shorter than usual. This could be due to not grinding fine enough but I certainly don’t feel the coffee is under extracted. It has a very pleasant mouthfeel to it and many of the origin characteristics still shine through. All in all, the coffee is still delicious. I may have to continue to play around with this while keeping notes to truly compare and contrast. I do find the staggering difference in grind size to be pretty interesting, though. Perhaps this may even benefit from pouring the beans in slower since I maintained a slow, yet moderate, pace for the sake of time. I’m sure you’ll reach diminishing returns at some point or maybe you’ll invent a grinder that does one bean at a time, first. Either way I’m glad you’ve introduced us to this new area of technique. It opens the door for even more nuance in an already over complicated process...and I love it ☕️
I've ground beans very slowly on the coarsest setting in my Encore and reground very slowly three clicks lower than usual for V60. It worked! It was more uniform, and the cup was cleaner and sweeter!
I have a sweet tooth and I live on the road as a nomad in the US. I have a hand grinder with the ceramic disc that grinds it would grind it very coarsely and then take those large courses and put them through again but with a smaller setting more like a medium and I noticed that when making my light roast hazelnut cream coffee with my Moka pot it was much sweeter much more enjoyable almost like drinking candy the aftertaste with that of sweet hazelnut cream I figure this out couple weeks ago before watching your video so imagine my shock and surprise discovering it was already covered.
I do this just to get a consistent grind size, with my cheap Hario hand grinder. Works great, and doesn't really take that long. I like the process of making coffee so the extra time grinding doesn't really bother me. I don't feed it in bit by bit, though. Just shove it all in again and give it another go over.
I had the same thought but hadn't tried it yet. In theory, at some point you'll get to the point where every piece of coffee is now a maximum possible size. This might mean more consistent. Though, it seems it might introduce more opportunities for fine coffee dust to accumulate.
I've been a subscriber ever since I saw your french press method. I've grown to have a much better appreciation for my coffee and am always trying something new. Videos like these are absolutely fascinating! Keep up the good work!
This pushed my morning brew from "pretty good" to "excellent." Feeding my Baratza Virtuoso (old model) whole beans at a slow pace definitely made a difference, and even more so did feeding in coursely ground beans. Gone is the hollow taste from my morning brew and right up front is all the tasty goodness. This is now a part of my daily routine.
Huge thanks for making a video about this James! I honestly think it's rather interesting and shines more light on how burrs work. I'm fairly sure this is obvious to some people (burr designers are probably saying duh!), but for most it's going to be an eye opener. The whole bean-by-bean feeding came about when I realised how single-dosing causes a coarsening grind profile ie. you get more fines at the start and the as the burr chamber empties, the grind goes coarser. Trying to minimise this I played around with weights stuck on top of beans, but that made it worse (way finer grind at the start and same coarse grind at the end). So I went the other way and figured out super slow feeding means you always end up with the "coarse" portion of the ground dose. Bean-by-bean feeding is of course taking this idea to the extreme.
As for regrinding, I find it produces a much cleaner cup on a 71mm conic when using a V60 / pour over methods. Less silt, less muddy notes, just overall better.
Augers are the way to go imho, gravity feeding and single dosing isn't perfect imho. Btw the "disk" on the Niche is "inspired" by the above ideas.
As for stacked burrs, look at Versalab, they had this idea absolute ages ago, with a cut down conical to pre-crush and a flat burr for proper grinding, all this to avoid gravity and emptying burr chambers affecting grind quality.
Last but not least, as I said on Twitter, huuuge props for proper surname pronunciation!
I have the same last name and it really surprised me how well he pronounced it!
in a way, that's similar to how roller mill grinders work, multiple grinding stages. And they're known to have a superb particle size distribution, so probably if you can manufacture the multi burr grinder very well it could lead to a better result than a single pass grinder. I reckon the main difficulty is consistency and relatively slow output.
just don't go inventing my coffee teat... this bean by bean grinding... Just don't go and do bean by bean brewing and attach it to a rubber nipple that dispenses coffee when you tongue it
You did the "single bean grinding" with conical burrs. Or did you also test is with flat burrs? Would be interesting if the effect is equal or different depending on what type of burrs you use.
Great post- I second your comments about the Versalab- I have one and it is a spectacular grinder, and its small footprint is a huge bonus that grew on me exponentially over time. I understand that they recently released field installable improvements, but I haven't ordered the upgrade kit yet. I can't say enough good things about this grinder- it is a pleasure to use and is really a classic design.
Making coffee used to be so simple. Then I found your channel.
This comment is tragically underappreciated. This pretty much sums up my coffee experience over the last several months.
Used to be cheap too. 😏
I used to be happy with keurig pods. Then my I got a French press and grew taste buds
@@MrMexi-oe8eqyeah but a French press is only complicated comps to pods
Amen. But then again, I’ve managed to make better coffee for example with my moka pot ☕️😊 Thanks to this channel.
Being someone who repairs professional espresso machines and grinders for a long time. My thoughts are, re-grinding will mess up your grinder real bad and there will be a lot sticking at the side of the burrs, causing things to fail one way or another. If one is really conscious about the grinds, best bet will be a big hand grinder which can't go any faster in RPM, with large conical burrs. The grinds from conical burrs are more round while flat burrs are elongated, this changes the yield result. The slow RPM generates less heat and keep more of the nice oil in, but the end result whether you love it or not, is up to your preference and the beans you use.
