Hario Canister Ceramic Coffee Mill

Well with prompting from @BaristaOnDutY I ordered an inexpensive burr grinder, the Hario Canister Coffee Mill, a few days ago.

Nearly everyone in the house has been ill this week and I think it caught up with me, but the Hario canister coffee mill finally arrived and I had to give it a test drive.

Before going much further there are a couple of things I should mention. The only words on the box or in the instructions printed in English were, "Hairo Cansiter Coffee Mill", every thing else was in Chinese. Great! It actually made me laugh out loud though. But that wasn't so bad, all that was need to get the grinder working was place the rubber grip to the jar's bottom, remove a cork inserted into the lower grinder opening and install the handle. Kid stuff, right? While installing the handle, I figured out how to adjust the grind. You do this by turning a wheel up or down on the crankshaft. OK that's not so bad, but there are no marks or indicators, it's all trial and error. Luckily it only took one adjustment to get a proper grind for a pour over. I think it's a little course, but it wasn't to bad. It took about one minute to grind enough beans for a cup.

Well my water was hot, the coffee was in the filter and I was ready to roll. I should mention that while I was pouring beans into the grinder one fell on the counter, which I promptly ate. I do that all the time, but today it was a mistake since it completely overloaded my taste buds for who knows how long.

So I did my pour over anyway and I noticed a big difference right of the bat. For the first time my coffee actually developed bloom on top. But wait, there's  more, on this pour the filter didn't clog before the drip was done. The filter plugging has always been a problem when using coffee processed in the blade grinder. So my guess is with the blade grinder there were too many fines, or dust, being produced which clogged the paper filter.

Like I mentioned earlier, I had eaten a bean so there was no way to really compare the coffee flavors from the blade grinder to the burr grinder, but I am sure this Sumatra Red Badger was a bit more robust and picked up some spice that I didn't taste before.

There are problems with this budget grinder, no marks to ensure repeat settings, no English instructions, and I don't think the hopper will hold enough whole beans to grind for a press batch. I paid $42.00 for this grinder off of amazon.com and so far I think it was the right choice.

Rated 8.5