Review of the Porlex JP-30 hand grinder

Holy smokes my last post was all the way back in September! I've moved into a new position at work and I have been so busy adjusting that I have barely had time to roast coffee, much less write about it. Here's hoping that my Java updates can be as consistent as I want my coffee to be. 

I was very excited when I settled on and ordered this grinder. As part of this new position I've been working long hours, and recently I've starting with going to the gym early in the morning. I don't like drinking coffee before I go to the gym because of it's bowel moving properties, and if I brewed coffee before I went and drank after the gym it wouldn't be fresh, but now work coffee is a go!

It costs $46 on Amazon and presumably ships from Japan. The packaging is all in Japanese which was useless to me. I still have questions about it, like if it can be rinsed with soap and water, but using it was fairly straightforward.

 

Fully disassembled there are only 6 pieces. The burrs are ceramic, which I've read are more durable than steel. Not pictured inside one of the cylinders is a spring that presses the smaller burr towards the larger one. One qualm I have is that when its assembled and you're grinding the coffee, I felt like it was going to come apart where the two cylinders fit together. