Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1531 in Kitchen & Housewares
• Brand: Krups
• Model: GVX231
• Dimensions: 6.30" h x 4.72" w x 9.84" l,

Manufacturer's Description
Blade or Burr - capturing Aroma...

If roasting coffee beans is an art, then turning them into perfect ground coffee is a science. If the grind is too coarse the coffee will brew too slowly, and flavours will not fully develop, if it's too fine the coffee will lack aroma and tend towards bitterness. Too much grinding is as bad as too little for perfect coffee only 'just right' will do. Different coffee machines work best with different grind sizes so what works well in a cafetiere will produce dreadful coffee in an espresso machine. Coffee can be ground with either a blade (chopped) or a burr (crushed).

Blade grinders chop and re-chop each bean turning them into thousands of unevenly sized coffee fragments. The longer you chop the finer the blend becomes, but no matter how careful you are some of the coffee will be over ground and some will be under ground: so the coffee will never be as good as the beans you started with. Burr grinders such as the Krups Expert Coffee Grinder, crush the coffee to a pre-determined size turning the beans into thousands of uniformly sized fragments fine enough to release flavour but not so fine as to destroy it. With a burr grinder, the coffee you make will be every bit as good as the beans it' made from.

Coffee Beans: All of today's coffee beans come from just two varieties of coffee plant; Robusta and Arabica - the mix giving the quality, flavour and strength (caffeine content) of the coffee. the beans are taken and roasted, developing the flavour and aroma of the coffee - the longer they are roasted, the darker and more aromatic the beans become.

Krups for the true coffee lover Krups began its journey towards perfect coffee back in 1846 as "a brand dedicated to precision and technical perfection". These high ideals were not enough for Robert Krups the founder, who insisted this would not be some future objective but a "firm promise". The company's first products immediately won widespread admiration for their quality, far sighted design and technical refinement.

In 1961 Krups turned its attention to making the best electric coffee grinder, revolutionising the quality of home ground coffee. Krups now makes arguably the best range of Espresso machines in the world from modest easy to use machines for novices, to fully automatic bean to cup machines for coffee connoisseurs.

Customer Reviews

Great product for the price
I've had this grinder for around 2 years now and it's been 100% reliable. It's very easy to operate and the grind settings are good enough for all machines. I've just bought a Gaggia Baby Class D espresso machine and this Krups grinder makes fine enough coffee to use in it.

There are some small niggles; the beans sometimes get stuck and you have to shake it to loosen them again, also the two safety mechanisms (hopper lid and grind container) can occasionally be temperamental, but these are small prices to pay for such quality at a low price.

Chic and efficient
This little machine does an excellent job. We have to set it at its coarsest setting for our cafetiere, but the finished ground is comparable to that we used to buy from a specialist retailer. The cup setting (where you set it to mnake the amount of coffee you want to grind) is accurate and consistent.

We use it every day. It blew its fuse the second time we used it, but we replaced that and it has been fine for the four weeks since then.

Good at its job, but can be temperamental...
Bought this machine a couple of years ago and it has been in very regular use since. It does the grinding job well, and I find the fact that you can choose the degree of grind helpful in ensuring that you get just the right grind every time without having to judge how long to let it run. I use the beans in a Gaggia machine to make espresso and cappucino. BUT it can be temperamental as both the lid and the plasic box that collects the ground coffee have to be absolutely fully engaged before it will work. I couldn't make it work last night, tried changing the fuse etc etc and gave up and started to look online for a new machine. This morning, I had an inspiration and turned it upside down and found that over the months of use, some ground coffee had spilled over the edge of the bean hopper and down the side which was preventing a perfect contact when the lid was put on. Cleaned it out, and hey presto, we're back in business!