The Moka Pot is a uniquely stylish way to make coffee at home. The pot, which has more than a whiff of art deco class about it, takes ground coffee and turns it into the stuff of life.
But there’s the rub. Ground coffee.
You can buy ground coffee that’s been ground miles and even months away, sure, but it’s been losing all its freshness and flavonoids every second since the grinding was done. We’re not saying commercially ground coffee is bad as such, it’s just a long way divorced from that rich, athletic zing of fresh ground. Everybody deserves that zing of fresh ground.
So, how do you get the freshest ground coffee for your Moka Pot? Easy – you grind your own beans. But if you’re going to grind your own, you’re going to need the king of bean-grinders.
How do you find the best bean-grinders, though? You don’t distinguish between quality bean-grinders and overcomplicated, under-rugged wastes of cash on a daily basis, do you?
Relax – we’ve got you covered.
We’ve found the 7 best coffee grinders for your Moka Pot, so you don’t have to.
In a hurry? Here’s our top pick.
7 Best Coffee Grinder For Moka Pot
Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
When grinding coffee beans at home, you need a machine that will deliver on at least three points. You need speed, you need an effective grind, and if at all possible, you need a sturdy grinder, so you can grind all day if you want to. If at all possible, you also need a grinder that’s quitter than most on the market.
The Baratza Encore One is renowned as the absolute master of entry-level coffee grinders. It’s built to last, grinds your beans fast, is relatively quiet, and gives you the perfect grind for your Moka Pot. Added to all of which of course, the joy about entry-level grinders is that they’re priced as entry-level equipment, meaning the Baratza is about to break your expectations, rather than your budget.
The Baratza does more than grind for Moka Pots, but to get the perfect grind for your stovetop espresso maker, setting #12 is your huckleberry – it will reduce the heat of the process, so you won’t scorch your beans as you grind, and its dual electric and its gear speed reduces jamming to a minimum while grinding.
One of the special pleasures about the Baratza is that while it’s built like a tiny ox, if and when parts need replacing on it, they’re easily available almost everywhere.
Consistent, perfect grind level, sturdy build, impressive grind speed and durability, coupled with its entry-level price tag, are what make the Baratza Encore our favorite coffee grinder for Moka Pots.
Pros:
- The robust build means it will stand up to a lot of grinding
- Setting #12 is perfect for Moka Pots
- It grinds quietly and reduces the heat produced
- Rapid grinding means you get your coffee faster
- The parts are easily replaced when needed
Cons:
- If the Baratza has a fault, it’s that it lacks a timer for precision grinding
OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
The OXO Conical Burr coffee grinder brings significantly more tech to your grinding game, with a built-in intelligent scale, and presets that give you a perfect grind for a range of different machines – including the Moka Pot.
In particular, the built-in scale helps newcomers to the art of home grinding a helping hand, giving them a basic measure for a darn fine cup of coffee, and allowing them to tinker from there to their own particular tastes. It also adds ray blocking to the party, so you won’t lose out on any of the subtle flavors of your chosen beans.
Well and strongly built, it’s a grinder that will stay with you long after you’ve outgrown its initial newbie-helping features. And with 15 coarseness settings, it will also continue to give you great ground coffee beans for your Moka Pot with all the flavor you want.
Pros:
- 15 coarseness settings means you can experiment with the grind that suits you best
- Fast grinding maintains the majority of the flavor compounds of your beans
- The OXO gives you consistent grinding
- Fast grinding
- The intelligent scale and the timer take the guesswork out of grinding
Cons:
- It’s one of the noisier grinders on our list
Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill – “Skerton Pro”
There’s something intensely pleasing about the shape and design of the Skerton Pro, and there’s a simplicity to it that helps make it relatively fool-proof. Consisting of only four parts, it’s a manual grinder, which means it takes slightly longer than any automatic machine. But still, given that fact, you can get a half-cup of grinding done in under two minutes.
As you’d expect of a “Pro” machine, this is an upgrade of an existing design, and where you’ll notice the improvement is in the new metal crank handle. Previously a point of weakness, Hario has gone with metal to translate your energy into grinding power more easily, with less chance of breakages along the way.
