So let me get this straight:

You were (happily?) using a bladed coffee 'grinder' and now, after little research, are recommending this less than stellar burr grinder? (And we're supposed to care?)

To be fair, the CoffeeGeek site, your source of info, has become, visually/organizationally too busy, lately. So it's very difficult to get to the meaty, good reviews nowadays in order to find the wheat amongst all that chaff. I couldn't find a 'sort by rating' button to click on their web pages, nor a 'sort by price range' button.

You should've gone with a Solis/Barratza Maestro and gotten a grinder that you know can grind fine enough even for Turkish coffee..for just five bucks more.
http://www.amazon.com/Baratza-285-Maestro-Conical-Grinder/dp/B0000DDVS2/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1252328342&sr=1-6

And when you decide to actually step up to the plate and get an espresso machine, I can heartily recommend the Solis SL-90. Don't waste your money on disappointing machines that you'll end up replacing after a few years.

While you're saving up for an espresso machine, just use a stove mocha pot.

I've had mine for more than three years now, and I'm still happy. (At the time, CoffeeGeek was still readable, and I was lucky enough to come across the review for the SL-70 and ordered the next model up - which turned out well.)
http://www.coffeegeek.com/proreviews/detailed/cremasl70

We have used a burr grinder for many years (and are on our second Braun grinder) and recently Mrs. SW announced that I could no longer use it because it always left coffee grounds all over the counter when we, no matter how carefully, extracted the ground coffee from the basket. (Although I always try to clean up, apparently my efforts are inadequate to the Mrs.) If you or any of your readers know of a burr grinder that has minimized the spraying of fine coffee grounds whenever opening the basket to move the grounds to the filter, please advise.

I have both a burr grinder and a blade grinder.

We usually French press our home-roasted coffee, and in blind cupping, I cannot distinguish between the two grinders reliably. Maybe I am just a Philistine, but I seem to get an excellent cup from either grinder.

On the other hand, I can easily taste the difference between coffee I roast at home, and coffee available from quality retailers. Excellent quality green beans are available on the web, generally at a discount to even grocery store(ugh) coffee.

I's spend my money on a decent roaster and some good green coffee instead of an burr grinder. Try Sweet Maria's.

@ Paul Renault: Did you have this Breville model that Lance is recommending and find it to be less than stellar? In what way? Please stick to constructive input.-es

Why not buy the "Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinders"? It's cheaper, has many more reviews, and a higher overall average rating?

Also, how long have you had this grinder?

http://www.amazon.com/Capresso-560-01-Infinity-Grinder-Black/dp/B0000AR7SY/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3LY59FKG85AUG&colid=2VOYKVZ84XCZK

Then again, you can keep an eye on Craig's List and do what I did. I found a Bunn LPG grinder with a hopper to hold six pounds of beans for fifty bucks. Works great.

Don't forget the most important ingredient -- good tasting water! You will never get a good cup of coffee if you use cruddy tasting tap water. I wish I had known about the Berkey water filter back in my coffee-holic days. That is my favorite filter at the moment and I'd rank it above buying bottled water. There was a review of the Berkey on KK but I haven't been able to find it.

I would suggest that the first thing which needs attention is the power cord.

If the electricity which goes to your coffee grinder is not transmitted in an optically pure and tangentially-sequenced fashion, all the money you put into special stands for your coffee filters and green pens to wipe the basket are just wasted.

Wasted, wasted, wasted.

Getting serious: "Most lower-priced grinders are.. bladed choppers and their output is... a mix of burnt bean dust and bean bits."

Says who???? I mean really: says who? The beans are "burnt" in those few seconds of grinding?? A "bean bit" is somehow a bad thing?

Come ON NOW.

CoolTools is worthless if it lets itself become a home for hobbiest/enthusiast/cultist contributors who parrot exclusivist drivel fed to them by other cultists. Pretty soon you WILL see a coffee-grinder power cord being pimped here.

I'm an audio engineer: I know how this psychology works.

**** tea drinkers.

Getting serious: back when I lived in Philly the water used to come out of the tap in primary colors. Please feel free to call me a cultist but I ain't making any beverage with that.

You can modify (at your own risk) this grinder to give a finer grind. I've had mine a year and am very satisfied.
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.coffee/2008-02/msg00541.html

One further comment to ShrinkWrapped: Whatever antistatic treatment they did to the plastic basket really seems to work to minimize grounds flying all over the place.