So I don't/can't do espresso at home, but I tried slowly feeding beans into my breville smart grinder (1-2 beans/sec) for my pourover this morning and I was blown away by a ridiculously cleaner tasting cup, as well as/probably due to a very noticeably MUCH more uniform particle size in the grinds! My grinder is getting on a bit and I HAD been thinking it's about that time that I should be looking at replacing burrs or upgrading, even thinking about sifting/sieving and regrinding larger shards (but seriously first thing in the morning? just kill me), but grinding slowly has literally eliminated that need from my mind. Thank you so much for this video I will be doing this every day from now on!
This result makes intuitive sense when you consider grinders output are bimodal and when dialing in the grind setting the best result will land somewhere between those particle distribution peaks and therefore some of the grounds are too coarse and will under extract (sour) and some grounds will be too fine and over extract (bitter). Reducing residual fines by decreasing flow restriction within the grinder is in effect creating a more uniform particle distribution optimizing the amount of coffee that is being extracted correctly. PITA though spoon feeding a grinder.
I actually accidentally discovered similar results the other week, because I had loads of pre-ground coffee that I thought I ought to use rather than waste, but it was too coarse for espresso.
So, I loaded grounds into my Comandante at my usual ‘espresso’ setting, and was dismayed to find that the shot I pulled was super fast. I realised that ground coffee sits in a Comandante very oddly such that you have to keep nudging it to dislodge the grounds into the burrs. So I ended up with the result that pre-ground coffee grinds coarser at the same grind setting, and I’m glad I finally have some vindication and explanation!
I love these videos. I’m super into Coffee. I just bought a keurig and it makes amazing coffee.
I've done this before as a strategy to grind for espresso using manual grinders but never stopped to analyze the differences in the tasting. Seems like an interesting experiment for the weekend :)
Do more regrinding cupping with friends, and share the result
I learned so much with your videos.
I'd be interested to see a prototype of a sort of 2-stage grinder. One stage for a rough and coarse grind, a second stage for a smooth and fine grind, regulated by some orifice that disallows excess flow while also preventing internal "popcorning" like you described.
Also James, I think it'd be a worthwhile idea to test this principle on drip/perc brew styles. Does it make a difference? Is it notable? Maybe, maybe not.
And... queue in a kickstarter for a two step grinder!
I would really like to see the different grinds measured using a Kreuve to make a histogram of the grind distribution. There must be a measurable physical difference between these variations. I’d volunteer to do the measurements but I live just a bit too far away I’m afraid. 🤓
Too bad I brewed my morning coffee before watching this video! I will try this with whole beans. But did you do a blind test tasting slow grind vs. normal grind? You always should when trying to do an affect on coffee flavour!
I tried the slow feed method with whole beens on my Gaggia MDF grinder ($200) and there was a staggering improvement in sweetness. I did have to go down 1 click in the grind (which is now the finest grind size) to get a nice 30 second shot. However, now I'm left wondering if it's worth it to consider buying a better grinder anymore; if there are almost no fines, will I really get a more consistent grind in a grinder 3x the price?? There are NO comparison reviews using the slow feed method!! :-( So here's to looking forward on that :-)
It sounds like you need to take the two different samples and run them through a set of laboratory sieves to see if the results contain different particle sizes.
James- is there any history of producing gradation graphs for coffee? I am a materials engineer and we do so with soil all the time.
Will motor RPMs also have an effect, besides slower speeds won't heat up the beans as much? If I'm not wrong, the Niche's motor turns at lower RPMs.
This one was really interesting. How is it not a weird coffee science video?? Maybe it's more like weird coffee engineering? :-D
watch one twin peaks video with dale cooper talking about damn fine coffee and the youtube algorithm assumes im a coffee connoisseur
Mmmmmmm long slowly reground espresso I'm going to be caffeine buzzed all day your fault, James. Confession time I'm one of those who has to have sugar in my coffee but I play with the sugar levels depending on the coffee used. With the regrinding, I'm finding it is sweeter also so as such using less sugar in the consumption.
Ok. Off to make coffee.
Ok. My report. I'm using a Baratza Virtuoso and v60. I noticed less fine grinds on the top of the grounds after brewing. I would need to repeat to confirm. I'm a heathen that likes sugar and cream in his coffee. But this is very nice. I might need to do a side by side comparison. There is more pleasant notes almost like a very slight cinamon. But I can't be 100% certain. When I tasted it black I almost thought ever so slighty over extracted. But now that I've had half of the coffee it's quite pleasant.
Buy an electric bur grinder so that you could grind coffee faster and more convenient and then feeding it bean-by-bean
Maybe we just need better grinders😅
Hi, I would really like to have the same poster as James in the video (the ultimate French press technique). I can’t find it anywhere... at least the source image so I can get it printed... any idea?
Thanks
And here I thought he was going to suggest regrinding some freeze dried Folgers
At 8:55 when you say "Experience", I feel like you're trying to send me subliminal messages.
DON'T MESS WITH ME JAMES!!
My wife when she sees me grinding already ground coffee: "you did watch a video of that britisch guy again, did you..?!"
