Cuisinart Programmable Conical Burr Mill

Are you looking for a good conical burr grinder and wondering if this one is worth your money? Of course you are. That's why you're reading this.Lemme cut to the chase. I spent in the neighborhood of $70 to replace a blade grinder. It's well worth the money.People talk about the static in the plastic bin like it's crazy messy. It's not. There's just a little coffee dust remaining once the coffee comes out. Nothing you don't expect. And it's drastically less than what remains in a blade grinder after you tap it empty. If it's a deal breaker for you just put a sandwich bag in it first before putting the lid on. Or rinse or brush it out. It's not a big deal. Really.The reason you should buy this grinder is you're upgrading from a blade grinder and/or you drink regular coffee. If you make espresso at home and have a machine that costs less than $500, this grinder will do you just fine too. It vastly improves your coffee's aroma. If you smell your coffee in the cup and it smells slightly burnt or acrid towards the end of the sniff then you have one of two problems: old beans that have been exposed to too much oxygen for too long (they've oxidized) or you're using a blade grinder and heating the beans when grinding them.As long as you have decent beans (ideally brewed 5-14 days after roasting for optimal flavor), use good filtered water, and use enough beans this grinder is going to give you a great cup of coffee.Speaking of using enough beans... there's just one issue with this grinder: it doesn't put out enough coffee when selecting cups. I've done a few tests (though nothing extensive) and I recommend weighing the coffee you like at the grind you like to find out which setting works best for you when you first get your unit. You'll likely find that the amount of coffee you use and the number of cups you'll need to set to grind will be two different things.I have several friends who are coffee roasters and one of the owns a coffee shop. I've bugged all of them for their coffee recipe, since everybody is a bit different. The best recommendation was this: 16:1 water to beans by weight. It's important to note that it's WEIGHT and not VOLUME.The trick to good coffee is weighing everything. The coffee industry plays fast and loose with the word "cup" enough so that using volume as a measurement is unreliable. The old "heaping tablespoon" measurement just shows how non-specific the directions for making coffee are.When this grinder is on the 1 cup setting, it puts out between 6-7 grams of coffee grounds. At 7 cups it put out 45 grams of coffee so it seems consistent when grinding multiple cups.Unfortunately, this is not nearly enough ground coffee to make a good cup of coffee. Remember the 16:1 ratio. This is closer to 7.5:1. My advice: double the cup amount on the grinder and then go down one number. So if you want 4 cups of coffee (cups on the side of your coffee maker, not "cup" as in 8 oz.) then you'd grind 7 cups worth of coffee on the grinder. (That's 640 grams of water for 40 grams of ground coffee.)As for whether you should keep your beans in the hopper, the coffee purist in me would tell you to get a container with a vacuum seal for the ultimate in coffee storage. However, if you are a daily coffee drinker, the hopper only stores 1/2 lb. of coffee so for the ease of use, you can get away with storing your beans in it since you'll be turning over the entire 1/2 lb. in less than a week. If you're a big family or drink coffee more than once a day, you'll be replenishing the hopper every few days.Will it get a little stale? It depends on your beans but I haven't noticed a real difference between the hopper and an OXO plastic storage container.Bottom line: If you want an inexpensive conical burr grinder, this one does the trick just fine. In fact, it works so easily and simply, using it for the first time is a little underwhelming. It just grinds the coffee properly in less than 15 seconds. But tasting is believing.Once you use a conical burr grinder instead of a blade grinder, you'll never go back.

Pros:Works very well, producing very uniform grind consistencyAdjustment for grind size from powder-fine to very coarse is simpleLooks very niceFeels heavy and well-madeBean hopper on top has a generous capacity, as does the ground hopperCons:The grind hopper builds up significant static and tends to scatter grounds on the counterGrounds tend to collect behind the ground hopperAfter reading reviews on several units, I settled on this one. I knew I wanted a vertical burr grinder for ground consistency, and I like that you can store plenty of beans in the input hopper. The hopper lid fits on tightly enough that I don't feel the beans will become stale while stored there, and in fact I have not noticed any drying out or staleness in the beans I have stored in it so far.The back light for the LCD display is a pleasant blue color, and does not have an "off" setting, so those who would prefer their kitchen / kitchenette not to have a faint blue night light might want to unplug it when not in use, or put it on a switched outlet / power strip.I only use the manual grind function and only grind what I need for one cup at a time, so I cannot comment on the programmable functions. I do notice that it is easy to make a mess when scooping grounds out of the output hopper due in part to the amount of static that builds up on the plastic output hopper, but I just put down a paper towel to work over, or just wipe the counter afterwards. It is not like a big coffee bomb goes off when scooping out coffee (unless you drop the output bin like I did once), but getting some grounds on the counter top is unavoidable. I have noticed that grounds accumulate behind the output hopper and require periodic cleaning out, but even that is not such a big deal to me - some may feel differently, but it only takes a few seconds every few days.Overall, this grinder has made a nice companion for my single-serve coffee maker, and now I can have freshly ground coffee for every cup without spending as much on the individual prepackaged cups. Using the grinder the way I do, I figure the grinder will pay for itself in a couple of years, and I can enjoy any kind of coffee I want without having to find a compromise in the prepackaged cups.