Wilfa - Svart WSCG-2

Love my Svart, but I suspect OP is in the US (budget given in dollars) so Wilfa not an option, unless things have changed recently.

Also what country are you in? I really like my Wilfa Svart as a solid and cheap grinder, but it's not an option for those of you outside Europe (or certainly wasn't last time I looked)

Nothing to do with price or value, it’s just about quality and taste. You can buy coffee beans for three quid from the supermarket and grind them as you need them. They should give you a better taste than buying the same stuff pre-ground. The entry level for speciality coffee is going to be close to ten quid for 250 grams. If you do decide you want a grinder, I’d recommend the Wilfa Svart. It’s a small electric grinder. I’ve been using mine for getting on for a decade, and paid £100 with a bag of beans thrown in.

The burr grinder makes a big difference. Baratza Encore it up! That's the price to performance grinder I would recommend. I have the Wilfa Svart, turns out I needed a voltage transformer for it in the US so I'd just recommend the Encore instead if you also live in 120v land. p.s. the hopper size means nothing - weigh your beans and throw the amount you weighed into the hopper and grind. Don't keep beans in the hopper. That's something I learned over time.

I'll second the Wilfa Svart recommendation, though I find it starts to struggle at espresso grinds.

I’m no expert but have read from people who are and have chatted to local shops who do great pour over. There seems to be a positive to an uneven grind when it comes to pour over. Partick Rolf from April talks about using a Wilfa Svart Aroma to win a brewing competition. I’m reading this with interest though. I have the std. all black Svart and I think I’m doing ok, but the grass is always greener.

I have this as well and agree I never saw it when I was in the US. Only here in Europe.

We have the Wilfa Svart, fantastic little grinder for the cost. Here in the Uk I managed to pick one up second hand barely used on FB marketplace for £40. Does a great job for aeropress and V60

I’ve got 5 at this point, mazzer major with ssp burrs for daily espresso, wilfa svart for filter, an ascaso mini for decaff espresso, a turkish grinder and a cheapy one for spices. The wilfa was bought for having at work, but now I’m remote it’s not seen a lot of use

Get the best grinder you can afford. There's no substitute for freshness in coffee grounds, no matter what the bag says! I have an Etzinger etz-i, but if you're unwilling to spend £200 on a hand grinder, there are plenty of other choices! James Hoffmann did a review on the [KinGrinder P1](https://youtu.be/EPbVUR6Y83k?si=LdQ82LSeqs3EpFdm), which only costs £30ish. It's reviewed well, it might be a good starting point if you're on a budget. Stepping up, you could look at other offerings from KinGrinder, Timemore or 1Zpresso, they're the big names for budget grinders. Check the reviews, but it's my understanding that you can't go too badly wrong with their offerings. If you want to go electric, look at a Sage, Baratza Encore or Sette, Fellow Ode or Opus, or Wilfa Svart for good starting points, they can all be had second hand for not a lot, but I do see the odd Fellows going for £150 or so new. There are bargains to be had here and there! I kind of gloss over electric grinders not because they're no good, but because the money you spend is put to better use if the manufacturer doesn't need to pay for electric motors. Grinding as coarsely as a moka pot needs isn't too onerous, and the money just goes into making a decent grinder. Electric grinders start at well over £100 for anything worth looking at, so unless you're grinding for 4 espressos every morning, you'll get much more bang for your buck grinding by hand. I do make 4 espressos every morning though, for which I have a DF54. Worth a look for an espresso-capable grinder you can grow into, and you want a nice kitchen gadget. (Who doesn't?) Another wise investment is a jeweller's scale, or drug scale, depending on your upbringing. It doesn't need to be anything expensive or fancy, as long as it measures to 0.1g. Use it to measure out your beans before grinding them, and weigh the water into the base, so if you find a recipe you like, you can repeat it. A standard kitchen scale is no good for the coffee world if it only measures to the nearest gram. If you're weighing out 500g of flour, you'll end up between 499.5g and 500.5g. Pretty negligible in a loaf of bread. When you're working with 20g of coffee, you'll taste the difference between a 19.5g and 20.5g cup. Amazon is the place to look, they're a tenner well spent. Finally, when you make the leap, hand or electric, get yourself a burr grinder. If it costs three eighths of bugger all and has a little spinning blade at the bottom, don't waste your money on it. Blade grinders are near-universally regarded as crap by the coffee world because the "grounds" they produce are so horrendously inconsistent. You want a nice uniform(-ish) particle size, which blade grinders just aren't capable of by their design. You'll have coffee particles ranging in size from half a bean to icing sugar in the same batch. Unusable for making anything you'd want to drink. Also, avoid grinders with ceramic burrs like the Hario Skerton. They aren't as awful as blade grinders, but they don't produce good grounds either. Ceramic burrs are the very cheapest you can get, which shows how much thought and effort went into the rest of the grinder, and the quality of coffee it'll produce. You get what you pay for.

Wilfa - price has gone up in past few years and it doesn't seem to be reviewed recently but James Hoffmann did a review a few years ago and rated it as a good solid entry grinder.

I’ve got one and am very happy with it. The wilfa Can’t do espresso grind but that’s a whole different level of control and equipment I suppose.

It’s also quite small compared to other grinders

Someone here was not too impressed with it around 5 years ago… https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/s/Omic6ZFAWa