Haha, fantastic! :D
Neeeeee, hab ich nicht. (Nase wächst exponentiell)
🤣
Das ist aber auch kein echter Brite... Hoffmann ist ein deutscher Name...
🤣🤣🤣 the struggle is real!!
Tried this with a hand grinder. Still grinding.
underrated comment
Are you done yet?
It was funny coz i tried double grind before this video, wish fine grind can be finer but end up never pass thru the hand grinder.
Legends says he still grinding to this day
Steadily grinding one bean at a time!
For god's sake man, I'm trying to SHORTEN my espresso prep time.
I know, me too! (Also sorry)
Vodkainum I hear you!
Haha as a former Barista, I felt that.💯Lol😊
I laughed too hard 😂😂😂
Hahaha yes! 😂
I did this! I set up my beans in a funnel with a little arduino gadget blocking the opening to regulate the "bean flow rate" for a really consistent drop time (extra I know) and overall I noticed a super super consistent grind more so than just filling the hopper and tested this with 3 different coffee I get from Trade. I was able to use nearly a 2 stop finer setting without choking and my crema and flavor was so much Richer across the board! Really interesting concept.
Can you provide more info on your arduino gadget? I’m super intrigued to try this out
Dudette! Build me one please. :)
I got a Nescafe ad before a James video. The AUDACITY.
Mirna Jiménez.Hernández 😂😂😂
Same. I have a Keurig and now I feel bad about it 😂
Hahahah me too
Indeed, how dare they?! *sips offbrand instacoffee*
Ha ha me too! It makes me feel good that Google ads aren't as clever as we sometimes think they are!!
EK43: I can grind 20g/s
James: No
It may be why EK43 is so good. Given it's speed and single dosing it is by default equivalent to grinding few beans at a time. Hence why it need very fine setting for espresso...
The EK43 has a feeder so it’s basically feeding those massive burrs a few beans at a time, secondly there is never bean pressure on the burrs this is both an effect of the beans fed behind the burrs and the orientation of the burrs. It has therefore close to no effect to feed it slower.
I've been curious about this topic ever since Kruve released their sifters. I mean, what else to do with the boulders? But luckily I live in a world where James can do the tests so I don't have to. Keep up the good work!
Maybe James can do a Battle of the Kruve. VS a vibrating sifter used in labs. {with Sieves up to 1200 Micron} {Since the Lab equipment serves the same purpose but it is only automated, and has more sieve choices}
Avid Kruve sifter user and data recorder here. For about 80% of coffees (light roasts), they're clearer and sweeter as a V60 with the grounds sifted, and then the boulders re-ground one time. I toss about 2-3 grams of fines per 15g dose.
@@Roont3 - Thanks for sharing. Since I use a Clever, I would just throw the finer grounds on top of the crust and stir it in later in the brew cycle.
I tried this years ago, my coffee grinder jammed up. So be careful.
hey james, I would like to know if you would be intrested to make a video on how you clean your equipement. Maybe talk about the effect of different cleaning methodshave on your extraction. I do believe that most people (me included) do not maintain our tools well enough.
THIS
Yeah. Me too.
This would be great. I’m a relatively new V60 brewer, and desperately trying to figure out why my it is taking twice as long as it should to finish brewing. The only way I’ve been able to get reasonable results given this brew time is setting my Baratza Sette 30 on the coursest setting (30). I have attempted to clean it many, many times, but maybe it’s not sufficient.
If a proper cleaning doesn’t yield better results, then, we’ll, I have no idea what else to try.
I agree with this idea too
@@ericrogers4690 Hey I can probably give the assist on this one-- Are you stirring/swirling your v60 too much? I found there was a sweet spot for how much you want to agitate your v60 brew around. His v60 tutorial video has tons of depth but.. Try giving this a shot for a comparison: when you brew next time try not swirling/stirring and avoid running water on the sides. You'll see the brew time go down quite a bit.
I personally got into pour over about two weeks ago; realized I was stirring too much and it was okay to be a little more aggressive with the first half of pouring. I don't make a perfect cup, but it's definitely gotten better with practice. 😀
TL;DR- swirl lightly. use hot water. pour faster in the first half of the brew and level for the second half!
I made a comment as I sat down to watch the video that Jame was doing the work so we don't have to. I've finished watching and it ends up, I was wrong. We've been given homework! Time to grind...slowly.
careful with those early likes.
I will not do the homework (due to absence of a grinder)
so I won´t regret my like.
I hope he doesn´t find out.
I always grind slowly because I only have a hand grinder. lol
@@Koorstag Me too hahaha
@@Koorstag I hadn't thought about that, but it's interesting to think about it. I wanted to get a hand grinder for travel, but now I have another excuse, scientific comparisons!
