Review: Hario Skerton Coffee Mill
I'm becoming more and more of a coffee enthusiast in my old age. Probably because, unlike other hobbies that require a lot of time, enjoying coffee can be done every day in just a few minutes. The caffeine boost is also a big plus, especially when dealing with a daughter who likes to wake up screaming multiple times during the night.
I've gone through phases in my modes of coffee preparation. Of course, my first experience was simply making drip coffee with a traditional coffee maker. My first upgrade was using a French press. After that I started buying whole beans and grinding them myself with a blade grinder. Using a French press and grinding your own beans are regarded as the most important first steps you can take to make your coffee taste better: using a French press means you have to heat the water yourself, and can get it closer to the optimal 200 degrees Fahrenheit, while grinding at home means less time for coffee beans to go stale.
The next coffee upgrade I wanted to make was to switch from a blade mill to a burr mill. The difference is that a blade mill cuts your coffee, while a burr mill crushes it. In addition, blade mills have a hard time grinding coffee beans evenly — you have to grind your beans down to a fine powder before you'll get a consistent particle size. Blade mills can also make the ground coffee slightly more bitter, due to heat from the friction of the blades.
Unfortunately, blade mills are also way cheaper than burr mills. An electric blade mill might set you back $50, while the burr equivalent might be more in the $200 range. I wasn't sure I wanted to pay that much for an electric burr mill, so I set my sights on a hand-operated (!) mill from a company named Hario, the "Skerton." It was priced at a much more reasonable $40. Luckily for me, I got one for my birthday last month, so thought I'd share my experience of using a hand-operated coffee mill for the past two months.
It's not as annoying as you might think to have to grind coffee by hand. I kind of enjoy using the mill while waiting for my kettle to boil... it adds to the preparation ritual. That being said, I only have to grind enough coffee for a two-cup French press. If I needed to brew a pot of drip coffee, I would definitely be using the electric mill.
The Skerton produces a pretty even grind... basically it'll look like what you get buying pre-ground coffee. You can adjust the coarseness of the end result, but the mill doesn't handle very coarse grinds very well; you'll get some large chunks of coffee bean here and there.
The construction of the device is pretty good. The top of the mill consists of a plastic hopper with a metal crank and ceramic burr. You can adjust the coarseness of the grind by unscrewing the crank and adjusting a metal washer that controls the height of the burr. The top screws into a heavy glass container, used for catching the ground coffee. As a nice touch, Hario includes a rubber bottom for the glass jar, which makes it easier to use the mill: it sticks to flat surfaces, making it less likely to slide around.
All told, I'm happy with the Skerton so far. My electric mill has been put out of sight, and I've even gotten the wife to use the Skerton a few times. It's helped me elevate my coffee snobbery to the next level.
Comments
Peter wrote on :
The Hario Skerton can definitely replace your work out routine for the day, depending on what you are grinding for. I love using it for French press coffee - or any other mode that requires a more coarse bean, but whenever I have tried grinding it finer (i.e. drip or espresso) it takes so much time just to grind the beans. Like you said, if you're using a two-cup French press, the Skerton is by far the coolest device out there, but when opting for a finer grind setting it definitely requires a lot of patience.