Hario Skerton Follow up Review – French Press

Since the Skerton is the grinder I use most often I end up constantly making adjustments to my grind setting to accommodate whatever brewing method I have in place. If anything, I think that this is what will motivate me to get a new grinder; probably an electric burr grinder that will be stepped (meaning it will have many settings, allowing me to quickly switch to whatever grind setting is appropriate at the time).

While I really like the Skerton, this morning I had a very negative experience making coffee with it and using a French press: I set the grind to be a smidge too coarse, and ended up with huge unground chunks of bean in my grind! The lack of consistency when grinding beans coarsely  is a problem that many people agree exists with the Hario, but maybe one I hadn’t noticed before. Whats worse is that I didn’t realize this at the time that I was grinding! I adjusted my grind, brewed up my coffee (using a scale to measure dose and a timer to control immersion time) and ended up with a weak and watery cup of coffee. Fortunately I like to let my grounds cool down before I throw them in the trash, so I hadn’t emptied out the press; when I looked at the grinds in the press pot I noticed the large “boulders” I mentioned earlier.

I’m hoping that the fault is mine and that I just didn’t set the grind setting to be fine enough. The alternative is that wear and tear on the grinder is making the shaft wobble around when grinding resulting in this kind of uneven and inconsistent grind. I will try to brew another cup later on today before I hit the gym and will try to update this posting with my results.

Note: I should point out that my beans are about to hit the three weeks past roasting mark. Does this make any difference in the grind? Like, if they are drying out will that make them more crumbly? Is three weeks still fine as far as that is concerned? Oh well, I’m almost done with these beans anyways. Can’t wait to start with the micro lot I got from Elemental coffee last week.