So you forgot to grind your coffee at the supermarket, or you bought whole beans by accident, thinking they were ground coffee. Or you might have had a bag of coffee beans from your friends and/ or family, and you have never ground any coffee at home.
In this article, I will explain how to use 7 different kinds of techniques to grind your coffee beans. You can use things you probably already have lying around the house to grind the coffee beans.
This will give you the chance to finally try out that super cool blend you got from a friend but never had the chance to try; because you don’t have a coffee grinder at home.
Grind coffee beans in a Magimix
When you’ve got a Magimix at home, you are in for an easy way to ground your coffee beans. This is by far the easiest way to grind yourself some coffee. The only things you will need for this to work are a Magimix and the bag of beans you want to grind.
Make sure you plug in the Magimix (yes, I have forgotten to do this multiple times). It will save you time trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing after all.
Weigh out the coffee beans you want to grind, or if you want to grind your whole bag of coffee beans, grind them in portions of 200 grams.
Add your coffee beans to your Magimix
Pulse until the right grind size is accomplished. You might want to opt for a medium grind for the coffee beans. This way, you can make great pour-over coffee.
Going old school, using a pestle and mortar
Most people have a pestle and mortar standing in and around their kitchen. This is the most fun way to grind your coffee. When bashing your coffee beans to a fine grind, they will release some delicious smells of fresh coffee.
It is just the best way to grind your coffee at home because all the time you are grinding, you will be looking forward to your cup of joe even more.
To get things started, you will need a pestle and mortar, a kitchen towel, and of course, your coffee beans.
The first step is to put down a kitchen towel on your kitchen table; this will reduce the mortar’s impact. This will result in a less noisy grinding session and will also help against the slipping of your pestle while bashing on your coffee beans.
Next up is adding your coffee beans to the pestle and start smashing the hell out of the coffee beans!
Tip: make sure you have cleaned the pestle thoroughly. Otherwise, your coffee will taste like your homemade pesto you made the day before.
Using a towel and a wooden spoon
When you are ready to try this technique, be warned: this will make you grind your coffee at home more often. This is just so fun to do.
The things you need to mash some coffee beans are a kitchen towel, your coffee beans, and some kind of wooden spoon with a big surface area for maximum efficiency.
Start by spreading out your kitchen towel all the way, like this.
Put your unground coffee beans in the middle of your kitchen towel.
Take all the kitchen towel ends and fold them together, making a small bag with no holes.
Go ham with the wooden spoon until your coffee is as grounded as you like.
Meat pounder and a ziplock bag
If you have a meat pounder lying around the house, this would be great, and if not, you can also use any other kind of hammer you’ve got.
Think like a regular hammer you have for hammering nails or some kind of rubber hammer, which will make less of an impact, which would work great for grinding your coffee beans.
For this technique, a ziplock baggy will come in handy. Because you will be smacking the coffee beans with a little more force than the wooden spoon, you want to make sure your coffee beans don’t fly throughout your kitchen. If you like, you can also switch to a ziplock bag while smashing your coffee beans with a wooden spoon.
Fill the bag with the coffee beans you want to grind. You want to make sure you are working in batches when working through a kilo bag of coffee. This will result in a cleaner and even grind at the end of your hard work.
Put down a kitchen towel again and add the filled up ziplock bag on top.
Gently smash the coffee beans with the hammer of your choice. Make sure you start slow, as the ziplock bag will release some air. When smashing too hard at the beginning, you are risking the ziplock bag exploding.
Smash on until you are happy with the coffee grind.
Ziplock bag and rolling pin
You can also use the same technique with the ziplock bag when you have a rolling pin at home. This will be a lot harder to pull off, though. You are crushing the coffee beans while using your own bodyweight. Make sure you use it wisely.
Once again, to get started with this technique, fill up your ziplock bag with your coffee beans.
This time around, wet your kitchen towel a little bit. This will help even more against the slipping away of your towel with your coffee beans.
Spread out your kitchen towel evenly.
Place your ziplock bag on the kitchen towel and begin rolling.
Keep on rolling over your coffee beans, turning the ziplock bag once in a while to spread the coffee beans out evenly. Go at it until your preferred grind is achieved.
Using any sort of blender
While you might think this is the same as using the Magimix, it really isn’t. When you are using a blender of any kind, you might have noticed that the blender cup has an oval-shaped design. The Magimix is round-shaped.
This will impact the way your coffee beans will spin around in there. It will make less contact with the blades, so you need to make sure you are blending the coffee beans long enough to reach the coffee grind you can use.
Let’s get started.
Start by preparing your blender. The blender needs to be dry from the inside. This will prevent coffee beans from sticking when there is a little moisture leftover in the blender cup.
Add the coffee beans to your blender and close the lid of the blender.
Turn on the blender and slowly start pulsing it. Wait until all your coffee beans are ground the way you can use them. Start by adding just 100 grams and trying out how long you want to blend your coffee beans.
Work in batches. Get the ground coffee out of your blender before adding a new batch. Make sure you are not adding a kilo bag to your blender. This will result in a really uneven grind, and we don’t want that.
Chopping the coffee with a chef’s knife
We have arrived at the hardest way to grind your coffee. This will involve a lot of knife skills. Start by choosing your cutting board.
I like using this big chopping board, because of the grip it gives me.
You can also use one of these plastic cutting boards. If you wet a little paper towel or kitchen towel for that reason, you will counteract the cutting board’s slipping. This way, you can make sure you are using this technique safely.
Now you want to choose a knife. I recommend using any kind of chef’s knife, as this has a nice surface area to work with.
Ensure you are not using a brand new knife because (depending on which roast you’re working with. The coffee beans can be quite hard, and this will make your knife go blunt. You don’t want any of that.
Once you have prepared your cutting board and have decided on which knife to use, add the desired amount of coffee beans to your board.
Start by laying down your knife flat on the surface of the coffee beans like this.
Then give them a nice smash with the palm of your hand; this will break the coffee beans into bigger chunks, which will be easier to work with.
Next, you want to chop your way through the coffee beans until you have reached the grind you are used to.
Conclusion
So there you have it. You can use this nice big list of 7 things when you want to grind coffee beans and don’t have a coffee grinder at home. It is guaranteed that you can at least use one of these techniques because most of the stuff used is common in every household.
If you want to use your freshly ground coffee beans straight away, you can check out the beginner guides to brewing coffee. I’ve listed a few techniques you can try out below.
Will you be trying out one of these techniques? Let me know by leaving a comment down below. If you have any other questions regarding coffee, you can also contact me directly by pressing the “Contact Me” button at the top!
