Best Coffee Grinder for Your Kitchen in 2023 - Buy Side from WSJ

We asked baristas, coffee shop owners and other pros what they use in their own homes — and tested them out ourselves to bring you, coffee lovers, the best coffee grinders

Written By

Written by

Contributor, Buy Side from WSJ

David Murphy is a contributor to Buy Side from WSJ and technology expert.

Updated October 22, 2024, 4:19 PM EDT

$150

$195

$80

$81

$299

Coffee grinders have a simple mission: transform coffee beans into smaller chunks, which you then mix with 200-degree water to create a delicious caffeinated drink that gets you going in the morning. "When you buy whole bean coffee and grind fresh just before brewing, you get more of a full experience of the aromatics and the flavor of the coffee [compared to pre-ground coffee]," said Eileen Rinaldi, founder and CEO of San Francisco's Ritual Coffee Roasters. "You might think that this is something only coffee connoisseurs would notice, but in my experience, pretty much everyone who gives it a try sees the difference."

The actual process of grinding coffee beans can be complex, though, because different types of coffee taste best when made with grinds of a particular size. For example, you'll want to use coarse particles for cold brew versus fine, dust-like grinds for the best espresso. Get the grind wrong, and you're likely to over- or under-extract your brew, giving you a mixture that tastes sour, weak or bitter.

Coffee grinders break down coffee beans with either blades or burrs (conical or flat). Blades cut beans instead of pulverizing them, so you'll get a lower grind quality as they create a wider variety of particle sizes in your grind, and that's not what you want - you're more likely to have over- or under-extracted grounds when brewing, which will affect the overall flavor of your coffee in an unpleasant way. Grind consistency is the key to good coffee, says Kyle Porterfield, owner of Dark Moon Coffee Roasters in Las Vegas, and a quality burr grinder is the best way to get even, regular results.

That precision doesn't come cheap. You can buy a basic blade grinder that chops up beans for the price of a few lattes from your favorite coffee shop-or, at the other extreme, you can buy a 98-millimeter burr grinder for home use that costs the shop's entire monthly rent. (Seriously: The high-end Option-O Lagom P100 grinder is $2,650.) Our pick, Baratza's Encore, is a happy medium: a tough, entry-level grinder that supports a huge range of grinds for every common coffee-brewing technique.

If you'd like to read how we vetted and tested these grinders, and which experts we consulted, scroll down for more detail.

Buy Side Top Pick

$150 at Amazon

$150 at Crate & Barrel

Baratza's Encore delivers high quality and consistency, with added value: The company's array of replaceable parts make it a better investment than other burr grinders, as Rinaldi points out. Many of the more affordable grinders don't operate as well, she says, and "they are not designed to be repaired, so as soon as there is a minor problem, they are garbage."

The Encore isn't without its downsides. It's loud and was the slowest grinder we tested, anywhere from a few seconds' difference to twice the amount of time, but it's also a workhorse. The grind range matches or beats that of grinders more than twice its price and the Encore is easy to disassemble and clean; it didn't jam up in any of our tests.

If you are willing to invest a little more for a sleeker-looking device with a weightier feel, slightly better grinding performance and a bit of automation, the $250 Baratza Virtuoso+ offers an LCD screen with a built-in timer so you can "set and forget" your morning grind. We also love its LED-lit grounds bin, so you can easily see how much you've made each morning.

$195 at Fellow

$195 at Crate & Barrel

Fellow's Opus Conical Burr Grinder is an excellent choice for home coffee brewers who want to be able to make the widest range of drinks without having to buy more than one grinder. Unlike the Baratza, it can grind beans fine enough to be used for pulling espresso shots; at its coarser settings, it can produce grounds appropriate for cold brew. There are 41 grind settings, plus the option to fine-tune in between them. The Opus arguably looks better than the Baratza, and it's nearly 3 inches shorter, so it should fit under more kitchen cabinets. But unlike higher-end Fellow models, including the aluminum Fellow Ode, its housing is entirely plastic.

In addition to grinding well, the Fellow has a number of nice touches that make it more enjoyable to use. Its front-facing grind button automatically shuts off after a set period, depending on how many times you press it; the cup that grinds catches the grounds magnetically snaps into place, so you don't have to worry about it being properly aligned; and the hopper lid has suggestions for which settings to use for different brewing methods and can be used to measure out your beans. This model is quieter than the Baratza, but that's relative. It's still crushing up beans between steel burrs, and that still makes noise.

The Opus has a few shortcomings, all related to the coffee after it's ground. We found there to be significant retention in the hopper, with grounds raining out and forming a mound on the unit's base with even a slight bump. "There is some natural buildup of grinds inside so having that release and fall on the platform can happen," says a spokesperson from Fellow. It's worth giving the grinder a few good smacks before you remove the catch cup to loosen as much ground coffee as you can. The cup also held on to grounds in our tests, despite Fellow's claims of "antistatic technology." The company sent a second cup, which we tried to see if that was the issue, and had the same result. Taken together, these two factors mean the Opus falls short of the "mess-free morning" Fellow promises, but we don't think they're dealbreaking factors.