I just tried this with filter coffee, and it was interesting but probably not worth the effort. My grinder is a Baratza Encore, and i used a plastic v60 with unbleached tabless filters. I did 20 grams of coffee to 330 grams of water using Hoffmann's ultimate technique (45 second bloom). Before doing this, I thoroughly cleaned the burr chamber and the chute that leads to the grounds bin. I had to put 20.5 grams in to get 20 grams out of a totally clean grinder for this. I usually grind on 13 for this coffee, and for this I ground on 11. My coffee was a medium roast Colombian. Grinding was PAINFUL. In the Encore, beans spin around between the burrs for a second before actually grinding, so it took 5-10 minutes (not sure exactly) to grind 20 grams. Upon a cursory visual inspection, the grounds looked about the same as usual, maybe a bit finer and with fewer fines, but it's hard to say. i brewed as normal, and the coffee drew down in about 3:20, as opposed to the usual 3:23 with this coffee. As far as taste goes, it was a little bit sweeter than usual, but that wasn't the main thing that I found interesting. The tasting notes on the bag are green apple, mandarin orange, and toffee. I find those to be pretty accurate, so they are what I will use to describe this coffee. Usually when I brew, the most prominent note is green apple, but with this new technique, the mandarin orange note became far more prominent, and the green apple sank into the background. The toffee note was also more prominent. It was also less bitter than usual. The bitterness wasn't a problem previously - it was the good kind of bitter, and was not too prominent - but this was nonetheless quite interesting. I'm tempted to try this again, but I've already had too much coffee and I need to be productive now. I hope this was interesting. Thanks for making this video, James. Super interesting.
Calvin Rey Hey Calvin thanks for sharing. I have this exact same set up. Wondering what brand of colombian you use. I've been using the scott rao method for my v60 just because it seems easier. To follow the Hoffman method do you use any app or just rewatch the video? For the Scott Rao method I use his app called Brewtime.
Great comment, enjoyed reading it, it's really interesting.
thanks for the info! what blew my mind the most is that you grind at 13 for v60!
@@henlolneh I grind at 10-11 for my Melitta - but I'm using cheap beans from Aldi. [For their cost, they're the best cheap beans you'll ever find. Not excellent, but good enough.] I use 29 grams per 500g water.
@@henlolneh i have also found 13 a good grind setting for medium roast. However, my encore is new and i was wondering which setting u use for a medium roast coffee for a v60?
I could see this opening up the doors to multiple stage grinders.
If I'm not mistaken, double grinding was used by a competitor on the WBC few years ago.
Multi-stage grinders, OR, perhaps grinders that have a way to control the rate of feed of beans to the burrs.
Like the DRM burrset?
Wonder if some company will make a residential roller grinder.
Or grinder with feeder.
i would like to see one niche grind coarsely directly into another niche grinding finely , double instantaneous grinding.
It would be like some Wallace and Grommet crazy wacky invention
This is the future.
Yaaaaaassssss!
Sounds like that would put it in a very niche market sector (sorry I had to)
double. burr set under one another
Spending hours re-grinding coffee? Sure. Ironing my shirts? Waste of time. Love your videos, I also find ironing a waste of time.
I mean, there are plenty of shirts made to not wrinkle so you don't need to iron them... Non-iron shirts I think they are called, even though that sounds like you can't iron them and not that you don't need to.
Been drinking Square Mile Los Ancestros all week. Between the coffee and your fun and light videos quarantine is that much more bearable.
Hoffman big brain: What if we could combat regrinding... by regrinding?
Felicia Barker Indeed it’s the same with “how to get the best brew from a french press”...don’t press!
Its 11:00 pm, I tried it and yeah it is sweeter, and noticably so. But I can't sleep now😂.
But you did good for science!
That's why god made Scotch whisky
I really appreciate how transparent you are, how you admit and make up for any mistakes, and respect conflict of interest issues etc. Not enough youtubers do this, and it really speaks to your high level of ethics.
Bruh we know he's fair skinned but isn't 'transparent' a bit racist? :p
@@alanz90 😂
Changing the amount of coffee that goes through the burrs affects the load of the burr, its speed, and therefore the ratio between cutting,shearing and compression forces,resulting in different grind profile. A higher load produces a "finer" grind, with more fine particles, while a lower load leads to a coarser and more uniform grind (it obviously depends on how you measure uniformity.
Controlling the feeding rate of coffee mass is one way to manipulate particle size distribution.
multi stage grinding also has a similar effect and its based on a similar principle. Splitting the load of the grinding process into multiple progressive stages produces a more uniform grind,with lower temperatures and higher output.
multi stage roller mills used in coffee industry have this kind of features, with controlled feed rate, 2 or plus stages of grinding, adjustable rolls speed, various rolls teeth profiles,densifying stage etc. allowing for a complete control of particle size distribution.
I totally believe that this comment should be higher up the list.
From my side I'd just add that you can try to measure and control the particle distribution in the final load of coffee being used for brewing.
By using tools like KRUVE Sifter or any other sieve set of known sizes and a scale, you should be able to tell how many (in terms of weight) particles of given size range are in the load. Different particles distribution profiles will effect the extraction during the brew and of course the final taste of coffee.
I would be happy to see someone (hopefully James himself) digging more into the subject.
Multi-step grinding isn't new, but it is new in the hand grinding industry. It is a game changer, opening a whole new world of coffee grinding. The challenge is how to produce uniform particles fast without too much fine
When I worked on a brewery I used to run my grain through the mill twice. The first time the rollers were set so they would just crack the grain. The second pass the rollers were a set a touch finer than normal. I ended up with little bits of malt with less flour than in a single pass. By doing this I got a higher extract effiency and faster lauter.
So who else is here cause Lance Hedrick did this yesterday ?
😂 me
Everyone: NO you cant just regrind ground coffee!
