For a long time I had been looking for a hand-powered coffee grinder. Previously my only way to prepare coffee beans was a blade-based attachment for a food-processor: awkward to set up, giving less than brilliant results (blades produce a mixture of fine dust and over-sized chunks) and using electricity. Recently I popped into a branch of Whittards and found a small, hand-cranked grinder using a burr mechanism – and on sale, too.

The grinder was deficient in the area of instructions but it was relatively simple to figure out how to adjust the height of the grinding head. Initially it produced espresso-fine grounds and took a lot of effort but I have now reset it to turn out grounds similar in size to those I am using to buying in packets. A couple of small teaspoons of beans and about fifty turns of the crank (along with some shaking along the way to keep the grinding area topped up) produces enough for a cup of fresh-ground coffee.

It isn’t a huge contribution to fighting global warming and rampant energy use but using beans and this simple bit of machinery slightly reduces my overall impact – and produces an excellent beverage!

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