Augers And The Grand Universal Theory Of Coffee Grinding – CoffeeTalk

Augers (categorized as slow, medium, and fast) help in pre-breaking the beans before they reach the main burr set. The idea is intriguing, but does it have a significant impact on the coffee’s taste?

What Augers Do

An auger, which can be considered as a sort of corkscrew mechanism, moves beans into the burrs and pre-breaks them. This component can be swapped out, adapting the grinder’s performance based on the user’s needs.

Impact on Coffee Grinding

The theory here is that a slower auger feed limits bottlenecking within the grind chamber, leading to fewer fine particles. Particle size consistency can significantly affect the taste and quality of the ground coffee. While theoretically appealing, practical testing showed minimal difference across the various augers in grinding quality.
In practical terms, prebreaking did account for some better aspects like reduced fines. One would expect a slower auger to feed beans in a manner that mimics single-bean feeding (where beans are fed one at a time to reduce bottlenecks), potentially improving grind uniformity. However, noticeable performance differences were not significant enough to make one auger system stand out dramatically over others.