James: Coffee Grinder go brrrrr
*coffee grinder go burrrr
Please let the answer be 'no' I don't have the time to grind by hand twice every morning.
Hand grinding is already slower and should have a cleaner throughput already I would assume. Will it do a difference? You should try it!
Hjalti Hjartarson I think it has to do with the coffee in the chamber rather than speed
@@hjaltihjartarson Did you even watch the video? Cause you clearly didn't.
@@NeoAkira101 Well, we don't know what the impact of the burr speed is. Maybe this "undesirable" regrinding effect is negligible at slower speeds such as those you might produce in a hand grinder.
@@tysonking1805 Yeah, you are right :)
Me on the phone with customer service...🤓 "James told me to do it!"
Instructions unclear, I poured bloom sludge in my grinder
You probably did it the wrong way. I think it should be the leftover sludge lol.
Now I understand the "KEEP WATER AWAY FROM GRINDER" warning that is so blatantly displayed on my Barista Express.
I wonder if I could regrind espresso though...
You made my day with this comment man 🤣
I don't even have a grinder, why do I keep watching these lmao
Two months ago I didn’t really care about coffee.
My coffee tasted like burnt tires and so I just didn’t drink it 😬
Now I’m using the right water, measuring things, timing the shots, trying to taste different coffee, investing in better equipment and pulling shots just to improve my technique.
James, what have you done 😂
But does your coffee taste better than burnt tires though?
Nope, but it's the journey not the destination. -_-
You ruined your peaceful life
So you had an espresso maker just sitting there? Jealous...
@@colinmaynard2879 My thoughts exactly!
James new scientific method, take something we've done one way for decades, assert it could be wrong, then spend 15 minutes proving the answer is... possibly.
He does it far too well.
That's a pretty standard thing in science, actually 😅
@@r_bear I was about to say, isn't that a core concept of "null hypothesis"?
I just love how "taste" remains the standard of measure with James
@@stirfryjedi what else could be?
Seeing James put his finger in the coffee grinder for quite a long time while talking was just kinda scary.
You could make a multi-stage grinder as some have mentioned- you could also refine things and have a grinder that only allows one bean in at a time to REALLY slow things down while letting you "set it and forget it."
Aaand by dealing with single coffee beans (or quantums of coffee) at a time, you could call this new machine... THE QUANTUM GRINDER!
One *could* do all kinds of things, but first we need to know *if* it works, and if so, *why* it works. Asking thousands to test it is the right way to start. Innovation will happen if it's needed.
I can see the future of hi-end grinders with 4 stages. lol
@@worawatli8952 I can see such a thing working for people who are really, really adamant about getting the perfect espresso. Most mainstream grinders are intented to have high throughput because they will also be run in coffee shops.
Such a grinder would be a huge... niche... market. The Niche Quantum?
@@MelindaGreen It works, MOMENTEM works
After watching this, I tried feeding my beans into a hand held grinder a few at a time. V60 pour over method. Definitely a slightly sweeter result with the same beans and method that I had been using everyday, for at least a week. The conundrum: knowing my coffee could taste better...but having to grind for ten times longer to achieve it. For some maybe an easy answer:grind longer. Makes me question just how far I will go or how much of a perfectionist I am. My coffee making has become an S & M experience. LOL!
Your last sentence applies to lots of things when taken to a high level!
You had me at coffee. You kept me at S&M. 😂
MOMENTEM, the true dual-burr hand grinder that makes regrinding simple and fast, no more suffering for regrinding
Hey James, I've recently come across your videos and since watching them, the coffee i'm making at home is the best I've ever had anywhere. I hope people realize that you have brought world-class barista coaching to every day people, using every day language people can understand in some super entertaining videos! Thanks heaps! Luke
2 years too late but I tried slowly grinding my coffee beans in my hand grinder, I didn't add the beans slowly I just ground a lot slower, and I'm genuinely blown away by the results. An amazing cup of coffee! Everything else was the same. Same grind setting, same beans, same ratio, same brew method, same timing.
Another late response but still: does this mean that potentially slower settings for the grinder's motor would do the same job without need to slowly feeding the beens?
@@Cezve_340mleven later response, but lance hedrick has commented a lot on how lower RPM grinders produce less fines and have less retention
Wonderful video, James. I love the content you produce. Now I’m waiting for an inventor to produce a two stage, single dosing grinder. Can you imagine? First chamber produces the “unusable” coarse grounds that it is slowly fed downward into a second grinding chamber to be made into espresso grounds. Sounds crazy, and expensive, but what is coffee without ridiculous innovation and technology pushing the boundaries?
I've built what I call a small feeder to feed beans into my Baratza Encore I noticed that like this I can get a much more uniform grounds. But I need to select a much lower grind setting.
Ooh interesting will have to try this on my encore
Plans, or at least some guidance?
I was thinking of trying this with my Encore this weekend, when I have time to feed beans in slowly.
How have you made it out of?
How would one go about that?
Nothing super fancy I just 3D printed a funnel like device with a small hole that allows feeding 1 bean at a time. With smaller beans feeds more than one and bigger one do not work but anyway it works for me for sure you guys can think about something better suited
I am seeing people complaining about how this experiment is amazing but so time consuming. Just buy a sloth and train it to drop beans into a hopper - great coffee, saves tons of time, and a new pet.
