While its easy to get caught up in star ratings and numerical scores one can sit back and look at the porpoise of writing reviews at all. A wonderful specimin of cetacean, the porpoise will dive up to... hold on. That was a typo. I shall wax here about the purpose of reviews. I'm trying to scale each item on its own qualities by determining the scale on which it can be measured and placing it on that scale. How friendly to Dolphins can fishing for Tuna actually be, I mean, really? Friendly is the wrong scale of measurement. Fishing for Tuna can be measured on a dolphin scale of Killy, but killing less of them hardly categorises the process as friendly. One wonders if there are Tuna friendly Dolphins, which is unlikely.
Anyway, irrelevant as that was, what matters is the scale of measurements. Its very difficult to use an arbitary star rating largely because its arbitary, but its impossible to compare apples and oranges fairly until a scale and datum have been established. To this end, I'm going to reserve some space in each review explaining the comparisons but still try to avoid "This X is better that Y" statements.
So on the subject of grinding, I should probably mention the Krups grinder thats been serving me well. Its a Krups GVX2:
Which I bought because it satisfied all of my criteria, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It'll grind the right quantity of coffee, producing even results and its fast to use.Technically, for some processes you might want more than seventeen settings for the size of the grind but these only come into play under humidity, temperature and pressure conditions that arn't all that common at a fixed altitude in a temperate climate. If these become an issue you can counter a lot of the effects by switching to a moka pot rather than drip or press preparation and let physics do the hard work for you.
Likewise, quantity control is quantised to about 1/4 cup accuracy (1/8th of proper portions) but thats enough accuracy for my palette at least and fundementally it grinds all the beans you put in the top so if you put the right amount in you'll get the right amount out.
Its fast. Maybe a tad noisy, but I'm simply not measuring acoustics so have no complaint. It does take electricity, and lacks the contemplative satisfaction of a hand grinder due to its speed and the fact that you are no longer grinding the beans yourself. You have to decide when that is an issue and when it isn't. It also won't grind unless you've inserted the bin to catch the grinds and the hopper lid. Great for zero mess grinding but when those microswitches break it'll kaput the whole thing.
The down points a few and far between, but its a little difficult to clean. The exhaust nozzle that provides grinds gets a bit packed - especially with the finer grinds. When you switch to a coarse grind you can get up to a teaspoon of fine grinds and dust - very bad if you are switching from a paper microfilter to a cafetiere. This won't be a problem for day-to-day usage, where you may have a similar grind but cleaning can be a little fiddly.
While the cleaning process is a necessary evil, it is both an evil and necessary but the only frown on a so far faultless product.
Krups GVX2 Grinder - 9/10.
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