A cute fact about the replacement of parts here is that if the glass beans hopper should happen to break, you should be able to replace it with a standard mason jar – which is worth knowing, as the glass hopper is probably now the most vulnerable of the four parts.
You’re going to work harder to get your grinding done with the Skerton Pro, because it’s a hand-cranked grinder. But we’re betting if you’ve made the decision to grind your own beans at home, you’re going to appreciate the tactile connection to the process, too.
You can get a good medium or fine grind in anything between 1.5-2 minutes, and while it’s probably true that a hand grinder is never going to get you a grind that’s quite as uniform as an automatic one, the Skerton Pro is nevertheless the king of the hand-grinders currently available.
Pros:
- Robust changes to the handle and the lid make it much more hardwearing than previous versions
- Quieter than most, if not all, automatic machines
- Delivers a good medium or fine grind in under two minutes of cranking
Cons:
- Less uniform grinding than automatic grinders
Bodum Bistro Burr Coffee Grinder
This is not the first burr grinder on our list – but it is an excellent example of the breed. Burr grinders are increasingly scoring over old fashioned ‘slicing’ grinders, because they do less damage and lose you less of the beans’ subtler flavors. The Bodum Bistro model gets you deliciously even grinding in an easy-to-use machine that won’t break the bank.
It’s easy to see Bodum’s thinking in building this machine. It’s essentially a welcome mat to the world of home grinding. It’s not too expensive to scare off the complete newcomer, and it’s intuitive and simple to use for someone with no prior experience.
Added to which, it looks really cool, so it earns its place on your counter just by virtue of its design.
Two admissions it’s worth making – the Bodum is not the quietest grinder on the market, and neither are its burrs unbeatable. But the burrs will at least beat the pants off any blade-based grinder, and the noise is on a par with some higher-ranked grinders.
One neat extra in the Bodum is that it comes with a friction clutch. We know – you’re impressed, aren’t you?
You probably should be – it’s a feature that you won’t find in many grinders at this price point. If you get a stone in your beans, when it reaches the burrs, the machine will make what sounds like a death rattle, but isn’t – it’s just the machine telling you “Hey – stone here. Just how hardcore did you want your coffee?” That means you can remove it, rather than having to deal with it in the final grind.
Bottom line, the Bodum is a grinder to pick up, more or less priced down among the grinders to avoid. Is the grind consistent all the way down the line? Not as much as you might want, but at the price point, it’s more than good enough.
If you want the king of entry-level grinders, you’ll be scrolling back up the page to our list-leader – the Baratza Encore is unbeatable at what it does and the price at which it does it. If for some reason you’re not a Baratza fan, though, the Bodum will give you a high-quality grind, time after time after time, without blowing a huge hole in your budget.
Pros:
- This effective burr-style grinder will keep more of the flavor and aroma compounds than any blade-style grinder
- Ideal for newcomers to the home-grinding world, this is a very user-friendly machine
- It brings a degree of tech to the profess, including a friction clutch to stop foreign object being processed as beans
- The price is right for a grinder that significantly over delivers
Cons:
· It’s another among the noisy machines
Breville BCG820BSS Smart Grinder
Breville is an established name in simple, practically fool-proof kitchen equipment, and its Smart Grinder does absolutely nothing to upset that prestigious apple cart. It’s designed with push-button simplicity in mind, and it’s also designed to give you every size of grind you could possibly want, from drip to espresso, and especially to Moka Pot.
Breville’s reputation is for making its equipment so straightforward it tempts total neophytes into trying things they otherwise wouldn’t have. With a range of 60 grind options, you might initially feel overwhelmed by the choice on offer, but the machine has that trademark approachability that will have you pressing buttons and selecting the right option for your Moka Pot within half an hour.
Like many of the better options on our list, this is a burr-based grinder, rather than a blade-based option. That’s a mark in its favor, as the burr-style maintains more of the flavor and aroma compounds you want in freshly ground Moka Pot coffee.
There’s also an extremely useful precision timer, marked in 0.2 second increments, so you can get the grind you want, practically to the heartbeat.
