Spent $120 on a fancy manual coffee grinder and I regret it big time

Picked up a Comandante C40 last month because everyone online swears by it. But I grind 40 grams every morning for my Chemex and it takes me nearly 3 minutes of cranking. My arms get tired and I swear the grind consistency isn't any better than my old Burr King that cost $40. Has anyone else found that hand grinders are way overhyped for daily use?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_rowan15d ago

Dude I bet your Burr King was actually grinding better because those cheap electric grinders use spinning burrs that fling grounds everywhere and create this chaotic particle distribution that actually works better for pour over. The Comandante gives you this super uniform grind that sounds great on paper but makes your coffee bed pack down tighter and stall the drawdown. I switched to a much cheaper ceramic burr grinder and my brew times went from 5 minutes to 3 and the coffee tastes sweeter to me. Have you tried just pouring your grounds into a strainer to see if the C40 is giving you more fines than you think?

jake_owens15d ago

My brother spent $180 on a Comandante and now uses it as a paperweight on his desk because he got tired of cranking before his coffee was even brewed. @the_rowan you might be onto something about the fines thing because I tried sifting my C40 grounds once and there were way more tiny particles than I expected. Honestly I think the whole "hand grinder superiority" thing is just coffee snobs convincing themselves that manual labor equals better flavor. Ngl I'd rather spend that extra time sleeping than pretending I'm a 19th century pioneer every morning.

the_margaret12d ago

Did anyone else here buy into the hand grinder hype purely because of internet buzz? I used to defend my manual setup like it was a personality trait, but your point about the fines distribution makes more sense now that I think about how my brew times changed after switching back to electric. Honestly, you might have just saved me from buying a $200 grinder I'd end up hating.