What's the matter, Paul, your old lady come home with a case of crabs or something? Don't be such a jerk.

For the rest of you, I found the following interesting. And you might notice they quote a test done by the fine folks at America's Test Kitchen that showed that coffee ground in a blade grinder was only ever so slightly warmer than coffee ground in a burr grinder. Check out the link: http://gizmodo.com/5353032/giz-explains-the-giz-explains-platinum-collection

If you've got a bit more to spend, try a Nemox Lux. I got mine for about $150. It's all stainless steel, and was shown to hold its own amongst grinders in the $700-$2000 range in the "Titan Grinders Showdown" on home-barista.com. It grinds beautifully for espresso and does a kick-ass drip and french press grind, also. It's extremely solid, and doses straight out of a spout- great for filling your portafilter or a cone filter.

Lovely.

Like Edward Bryant (comment 3) I have both a burr grinder (a hand-cranked Peugeot) and a chopper (a standard Cusinart electric coffee mill), and have been unable to detect any difference between the two in terms of the taste of the coffee in the cup. However, note two caveats: we did the taste tests with dark-roast coffee, and we used French press rather than drip. Dark-roast is the great homegenizer of coffees; it tends to mask a bean's intrinsic flavor, so I'd like to repeat the experiment with medium-roast to see if we can detect a difference in flavors using a subtler roast. Also, it's possible that a burr grinder might produce a better cup of drip coffee than a chopper does; we haven't tested the two in our drip machine (because we prefer the French press and use the drip only when we have a lot of people over to the house).

I've had a Cuisinart burr grinder for several years and find it does a good job. It's about half the cost of the recommended one. It's a little noisy (though I imagine all grinders have to be) and the plastic collector bin gets "staticy" which attracts the tiny coffee grinds and retains a few percent of them when you empty the bin, but otherwise I love the machine.
http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DBM-8-Supreme-Grind-Automatic/dp/B00018RRRK

I tend to agree with Dual, but not quite as strongly and not nearly as smooth humor of writing. Blade grinders seem to work fine for my budget. I have lost a large part of my sense of smell, so I have found that a finer grind helps me better appreciate my coffee which I like on the strong side. A Black and Decker Smart Grind works great for this nasally challenged philistine and I think see prices range from 13$ to 25$ online. Time controls how fine the grind is. I have also found out the shaking the grinder every 5 seconds or so while grinding makes for a more even grind.

If I ever come across a bargain for a burr grinder though, I just acquire one. It was interesting checking some of the grinders mentioned and seeing customer satisfaction. Thanks.

I've been using this model for a year or so, with great results. It grinds the coffee quickly and uniformly, and is surprisingly quiet. Relatively small footprint too. As mentioned above, the plastic hopper for the grounds really does appear to reduce static; very little issue with stuff flying about.

I find any grinder with a plastic hopper irratating to the extreme. Static charge makes the little bits stick to the sides. I use http://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-Coffee-Grinder-Pearl-Metallic/dp/B00030IEJG

I've been using this grinder for more than a year now, and have been really satisfied with it. For less than half the price of the Maestro, it gives a nice consistent grind that I use in drip, moka pot and Aeropress makers. For me, the major attraction of the burr grinder is that I can navigate it on autopilot. With the blade grinder, particularly with darker roasts, it's awfully easy to run it just a little too long and turn your beans into powder that completely clogs whatever machine you're trying to brew in.

And as mentioned, the hopper is pretty good as regards static, but you do still get a certain amount of dispersion. I've found that fresher beans seem to cut down on the escapees.

This grinder is a great grinder. Period.

Sometimes paying a little more is worth it. I have a Breville juicer, and I think it is wonderful. It is built sturdily and juices different types of fruits and veges well. Thanks for reviewing a different breville product.

Not a Cool Tool. Again, this belongs at Engadget or whatever gadget fetish blog draws people that pay $100 for a frelling COFFEE GRINDER. Eugh.

Totally agree that this post reads like a Monster Cable ad. "Burnt bean dust" - spare me.

I have a Krups grinder and french press that I bought together at a thrift store for a whopping $12 and they make damn good coffee.

I got a Black and Decker burr grinder at Target for $25- works nice.

So I was out of town, and unable to respond to the ad hominem, er, criticisms(?).

First point:
From Lance's text:
"I don't[sic] really test the finer grind output of this machine, but my guess is that it would be less satisfactory for espresso than what the pricier models produce."
OK, that's some fine 'damning with faint praise'.

