Why is the coffee grinder idling without grinding? How to wash and grind the Italian hand-brewed single-product coffee grinder?

Many friends who originally used hand grinding have purchased an electric bean grinder to grind coffee beans. The purpose is to free their hands and no longer need to carry out the boring process of grinding beans. However, electric mills are different from hand mills, and pay attention to many details when using them. If you don't pay attention, you can easily shorten the life of the bean grinder and greatly reduce the grinding quality.

It happened that many friends recently asked Qianjie about various related questions about the bean grinder in the store, so today Qianjie will come to share what details we need to pay attention to when using the electric grinder!

1. Pay attention to "washing and grinding" and "washing and grinding" are correct. The two washing and grinding mentioned in the front street here are two washing and grinding. Although both have the meaning of cleaning the bean grinder, the specific methods and functions are completely different. The first washing and grinding was done when we used a bean grinder to grind beans! If you often go to a coffee shop to drink hand-brewed coffee, it is not difficult to find that baristas will take out a few coffee beans and pre-grind them before grinding the beans used for brewing, and then put the beans into powder.

The purpose of this action is not to test the grinding degree of the coffee powder, but to quickly "clean" the knife head of the bean grinder. As we all know, no matter how good the quality of the bean grinder, there will be a phenomenon of "eating powder", that is, the ground coffee powder will be less than the coffee beans put in. This is because part of the coffee powder is left in the knife plate or the internal space during grinding and cannot be separated. At the same time, some coffee beans that are roasted deeply/flavored will attach their own oil and aroma to the knife plate.

If it is not cleaned, these "impurities" such as aroma, oil, and coffee powder will be mixed into the next batch of ground coffee beans, which will have a direct impact on the taste and cleanliness of the coffee. Therefore, we need to send a small amount of coffee beans to bring these substances out before formal grinding to avoid affecting the quality of the coffee. Generally speaking, Qianjie uses 1~2g/3~4 coffee beans to wash the machine. Too little will not work, too much will cause waste. But if we grind deep-roasted coffee beans too often, we need to pay attention to regularly deeply cleaning the bean grinder, and this is the second "washing machine" mentioned in Qianjie.

Because deep-roasted coffee beans tend to carry more oil, and these oil is not something that can be completely removed by simply using coffee beans. When the grease remains in the cutter head for too long, it will produce peculiar smell due to oxidation and other phenomena. Not only that, the oil will also aggravate the powder consumption phenomenon of the coffee maker, leaving more powder remaining in the bean grinder. Therefore, if we grind deeply roasted coffee beans frequently, then we should clean the bean grinder relatively frequently. As for how to clean up, Qianjie has shared it in previous articles, so you can search for it yourself. (But the structures of different bean grinders are not universal, so it is best to ask the manufacturer for relevant cleaning tutorials)

2. Start first, then drop beans. This is also an operation often shared at the front street meeting! When grinding coffee beans, we had better start the bean grinder first and then add the beans for grinding. This approach can have two benefits: the first is that it can reduce the wear and the probability of sticking of the cutter head! When the bean grinder is started, there will be a short transition time for the cutter head from static to stable rotation. The specific time will vary according to the quality of the bean grinder, but it is generally in the range of 0.5 to 1 second.

If we choose to drop beans first and then start the bean grinder, the presence of coffee beans will increase the resistance when the knife head is started and increase the load on the motor. For some small household bean grinders, if the density of the beans to be ground is high, it is easy to get stuck or cause failure due to motor overload. In addition, this will also increase the wear of the cutter head and shorten the life of the cutter head. Although the degree of wear and tear is minimal, it is the saying that a little adds up. Therefore, the Front Street Association recommends that when grinding coffee beans, start the bean grinder first, and then add coffee beans for grinding after the knife head rotates stably. This can not only effectively extend the life of the bean grinder and knife head, but also improve the quality of the coffee powder due to the consistent rotating speed.

3. Regularly check the thickness of the ground coffee powder. Qianjie often recommends that you purchase a No. 20 sieve to measure the sieving rate of the coffee powder. This is not only so that everyone can use the same parameters/grinding degree to brew coffee, but also because it can be used to calibrate the grinding scale of the bean grinder.

I don't know if you have noticed that as the bean grinder's use time increases, the grains it grinds will become thicker and thicker. Or rather, the brewed coffee is getting weaker and weaker, and insufficient extraction is beginning to appear? This is the result of the wear of the cutter head. Every time we grind coffee beans, we will bring slight wear to the knife head. As the number of wear increases, the spacing between the knife heads will become wider and wider, and the coffee powder ground under the same scale will become thicker and thicker.

When the grinding degree becomes thicker, the coffee substance flushed out will naturally decrease under the same parameters, so neither the taste nor taste of the coffee is as rich and plump as it was at the beginning. Therefore, if we want to re-brew coffee with rich flavor and full taste, we need to adjust the grinding to a finer degree until it is the same as the original degree. Through the No. 20 sieve, we can directly find the relative grinding scale. It is worth mentioning that this situation is most obvious on the care bean grinder. Just by looking at the scale, you can know that the scale value will be much smaller than before.

4. Pay attention to observe whether there is any fine powder clogging "idling without grinding beans", which is a situation that often occurs in Italian bean grinders. Simply put, when we started the bean grinder, although the knife head was rotating, it did not grind any coffee beans.

In this case, a high probability is caused by grinding too finely and then clogging the knife head with coffee powder. If this happens to friends, the first step can be to observe whether it is caused by fine powder clogging. If it is, then we can choose one of the following two options to solve the problem: the first is to directly adjust the rough grinding and increase the spacing so that the grinding can be resumed; the second is to clean the bean grinder as mentioned in Qianjie. As long as the fine powder blocking the knife plate is cleared out, the bean grinder can start grinding work again. (Don't learn)

So, the above are some small details that need to be paid attention to when using the electric mill. If you have anything to add, please leave a message~

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