---
title: Grind size · Coffee Addict
url: https://coffeeaddict.nz/guides/grind/
source: Coffee Addict
checked: Prices checked 23 Aug 2026, 15:40 UTC.
generated: 2026-08-23 23:25 UTC
description: The dial that fixes almost everything.
---

# Grind size

The dial that fixes almost everything.

One setting decides whether your coffee is sour, bitter or right. Here is which way to turn it.

## Read the cup, then turn the dial

Sour, thin, sharp at the front of the tongue: under-extracted. Grind finer.

Bitter, drying, hollow at the back: over-extracted. Grind coarser.

One change at a time, a click or two at a time. The common mistake is fixing a sour cup with more coffee, which produces a stronger sour cup.

## Burr against blade, honestly

A blade grinder is a propeller in a cup. It makes dust and boulders in the same batch: the dust over-extracts and tastes bitter, the boulders under-extract and taste sour, and you drink both in the same mouthful. No recipe fixes that.

A burr grinder crushes beans between two surfaces a set distance apart, so it makes one size. A $59 hand mill beats a $99 blade grinder outright and will still be working in ten years. It is the highest-return $59 in coffee.

## Hand or electric

A hand grinder is about forty seconds of work per cup. That is nothing for one or two and tedious for four.

Electric grinders that are genuinely better than a good hand grinder start around $350. In between, hand grinders keep getting better and electrics do not get cheaper.

## How fresh is fresh

Whole beans stale over weeks. Ground coffee stales in minutes — most of the aroma you paid for leaves in the first quarter of an hour.

So a bag of whole beans two weeks past roast, ground this morning, beats a bag ground at the counter last Tuesday. That is the actual argument for owning a grinder, and it is not snobbery.

Buying pre-ground is not a sin. Buy it ground for one method, buy smaller bags more often, and keep it sealed in a dark cupboard — not the fridge, which is damp and full of smells.

## Gear

| What | Item | Price | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| The $59 that beats every blade grinder | Hario Mini Slim Plus | $59.00 | Raglan Roast |
| Same money, taller | Rhino tall hand grinder | $59.50 | Havana Coffee Works |
| Steadier, bigger | Hario Skerton Plus | $72.00 | Raglan Roast |
| Stainless burrs, holds its setting | Porlex Tall II | $120.00 | Raglan Roast |
| The standard electric answer | Baratza Encore ESP | $419.00 | C4 Coffee Co. |
| The other one people buy | Fellow Opus | $495.00 | Coffee Supreme |

Hario Mini Slim Plus — Ceramic burrs, small hopper, does one or two cups happily.
Hario Skerton Plus — Wider body, easier to hold, enough capacity for a full plunger.
Baratza Encore ESP — Boring, repairable, spare parts everywhere. Boring is the point.

Gear picked by hand, and every shop listed is one this site already tracks. Nothing here is sponsored and no link pays us. Prices re-checked against each shop's own catalogue nightly; last check 23 Aug 2026.

## About this data

Prices, weights and stock are the roasters' own, read from their public shop pages and re-checked every night. We do not set them, mark them up, or estimate them: a figure we could not read is null. Free to quote with attribution and a link.

One scrape a night at 15:40 UTC (about 03:40 in New Zealand), then the whole site and every endpoint is rebuilt.

Links to shops go through /go/ so we can count how many readers we send each roaster. We earn nothing from them — no affiliate deals, no commission, no paid placement — and if that ever changes this line changes with it.

Cite as: Coffee Addict — every specialty coffee bean on sale in New Zealand, priced per 100g and re-checked every night. https://coffeeaddict.nz

Machine-readable: `https://coffeeaddict.nz/api/beans.json`, `https://coffeeaddict.nz/api/deals.json`, `https://coffeeaddict.nz/api/roasters.json`. Schema and terms: https://coffeeaddict.nz/api/. Everything this site publishes for agents: https://coffeeaddict.nz/llms.txt