I personally would prefer building a Rube Goldberg machine over a sloth. Especially as the former can include a sloth or a dozen if one wanted. And as you know, the more sloths the merrier!
Now that's using the Ole Noodle!
Thanks to this, now my little nephews have a job.
Always a pleasure seeing an upload from Sir Hoffmann, patron saint of coffee
Hoffmann*, put some respeck on his name.
Respek restored
I just tried a variation of this as a pour over. I'd been wondering about double grinding for a while, but this idea of feeding the beans slowly was intriguing enough for me to finally try it. I slowly ground a 22g dose at the coarsest setting on my Baratza Encore, then set the grinder about 3 clicks finer than usual and fed the grinder slowly, about a pinch at a time. Then I brewed a V60 at 16:1.
I don't want to comment on quality until I've tried it a few more times, but even at a significantly finer grind setting the brew finished about 30 seconds earlier than planned, and drawdown didn't slow near the end like I'm used to. This would seem to indicate a much lower amount of fines.
How about the cup taste?
Roller mills triple stage grinding before it was even cool.
The Austrian/Hungarian roller mills for grain were invented in the early 1800s, I believe? (They were the first mills to give fine, uniform, wheat flour, and are the main reason Vienna was where a lot of modern pastries and white bread was invented.)
Hey James, I'm a barista from Aus and drink almost exclusively filter coffee at home. I use a commandante hand grinder, and I have taken to grinding with it on its side to slow the coffee down before it goes in. I find that it gives much cleaner and sweeter coffee profiles. I know hand grinders are a different, much slower beast then electric but I think that it still hold merit. Thanks for your videos!
Dude I love this stuff! Will I ever try it, probably not but at least I know about it now. Thank you for making your curiosity public, this channel keeps getting better !
What if you ground coarsely, blew away chaff and skin, then reground...
I'm wondering how this ties in to grinding at a colder temperature - if part of the equation is that the grinding process inherently increases the temperature of the beans, and breaking up that process might allow the bean temperature to come back down.
Also, consider the process of bruising mint and other herbs. Damaging the cell walls releases bitter compounds while only bruising the exterior allows the oils to be extracted more sweetly. Perhaps the extended grinding of whole beans when the hopper is full serves to extract more bitter compounds.
Take a page from Dave Arnold and employ liquid nitrogen.
There's been a long-standing myth that grinding frozen espresso beans will lead to a more consistent grind. I wonder if someone actually ever tested it in a more scientific manner.
This was exactly the thought, which came up in my mind when I watched this video: What impact has the (increased) temperature, when the beans are "stressed" in the grinder for a longer duration? And vice versa: Could this effect be compensated by using deep frozen coffee beans? Any experiences with that?
9:21 I was screaming when you were holding your fingers in the grinder
I took the challenge.
Brew Method: James's Ultimate French Press
Baratza Encore grinder set at 12
39g Intelligentsia El Gallo Peru blend
656g NYC water Brita Filtered
I turned on the grinder, then slowly fed the beans into the chamber. I didn't time it, but it did take longer, though not as long as I expected.
Result:
The foam sitting on top of the cake was a bit smaller than usual. More central rear-tongue engaged in the flavor. Less complex in a nice way.
Sweeter and cleaner taste. No doubt, fewer fines. The acid test, so to speak, was the 2nd cup, some 20 minutes later. No overextraction and souring. Next time, I will carefully inspect the ground coffee.
The only negatives: extra work, time and noise.
Conclusion: Big improvement. and worth the effort.
So no 2nd grind, just slow feeding the beans to the grinder, yields a big improvement. Interesting.
I would be interested in knowing what the grounds look like under a microscope. The geometry of the grounds almost has to be different in some way.
James` next experiment surely ???
Yes, it must be different, waiting for something to share that experiment
"Little" Niche? That thing is an elegant beast. The one piece of gear you have that I really, really want. Stay well, James.
It was James' initial review and the fact that it kept popping up on subsequent videos that led me to order one. Only shame is that I have to wait until August to get it!!
Hey James, just a question - do you think this experiment would translate to hand grinders? Would grinding slower using the hand grinder produce a similar effect?
Me too
Same here! Eager to try this on my HG one.
I only tried once, my coffee was with milk, and it was less bitter. Still far from any conclusion though.
I don't see why not. Just load the hand grinder with a few beans and grind them before putting in the next few beans, etc, etc. Would probably be easier on your arm muscles too.
I know a lot of hand grinders don't like to grind espresso/turkish level grinds in one pass. You can do it but the beans don't feed well and you end up with a lot of work and fines.
What a lot of people do is pre-grind their beans coarse (could use a cheap grinder or even a blade mill for this) and those smaller pieces will feed into the burrs faster and easier, which pushes out grinds faster so they don't "regrind"
And this makes sense. Asking any device to turn a half-inch bean into a powder in one step is a tall order. But crushing beans into coarse grounds? simple. Grinding coarse grounds finer? fairly simple.
And with the ease of cleaning out a hand grinder, Why not test it? For grinders that are easily adjustable, you will probably spend the same time grinding because that first coarse grind will go very fast. And the second grind should be quicker and easier than normal.
