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How do I grind coffee beans myself?

The short answer is, you need a good coffee grinder. What makes a coffee grinder good? Basically four things:

  • Consistent Grind
  • Precise Grind
  • Quick Grind
  • Cool Grind

Consistent Grind​

This is the most important feature of a good grinder, by far.

Roasted coffee beans are very brittle. That means that a coffee grinder works by "shattering" the bean into smaller and smaller pieces. A good grinder will break beans into pieces that are all pretty much the same size. This is important later to make sure all the little pieces of coffee brew the same (instead of some getting "overbrewed," others being "underbrewed," and only some others being "just right").

Precise Grind​

This is the second most important feature of a good grinder.

Precision is a related concept to consistency, but they are distinct components of a good grinder. Consistency describes how much "variation" there is in the final grind profile. Precision describes how specific you can be when setting the grind target. A lot of electric grinders (especially the less expensive kind) have "stepped" grind settings—for example, 1 through 10, or "Extra Fine" through "Extra Course." But what happens if the "sweet spot" for your particular beans and particular brew method lies in between two settings? On a stepped grinder, you usually don't have a choice.

That's why some higher-end grinders are "stepless" or "continuous." That means you can pick a grind setting anywhere on the spectrum between coarse and fine, with no pre-determined settings that you have to stop at.

Quick Grind​

This is more about convenience than taste—it's just a hassle to have a coffee grinder that's slow. A lot of the time, your coffee routine will be a recurring part of your week, if not every day. An extra minute or two might not seem like much, but over the course of a month that can add up. It can also be a psychological discouragement if you know that the grinding process is tedious and slow (but maybe that's a benefit, if you know you drink too much coffee and want to cut back!).

Cool Grind​

This is the least important factor, but it's still worth mentioning.

In this case, "cool" means "low temperature" (although there are definitely some "cool" grinders out there too!). Since the tasty stuff in coffee are aromatics, it's important to keep your coffee from getting warm until you put it together with hot water. Otherwise, the heat essentially "boils" the aromatics out of the coffee. A good grinder will shatter the beans into small, consistent pieces without warming them up too much.