"The more expensive burr grinders...do better at what this machine does well. They...produce extremely even grinds over a wider range of grind output with greater tuning of both the quantity and the fine-ness of the output."
Reread these two sentences by omitting the text between the ellipsises. (I'm assuming that the second "They" refers to the previous "more expensive burr grinders".) More faint praise, eh?

So, what Lance is saying is that other grinders are better than this one, but he's not too sure. Hence my comment of "less than stellar".

A review of a 'stellar' grinder would read something like:
"I've gone through ten different burr grinders, and this one consistently produced a fine, even grind that cups very well - even down to a Turkish grind. And it kept going even while my other grinders broke down."

The Breville's only 'outstanding' feature is that it's smaller than the typical burr grinder. As I pointed out, since this Breville was $99, you could get a grinder with better reviews for only five bucks more. This grinder is OK (once, Will @12 point out) once you modify it, but not a Cool Tool.

Second point:
Nobody came to CoffeeGeek's defence. So my criticism (and really my defense of Lance's sub-optimal, IMHO, choice), laid at the feet of CoffeeGeek's site, still stands. I do take full responsibility for the "And we're supposed to care?" comment. That too, still stands.

Third point:
Dual @ 9: I, too, thought that the dissing of bladed grinders wasn't well written. Yes, bladed grinders don't produce an even coffee meal, unless you keep 'grinding' for minutes to get your grind much too fine for a 'café piston' or even a drip coffee. In the process, you end up overheating the coffee, which releases those volatiles that we crave so much and makes them unavailable to your coffee.
(It can also be a problem with dull-bladed burr grinders.

Edward Bryant @ 3: Hear, hear!
Yes, the difference between home-roasted coffee and pre-roasted coffee even from quality retailers is jaw dropping. It's like the difference between Seagram's Black and White and just-about-any Scottish Single-Malt Whiskey. I've gotten requests for my roasted coffee beans as XMas gifts. I get my green coffee from Just Us Coffee - I find their Mexican coffee beans to have the best range of other taste notes. I do rotate through a variety of coffee to keep my taste buds from dulling.

There. More grist for you mills....

Heat isn't the biggest problem with blade choppers; (I won't call them grinders, they don't grind) it's the uneven results.(makes 'em worthless for espresso) I wouldn't pay more than fifty bucks for a decent burr grinder, though. Why in the name of all that's holy must people jump all over what used to be an affordable luxury and gentrify it beyond all recognition? The Gizmodo article is correct, with lighter roasts, 1 degree temp does make a difference, but not if you're tossing in overroasted Starbucks beans. If that's the case, you can use a blade chopper with an oval chamber, it stirs and mixes while it chops; does less damage. I have a Braun similar to one mentioned above, it poops coffee dust all over the counter, I use a Waring with a tight-fitting chamber now-retails for about the same as the Braun, was $12 bucks at a thrift store. The Waring doesn't grind fine enough for espresso, but Gizmodo's right, you cannot make a great espresso at home.

I've owned this grinder for over a year and love it. Never thought of using it for espresso.

Not a stellar review. See comment #26. Cool Tools has been suffering ever since the editor change...

Paul is correct. If you venture into any coffee forum you'll see recommendation after recommendation of a select few grinders. Reason being grind quality rules espresso quality to the point that it's generally accepted that grinder is more important than espresso machine.

Start with the Rancilio Rocky or if you can afford it, the Mazzer Mini.

@Coffee Snob:
While the two grinders you mention seem impressive, Lance specified that his pleasure is drip coffee, not espresso, and the Breville he's recommending for the coarser grind that drink calls for costs less than a third of the Rancilio Rocky, less than a fifth of the Mazzer Mini.
Lance is saying he used this grinder and recommends it, while Paul says that forums favor other similarly priced grinders.-es

I read somewhere that about the only thing non-burr grinders were okay for was Turkish coffee, which I drink. Is this true? Anyone know if a burr grinder would make a difference here?

I actually have an antique, engraved brass, hand-cranked, "real" cylindrical burr grinder from Turkey bought at a yard sale forty-five years ago. Presumably it gives a good grind (well, maybe not, the burrs look hand-filed and very uneven) , but I'm scared to use it because there's corroded looking soldering inside the barrel and I worry about possible lead problems in the grind. Anyone know anything about this?