I’ve been using my grinder (Baratza maestro plus) for ten years now, and I got it used. I’ve replaced some parts (e.g., burrs), but I’m wondering if it’s finally time to let it go. It seems like it’s not grinding as consistently as it once was, but I’m thinking it would be good to quantify it.
I’ve seen sieves used to classify ground coffee, specifically, the brand Kruve seems to be a nice implementation. It’s $90 for the cheapest version, though, which doesn’t quite seem worth it to me. It seems like it’d be better to just spend the money going towards a new grinder, but I figured it would be good to ask for anyone’s experience here.
I feel ya, the number of times I’ve opened up my gear to get just a few more months out of it til the next thing breaks…
If you want to maximize versatility and quality for a good price, I’d consider getting a nice enough espresso-focused grinder and a really high quality hand grinder that can do coarse grinds well. Grinding coarse is fast and easy by hand, and you can get grounds as or more consistent than am electric grinder 3 times the price with something like a 1zpresso. But grinding for espresso can be harder, so that’s one that’s more worth a machine doing the work for you.