I just tried this with my morning brew. The results are definitely interesting and noteworthy. I use a plastic v60 pourover, Baratza Virtuoso, and a locally roasted Colombian coffee, prepared using your pourover method. On the Baratza, I typically find myself grinding somewhere between 16 and 20 on the dial, depending on the beans, but for this experiment I took it down to 10.
I performed the experiment by dropping 2-3 beans in at a time and letting them grind the whole way throigh. 20g beans in, 250g liquid out. The Virtuoso is pretty consistent as is, but I was genuinely surprised to see how much more consistent the grind particles were.
As for taste, the resulting cup was just about perfect for this roast. It was significantly juicier and more balanced then my previous brews.
I absolutely love how this guy is 100% ready to question and put to test his own ideas again and again. To me this is the signature of scientific integrity. As a porous media scientist myself, I sometimes feel that this kind of approach is frequently lacking in much of the scientific community. Not many people have the guts to question their own beliefs and claims, and the lack of this questioning halts much scientific progress. In a world where people are ready to question their beliefs, science moves faster and coffee tastes better. Thank you again James!
Just did a nice cup of coffee in a V60 slow fed beans into my grinder nearly bean by bean at the usual grind settings. I would like to not have tried that... Because it made a great cup of coffee, if not one of the best one!
which grinder do you have?
I would try this on my Comandante but I'm too lazy to do it :p Anyone ready for the challenge? :D
Single grind, right?
@@pp-xu3rm I don't know if the brand is particularly good or popular but its a Graef electric grinder. Does a decent grind for me (no espresso machine)
@@gpmenga single grind pass yes. Though I'm thinking (to avoid jamming) if I could not do first pass in the electric and second pass in hand grinder...
The title sequence was absolutely brilliant!
this reminds me of Jia Ning Du's winning recipe for 2019 world brewer's cup. Granted it was a pourover not espresso but she also grounded her coffee twice, once coarse and then again finer.
I was wondering if this was applicable to those of us who are primarily pour over people. His comments about the end of the grind being coarser make me want to give the "slower bean feed" option a try.
Also her intention was to remove silver skin using Commandante grinder first.
I actually found out about regrinding from Jianing Du, the brewer champion from 2019. She recommended grinding at the coarsest setting, then SIEVING the fines through a 1000micron mesh, then regrinding it at the desired setting. That might have your desired effects without the problems of creating extra fines (since you sieved it away) and not having to worry about the slow grinding.
Same here, I recently found about Jianing Du, and I heard from her this first, I might try it to my beans
Du Jianing used similar technique on her 2019 World Brewers Cup winning recipe.
In the end, it is all about grinding the beans with a high uniformity and consistency - a very narrow, but high gauss curve.
Everything you do, needs to be better for at least one, and equal for the other.
I am very curious to try this with my mini moca but I would also like to use the grind size software you used earlier to see if you can see a difference instead of tasting it (I trust your taste buds more than mine). We could even do a small design of experiments to see how robust the system is - yes, I gonna try!
Yeah, after *making* coffee with it, the next thing to try is either filter sampling, or just "spread one gram out on some white paper and photograph it" and get some idea of the grind size distribution. (A single-bean-at-a-time grinder could have some very different design approaches...)
Let me know the results! Very curious....
Back when i was competing in a local filter coffee throwdown, I was told by my instructor to regrind my coffee. The purpose was to remove the chaffs so it doesn't bring any unwanted flavours into the coffee.
We ground our coffee in the courser setting, blow away the chaffs and reground it to the desired setting, and the result was... negligible, I would say.
Depends on the coffee and your brew methods?
Interesting, I recently started using my grandma's old manual grinder to make Turkish coffee. The only real way to use it is to hold it horizontally and knock a few beans into the burrs while continuously turning the handle. Too much at once and the grinder just seizes up and is impossible to turn. However, it only took fingertip amounts of grip on the handle once I got the hang of feeding beans at a slow enough rate.
Not exactly a scientific report, that's just what this video made me think of.
A surprising result is an understatement haha. This is so strange yet it is what it is. If the shot was tasty then it's hard to say otherwise. Thanks for the video James!
James, thank you so much for sharing this. I tried using my comandante ironheart hand grinder tilted at an angle to limit the feed rate. Huge difference in grind and taste. Used to do this to decrease resistance when the lido 3 was my daily driver per orphan espresso's recommendation.
What if there is a hand grinder with two burr sets designed for regrinding coffee? MOMENTEM
I continue to be happy to report that the time spent putting ten or so beans into the chamber at a time yields a superior brew. When it's my time to go, I will not regret the perhaps few extra days in total it took me to grind coffee properly. Those will be remembered as grinding days well spent.
What? there won't be coffee in Heaven? are you sure?
Morning coffee becomes afternoon coffee because of regrinding LOL, how about a manual grinder with two burr sets? MOMENTEM
I watched half this video and realized I had no clue what he was talking about. So, back to grinding my beans and making plain coffee with it as usual,
The 2019 WBrC champion Jianing Du mentioned that grinding twice is good and that was what she did in the championship competition.
