This is the amateurish part of my home setup: A Bodum Antigua burr grinder, and Zojirushi auto-drip brewer. Both are needles in the rough of bad consumer coffee equipment, and the pairing does a great job of keeping my non-obsessed wife happily caffeinated (while retaining the level of quality I demand for myself).

A lot of us in the coffee biz, myself included, get worked up about brewing devices and methods — v60 or Chemex? Stir or no stir? Is it a Clever or an Abid? — and tend to focus a ton of our energy on the subtleties of a great coffee. (For example, a recent Twitter conversation in which I decried the lack of “buttery”-ness of a fancy Yirgacheffe I brewed on a Chemex, and an acquaintance’s agreement with note that this same Yirg, brewed on v60, was “way buttery”.) And this is all well and good; I’m sure master violinists have their debates on which brand of rosin brings out the most character in a high B. But on a slow and steady mission to convert so-called “coffee snobs” of the Starbucks variety into certified coffee connoisseurs, there is no step more important than this: Buy fresh beans from a good roaster, and grind them yourself. 

Lately, however, I’m feeling guilty… Like a preacher who urges a congregation of illiterates to read their Bibles more often. Because while my customers have a good selection of fresh roasted, fairly traded coffees to choose from, and a good number of devices (presses, AeroPresses, Clevers and more) to brew them in, I don’t have a single grinder to sell them. In fact, I don’t even have one I can wholeheartedly recommend.

To step backward a bit, the first retail equipment I ever carried was Bodum’s, and I still carry of few of their presses to this day. I even brought in a case of Santos Vacpots, and the minimum-order of 2 Bodum Antigua burr grinders. This was probably two years ago, and while I managed to convince people to buy the vacpots, the two grinders were never sold. One sits in my kitchen; the other I gave to my manager. It’s not an “expensive” grinder; its MSRP of $100 is well below Baratza’s cheapest offering. And it’s not a bad grinder, believe it or not — grinds retention is almost non-existent (less than a gram) and it gives pretty even results. (Skeptics may refer to this piece by David Walsh.) But no one ever showed any interest in it, and those who did simply asked where they might find something similar for a lower price. I’ve pointed them to a Krups burr model that was my first real grinder; at $50 it’s affordable, it doesn’t take up much space and it does a decent-enough job if you’re hardcore about cleaning out the chute… I’ve suggested the Hario mills, but never attempted to carry them due to an abundance of eye-rolling by customers shocked that anyone would suggest a by-hand grinder in the 21st century.

There’s just something about coffee grinders that makes them a hard sell. $3 more per pound for really good, fresh coffee? I can sell that. Boil water and use a Clever despite the added labor? I can sell that, too. But $100 or more on a grinder is something I can’t seem to sell, despite my conviction that it’s REALLY important. Which may say something about me as a salesman, but it says something else too: We’ve made a big deal about buying good coffee, and done a great job of showcasing new (or old) brewing methods through tastings and such. But the grinder is still just a machine, and we haven’t figured out how to make it sexy. Yet.