Introducing Burrtopia: A place for burr opinions
Link to Burrtopia here
Submit your own opinion here
Coffee gear enthusiasts love talking about burrs.
There are two primary challenges for you, hunting for burr information:
Opinions are scattered throughout the internet coffee-sphere. Nuggets of info in a 100-page home-barista forum, or throughout thousands of incoherent messages in a Discord group, it’s a mess.
A viewer can’t determine whether an opinion is applicable or relatable to them. “This burr makes all my coffee taste good as espresso” may not be relevant to you.
Influencers are over-relied upon as the single source of truth rather than as a single, in-depth data point. When a viewer with different preferences tries a burrset based on an influencer take and is disappointed, nobody is happy.
Over the past few years I’ve put out several visualizations in the past that I immediately regretted. In a basic visual graphic, it is not possible to capture the nuances, differing outcomes for different brew methods and beans, or establish that burrs do not have a single presentation. Doing so introduces unintended conclusions or over-generalizations, and I felt in creating these visuals, was contributing to misinformation.
“What if we had access to particle analyzers and could objectively measure them?”
The idea is not new. I’ve hoarded 20+ burrs in hopes that one day I could send them to someone who would be able to output useful data. However, I do not believe this would be particularly beneficial for someone seeking to improve cup quality. Fines are not necessarily the enemy. The particle shape for a given burr doesn’t remain consistent throughout the grind size range, or at different RPMs. Even with access, the secondary factors would be so influential that it’d take a lab of dedicated researchers to collect the data, and pray that it is applicable to our goals rather than being funded and limited to the dark roasts of big coffee entities. There are a couple at-home particle analyzers. I’ve used them and don’t trust them, even for twenty measurements at a single parameter, the variability in setup and sampling warps the results. Even if we had the data, it would tell us very little in practice for flavor outcomes. What a downer.
“So what’s the best burr for clarity?”
This is a logical question, but a framework that can lead to a questionable purchase. Clarity is not one thing. To quantify clarity as a metric overlooks the unique presentations and suitable pairings of the beans you use. An 8/10 clarity burr doesn’t tell you that it might be great for highlighting delicate florals but unpleasant presentation of winey notes on naturals. Another 8/10 clarity burr might have long-lasting linger and consistently loud presentation suitable to how you process notes, but lacking in peak acidic intensity. Making purchasing decisions from these qualities would bring you closer to your goals sooner than debating if a burr is 7 or 8/10 in “clarity”.
So here we are:
A collection of opinions from enthusiasts who wished this were easier when they were shopping around. For this first round at launch, I directly reached out to enthusiasts that I have seen contributing their knowledge. An opinion on its own without contextualization and relatability to a reader is not very useful. The goal is to have less “expert” opinions, but numerous from educated enthusiasts who are more likely brewing the same way as a prospective buyer is.
The key things each submission needs to mention:
The specific burr. Some burrs have wild histories and silent revisions or coating updates. It’s important to understand whether an opinion is based on a current version.
What grinder the burr lives in: the installed orientation, burr carrier design, RPM and possible adjustability, infeed vs. outfeed rate of the grinder; these may all contribute to how the burr is perceived.
What does the reviewer like? If a submission is from an ultra-light, washed drinker, but you tend to go for darker, funky naturals, the opinions is perhaps less relevant to you.
What does the reviewer do? If a submission says they slow feed one bean at a time, RDT, WDT, and only does espresso, you as a busy pourover-only brewer might find the opinions less relatable.
As you scan through, you should expect there to be conflicting opinions. That’s the goal - to expose that this is complicated and there is no consensus. The beans you use, the water you brew with, the recipe used, and an individual’s preferences and goals all affect how they interpret a burrset.
Some notes:
This is a living document and will be continuously updated with new burr entries and opinions.
Be nice, respect opinions. Contributors are being candid with their opinions for the collective knowledge pool.
The credit goes to the many folks putting in their submissions. All I’ve done is copy and paste their thoughts.
Contribute your own opinion here, and save yourself from having to type out those thoughts again.
“I’m not as good at brewing as those guys”
This is exactly what this resource is for and why you should contribute. The reader is more likely to relate to your experiences and difficulties with a burr they wish they knew beforehand.
“I don’t have expensive burrs like on the page”
New sections will be added. Personally, I’m more interested in adding data points for cheaper, high-performance burrs than shaping the narrative to be “you need a big burr to make good coffee.”
To close, a gallery of some previous attempts I’d made to represent burrs, now forever scrapped.
If you see these floating around, know that today’s me expressly dismisses the representation. If you see other entities putting out similar representations… be skeptical.
