We’ve chatted before a little bit about the coffee bean grinder but not the KitchenAid coffee grinder. But today we’re going to go into some greater detail as well as focus on the KitchenAid coffee grinder choices for the professional coffee connoisseur. That’s you right! Well, I jest a little, you don’t need to be a connoisseur to appreciate that every home that enjoys coffee needs to have a coffee grinder to help ensure the freshest coffee possible.
I wrote about the manual coffee grinder earlier and how much I’m a huge fan of it. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first one being that the manual coffee grinder is a burr coffee grinder and the second being that well, it’s just nice to go back and appreciate how things were done before we had the luxury of electricity at the flick of a switch. So it should come as no surprise to you that if I’m going to recommend a Kitchen Aid coffee grinder then it will likely be the KitchenAid burr coffee grinder rather than the KitchenAid blade coffee grinder.
Differences in the type of KitchenAid coffee grinder
But before we get to that, let’s first consider the differences between a burr coffee grinder and a blade coffee grinder.
Burr grinding as the name suggests uses two abrasive elements to grind coffee beans. The elements are either wheels/discs or cone shaped grinders. It is helpful if you think of the burr that gets stuck to your leg as you’re out for a nice hike. This is similar to how the burr grinder works. Your sock is one element and the burr is the other. They squeeze and crush anything that gets in between. Unlike your sock though, the 2 burr grinding elements revolve tightly together.
A blade grinder chops the coffee beans with 2 or more blades that spin at extremely high speeds. One of the problems of blade choppers is that it is practically impossible to get the coffee beans to be chopped into same sized bits. The other problem is that because the blades spin at such high revolutions (20,000 rpm) or more, they heat up the beans as they chop them and this will affect the flavor of the coffee as the coffee bean oils are heated up too much.
Okay, so we’ve determined that a KitchenAid burr mill is best for your coffee, and you like KitchenAid because they make great products and you have the KitchenAid coffee maker to go along with your KitchenAid coffee grinder. At this stage you should know you’re which type of the KitchenAid coffee grinders you’ll choose, as KitchenAid provides both blade coffee grinders and burr coffee grinders.
My preference for the KitchenAid coffee grinder type
My preference for burr mills has always been the conical burr grinder over the disc burr grinder. Here’s why. The conical burr grinder rotates at a slower speed for less heat build up and because cones are thicker than wheels or discs, the conical grinder will last longer and has an appetite for a larger quantity of beans. You can grind more beans quicker in a conical burr grinder than you can in a disc burr grinder.
Thankfully, the KitchenAid coffee grinder that I’ve seen is exactly this type of conical burr grinder. And the price isn’t too steep when you consider the quality of the KitchenAid brand as well as the consistency and flavor you’ll be able to extract from your KitchenAid burr coffee grinder over the years that you own it.
The KitchenAid Pro Line burr coffee grinder would be the one I’d recommend. It has a 7 ounce hopper and coffee bean. Most of the parts are dishwasher safe, it’s quiet and you can choose from 15 grind settings for your coffee. And at around two hundred bucks or so I just don’t think you can find a better quality burr coffee grinder at a better price than this KitchenAid coffee grinder.