The Breville entry in this market was always going to be friendly and approachable. Where the Smart Grinder scores highly is in matching that approachability with a high level of precision grinding that can give you pretty impressive grinding for your Moka Pot.
Pros:
- There are 60 grind settings, so this is a perfect option for your Moka Pot – and for pretty much everything else, too!
- The grind size is easily adjustable even by a newcomer to home-grinding
- The precision timer means you can get the exact grind you want, effortlessly every time
- As a Breville, it’s a very approachable machine
Cons
- It’s quite the chunky grinder, which may be in convenient in smaller kitchens
Delonghi Ariete Conical Burr Electric Coffee Grinder
Delonghi is a company with a name in kitchen machinery, but more than that, it has a specialized niche reputation in the world of coffee. When you see a Delonghi conical burr coffee grinder, you’d be a fool to yourself not to check it out.
We checked out the Ariete, and it was more than worthwhile. It has 15 grind settings, including a few that will be perfect for your Moka Pot – a few depending on how you prefer your coffee.
It has a cute cup size feature, so if you know how many cups you want in your Moka Pot, you can simply press a button and select the amount of grinding to be done. The Ariete is probably the closest you’ll come to having a coffee grinding butler in your kitchen. It will be unflappable years from now, and unflappable today when you ask it to grind you your required Moka Potful.
The conical burrs of course keep more of the flavor and aromatic oils in the grind, compared to a blade-style grinder.
Effortless is probably the keyword for the Delonghi Ariete. Anything you want it to do is absolutely no problem for it.
If you’re thinking “But the Breville had 60 settings. What gives with just 15?”, there are two things to keep in mind. Number #1 – the Delonghi is slightly lower down in the rankings. Number #2 – the consistency and uniformity of grind in the Delonghi means you’re not looking for more.
This is not the cheapest grinder on the market – it’s a Delonghi, you didn’t really expect it to be, did you? But if the Delonghi name carries a higher price-tag, it does at least deliver you a first-class grinder for the money you’re spending, that will probably still be effortlessly and meticulously grinding years from now.
Pros:
- 15 grind settings are quite enough in the Delonghi
- The cup size feature here takes a lot of the overthinking out of the grinding process
- Conical burrs give a richer, more aromatic grind
- Highly consistent grinding, time after time
Cons:
· Price – the Delonghi is on the expensive end of the market
Braun KG7070 Burr Grinder, Stainless Steel
Last, but only technically least, the Braun KG7070 burr grinder still has a lot to recommend it. Burr grinding maintains those flavor and aroma compounds for a truly fresh ground taste. 9 main grins settings, with 6 intermediate settings mean you can fine-tune the grind you want – making this a machine for those who know their way around both a grinder and their own palate.
There’s a cup selector function here that lets you precisely grind anything from 2 cups to 12 – more than enough at any one time for your Moka Pot. Add to that an auto-off function that stops grinding as soon as your selected amount of beans are ground and what you have here is a highly capable, simple-to-operate burr grinder that will easily give you everything you need to make the most of your Moka Pot.
Pros:
- 15 grind settings allow you to fine tune the grind you want
- An auto-off function means you never grind more than you want at any one time
- The cup selector function lets you determine the quantity of beans to grind at a time
Cons:
- The grinder has a tendency to spit grounds onto your counter
Buyer’s Guide
When buying a coffee grinder for your Moka Pot, keep these things in mind.
Burrs for quality, blades for price
If you’re grinding your own beans for the richness of the fresh-ground taste, always go for a burr grinder – if you can afford it.
Time’s a-wastin’
If you can, get a grinder with a timer, to avoid wasting beans by grinding too many
How fine do you want it?
Always keep your Moka Pot in mind, and make sure your grinder has enough grind settings to give you a good result in that pot.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why are burr grinders better than blade grinders?
Because they keep more of the flavor and aroma compounds whole in the grind, so you get a richer taste in your Moka Pot
2. Are grinders with more settings always better?
Not necessarily. It’s great to have lots of options, because then you can fine-tune your grind, but a lot of options can also be intimidating to newcomers.
3. How fine do I need to grind my beans for a Moka Pot?
There’s no single answer on this as people’s preferences are different. Medium-fine is a good starting point, and you can experiment from there.