Jon Gagne wrote about this in this thread
www.google.com/amp/s/coffeeadastra.com/2019/04/12/grind-quality-and-the-popcorning-effect/amp/
Grinding bean-by-bean emulates a higher quality grinder, having a lower particle size distribution
this might be related to my problems with hand grinding for filter coffee, i usually put the amount of coffee I need in the grinder, but because of the difference in pressure due to the lack of beans as described in the video, there is a huge disparity between the grinds at the beginning and the end of me grinding. Any thoughts? (this was very flow of consciousness sorry for grammar)
Yep, I use similar equipment, specifically Hario Skerton & CleverDripper so am interested in any results from similar hand grinder & paper drip filter experiments.💯
Same issue with my Hario mini slim, I'm going to try blocking off some quadrants in the hopper to reduce flow of beans into the burrs.
I have a similar issue. Granted, I use a slightly cheaper hand grinder. But i find theres a pretty big difference, at times, between the grinds i get at the beginning and the end. I'm curious how you may be able to implement this type of "slow grinding" process in a hand grinder.
Yeah, I think the video shed some light on why that is the way with the grind. After grinding coffee for many years, it is surprising to realize the unknown details.
@@Steenar123 Maybe you could grind a few beans at the time? If you grind without the lid on (assuming your grinder has one in the first place), it should merely be _somewhat_ annoying to keep feeding in a few beans at the time.
What's your opinion on blowing out the papery bits after the first grind, but before the second? I just tried that for the first time today, and I think it made the coffee better.
Those are generally just parts of the husk or leftover accumulated film from the processing depending on what that is, haven't found particular differences in less husk-y coffees myself but ymmv depending on what you're using.
@@Speedojesus there's chaff inside too, along the middle of the flat side. You can't remove it until you grind the beans.
Probably a good idea if they not only look like paper but taste like paper.
I wonder how your Niche was initially dialled in at setting 25! That's very high for an espresso grind. Normally the setting is less than 15 and often below 10. And especially as you have the FCD. Just wondering!
Just had a go - full beans fed slowly. Grounds were visably coarser and I pulled an 8 second shot rather than my usual 25-26. It was underextracted (as expected) but still tasted ok and I think I also got more sweetness but you may have just made me imagine that with your analysis. Will try again at a finer setting.
He did mention you have to grind finder, but the uniformity you'll get will be improved.
I tried this with my v60 just now.
I preemptively set my grinder finer in anticipation for a drastic change.
It seems I didn’t set it fine enough -maybe one or two clicks short- because this method provided a much courser overall grind than I was expecting.
Still, there were visually less fines in my brew and the grind seemed consistent enough. My biggest finding was how my final product -my drink- was noticeably less acidic than normal. It’s important to note here, my brew time was also 40 seconds shorter than usual.
This could be due to not grinding fine enough but I certainly don’t feel the coffee is under extracted. It has a very pleasant mouthfeel to it and many of the origin characteristics still shine through.
All in all, the coffee is still delicious. I may have to continue to play around with this while keeping notes to truly compare and contrast. I do find the staggering difference in grind size to be pretty interesting, though.
Perhaps this may even benefit from pouring the beans in slower since I maintained a slow, yet moderate, pace for the sake of time. I’m sure you’ll reach diminishing returns at some point or maybe you’ll invent a grinder that does one bean at a time, first.
Either way I’m glad you’ve introduced us to this new area of technique. It opens the door for even more nuance in an already over complicated process...and I love it ☕️
I've ground beans very slowly on the coarsest setting in my Encore and reground very slowly three clicks lower than usual for V60. It worked! It was more uniform, and the cup was cleaner and sweeter!
Regrinding is becoming popular, and there is a hand grinder made for regrinding coffee :) MOMENTEM
I have a sweet tooth and I live on the road as a nomad in the US. I have a hand grinder with the ceramic disc that grinds it would grind it very coarsely and then take those large courses and put them through again but with a smaller setting more like a medium and I noticed that when making my light roast hazelnut cream coffee with my Moka pot it was much sweeter much more enjoyable almost like drinking candy the aftertaste with that of sweet hazelnut cream I figure this out couple weeks ago before watching your video so imagine my shock and surprise discovering it was already covered.
I do this just to get a consistent grind size, with my cheap Hario hand grinder. Works great, and doesn't really take that long. I like the process of making coffee so the extra time grinding doesn't really bother me. I don't feed it in bit by bit, though. Just shove it all in again and give it another go over.
I had the same thought but hadn't tried it yet. In theory, at some point you'll get to the point where every piece of coffee is now a maximum possible size. This might mean more consistent. Though, it seems it might introduce more opportunities for fine coffee dust to accumulate.
I've been a subscriber ever since I saw your french press method. I've grown to have a much better appreciation for my coffee and am always trying something new. Videos like these are absolutely fascinating! Keep up the good work!
JUST had this question this morning and then hoffmeister dunks on me with this
I've been regrinding because my crap Sboly grinder won't go fine enough for espresso. 2 passes at the finest setting does alright!
This pushed my morning brew from "pretty good" to "excellent." Feeding my Baratza Virtuoso (old model) whole beans at a slow pace definitely made a difference, and even more so did feeding in coursely ground beans. Gone is the hollow taste from my morning brew and right up front is all the tasty goodness. This is now a part of my daily routine.
How about we make your grinding routine more pleasant and short, would you like to try MOMENTEM, a dual-burr hand grinder?
@@IMNOTABARISTA I'm down.