I ground some coffee at the market earlier today and it was ground too coarsely. Can I put it back in the grinder, or is it unsalvagable?
No harm in re-grinding. I’m thinking, some of the aroma/flavor is already fading due to the original grind, so I wouldn’t re-grind until right before brewing.
A grinder like you have at home, the kind that looks like a little food processor, sure.
Taking it back to the store and using their big coffee grinder, no.
Those big ones don’t use blades, they sort of mill the coffee and trying to put grounds in there may jam the machine. It would be like filling your garbage disposal with sand.
In fact, my big (commercial) coffee grinder even gives directions for what to do in the event that someone does put already ground coffee in the machine. (Scoop it out, then flip the 40# machine upside down to empty the rest out).
Yes. But first you have to reassemble the original beans.
Good lord, yes, I meant a home grinder. Although I was wondering why anyone would grind their beans at the store when they could do so at home.
Because a lot of people don’t have burr grinders, and it’s impossible to get a consistent grind from the rotary ones. This may or may not matter so much, depending on what and how you’re brewing.
This. The grinder at the store has a coarse setting. The one at home doesn’t. So I’m guessing if I grind at home, which sometimes doesn’t work well for my French Press.
(Yeah…I know it would be fresher if I ground it just before brewing. I’m fine with the results I get.)
Convenience?
Because a lot of people like the idea of grinding an entire pound all at once and leaving the mess for someone else to clean up rather the dragging out the grinder every morning and the cleaning the grounds up.
Further, I’d be willing to bet that almost no one could tell the difference (doing a blind study) between coffee ground today and coffee that was ground, stored in something ziplocked, last week.
Yes, but you have to run them through a civet.
You do have your own civet, right?
I guess I was being unclear - I meant a person who already had a home grinder (which was my assumption about the OP), and thus presumably was already willing to put up with the effort that goes with that.
Certainly, if you can’t taste the difference/don’t care/don’t have time, it makes perfect sense to grind at the store.
But not to re-grind at the store.
We used to live in Germany where coffee really is a strong as jet fuel…so most American coffee for us sucks and it too weak.
However, we learned years ago that if you even take a can of Folgers or whatever, and then re-grind it finer - it will perk up the flavor and make the coffee stronger. So YES - by all means - re-grind the coffee for a stronger, fresher, more aromatic flavor.
In a sense, burr grinders ALWAYS grind grinds, in that the beans get broken into chunks by the wider part, and the subsequent chunks get ground smaller and smaller as they go downward.
It’s that self-sifting action (for lack of a better term) that ensures that the grind is very consistent out of burr grinders.
I’d think the problem would be if you put so much in that they packed in and caused so much friction that it prevented the cone from moving.