$80 at Amazon

$132 at Bodum

This burr grinder's mildly frustrating design quirks are balanced by its impressive performance. It's the machine for you if you want the widest possible grind range for a relatively low cost and you're not bothered by a somewhat clunky process so long as your coffee tastes great. "It'll make really sufficient coffee and give you a tight enough particle distribution so that you won't have wonky flavors," says Jonathan Riethmaier, barista and owner of Mammoth Espresso in New Orleans.

In our testing, Bodum's Bistro matched our top pick, Baratza's Encore, for grind consistency and range. It even managed to grind a 27-gram sample of beans twice as fast-though its "auto-shutoff" feature kicked in too early, which meant we had to restart it. At times, even accidentally touching the grinder would shut it off. Experimenting with grind sizes is difficult because there is no ability to set the grinder to a specific number; you have to remember which dot correlates with the grind size you want, which is more cumbersome.

$81 at Amazon

$84 at Blue Bottle Coffee

The Porlex Mini Grinder II's small cylindrical design hides a lot of functionality. It's more adjustable and produces a wider range of grinds than our electric picks and it also costs less. The caveat: You're doing all the work yourself. "If you're the kind of person who hand chisels the perfect ice cube for your cocktail or mills your own flour, you'd probably love the satisfying feel of the beans crunching in the mechanism as you turn the hand crank," says Rinaldi.

Adjusting the grinder's burrs for different granule sizes and brewing techniques is as easy as clicking a dial. And while Porlex's Mini Grinder II won't blow you away with how many beans it holds (roughly 0.7 ounces) or how fast it grinds, it's good enough for a single cup, or to pair with an AeroPress, one of our favorite coffee gifts.

$299 at Bloomingdale's

$299 at Amazon

If you're serious about your coffee and want a range of coffee grind options or the ability to grind on the go, the Comandante MK4 is a worthwhile pick. This hand-held grinder is "as good as coffee professionals in a commercial setting," Porterfield says. Its super-precise adjustments (25 to 30 microns per click) make it easy to crank out everything from coarse-grind cold brews to powder-fine espressos.

One downside is that you need to count clicks when manually adjusting the grinder's burrs and the dial becomes tougher to move as you reach the very end of the "fine" range for espresso-size granules. But the MK4 makes up for this inconvenience with speed: When we ground 27 grams (about an ounce) of beans with this device, it did it in half the time of the Porlex Mini Grinder II. Since the MK4's's large handle is attached to its top cover, you're able to really crank out your coffee without fear of the handle flying off, and you can store the grinds in one of two included containers, which lower-end, "single-cup" devices don't offer.

With a built-in timer and the ability to deposit grounds directly into a portafilter (not included), Baratza's $300 Sette 30 is a quality pick if you love espresso. It grinds beans with precision but lacks the wider grind ranges and general features of the Encore or Virtuoso+, and it's more expensive. It shreds beans faster than any of the other Baratza models we tested, and it was the easiest to set up, but it's incredibly loud. It also takes longer to adjust than the Virtuoso+.

We eliminated Fellow's sleek-looking $300 Ode Brew Grinder even though it ground beans faster and quieter than any other device we tested. Its 3-ounce hopper feels impractically small, and in our testing we found that a full hopper of beans tended to jam more than other grinders. It also doesn't offer the same wide range of grind sizes as our less-expensive Baratza picks.

I've built benchmarks, set up spreadsheets of specs, and tested the best and worst of consumer technology for leading product-recommendation websites and magazines for more than a decade. My expertise lies in gadgets and appliances like Wi-Fi routers and desktop monitors, and more recently I delved into the world of coffee creation as local coffee shops began shutting their doors at the start of the pandemic. For this article, I interviewed five experts-baristas, owners of some of the country's most highly rated coffee shops and the coach of a national award-winning barista-for their insights and advice on choosing the best coffee grinder.

Our experts agreed that a burr grinder in the $100 to $200 range is a good target for typical at-home coffee creators. You'll get either ceramic or the more durable stainless-steel burrs and you'll be able to produce a variety of grinds for different kinds of coffee: espressos, pour-overs, drip coffee, French press, cold brew and more. Pricier steel-burr grinders typically have a sleeker design and the ability to grind beans directly into portafilters for espresso (the cup-with-a-handle that detaches from your espresso machine and holds your "puck" of coffee). They can also grind beans faster, quieter and across a wider range of sizes, and may even offer timer- or weight-based grinding.

When we asked our experts for recommendations, including what they used at home, all of them mentioned Baratza-either one model or a few-citing the products' impressive quality, consistent results, exceptional customer service and reparability. We considered approximately 20 grinders in total and tested five electric grinders and two hand-held grinders (the ones that received multiple independent recommendations from our experts or were within our $100 to $200 price range).

We considered the following factors in our testing:

As part of our testing, we ground eight batches of medium-roast beans across each grinder's full range of particle sizes. We used our eyes, fingers and a Kruve Brewler measuring tool to compare the results, and we also timed how long it took each device to grind 27 grams (about an ounce) of beans-a typical amount you might use in your French press.

-Additional reporting by Nick Guy

As part of our testing, we ground eight batches of medium-roast beans across each grinder’s full range of particle sizes. We used our eyes, fingers and a Kruve Brewler measuring tool to compare the results, and we also timed how long it took each device to grind 27 grams (about an ounce) of beans—a typical amount you might use in your French press.

—Additional reporting by Nick Guy

David Murphy is a contributor to Buy Side from WSJ and technology expert.

Shopping for quality products made easy