Grinder angst

[Palpitation]

Hello,

Hope you are not all completely fed up with novice questions.

I'm am shortly going to invest in a little espresso machine (Gaggia Baby probably, unless someone thinks this is a huge mistake for some reason) and look forward to making my first steps on the road to espresso nirvana.

However, I just hadn't realised the importance of the grinding until I did some research on the machine and came across sites like this.

Now, I've already got a grinder which I've been using for my French press coffee. It's a old war horse that dates back to the sixties, just your basic tall round one, in lovely "stylish" orange and brown plastic. It has no settings apart from "on" and "off", but it has been going forty odd years and it happily grinds away to what looks to me to be the same consistency as *gasp* ready ground coffee.

Would I need anything more fancy than that in order to get a decent result?

 

[Sinister703]

well, you need a fine & consistent grind for a good espresso, and the ability to tune (coarseness/fineness) the grind is pretty essesntial.
Your old grinder might have pretty dull burrs (grinding discs) and I'd suggest investing in a new one.
If you want a good 'home' grinder that can do french, espresso, & drip, Id suggest the Solis Maestro Plus as its solidly built, heavy, and has a wide grinding range.
If you want one just for the espresso, a really nice machine is the Innova I1, a doserless (fresher coffee ) model that grinds on demand and has a great range of espresso grinding (but not for other brew methods)
I think the Solis is bout 150 US and the Innova bout 200US but dont quote me on that .
Grinding is really important to getting a good espresso extraction, more important than the quality of the espresso machine is the quality of the grinder, in my opinion.

I jsut found a link to the Innova I1 doserless, here it is (240 $ though)
http://www.espressoparts.com/index.php/ ... 7/1018/I-1

Good luck on your espresso travels :-D

 

[Palpitation]

Thanks so much. That's just the kind of info I was looking for. *auch* says my bankaccount. :shock:

But if it has to done....

I think I might go with an espresso only grinder and use the orange beast for the French press coffee. I'm kind of sentimental about it as it used to belong to my gran so would like to hang onto that too and I've also worked out the "technique" to get a decent French press cup of coffee out of it. But espresso probably is a blade too far for the old thing.

Thanks again.

 

[Sinister703]

Yeah, thats the way id suggest going, the I1 is such a good machine too, I can't recommend it enough. I use it for decaf in my shop, and its very reliable and well-built.
Good Luck!

PS the I2 (by Innova also) has a lower power motor and some plastic parts in place where the I1 has metal parts. It sometimes stalls on grinding too from what Ive read; the I1 has never stalled on me.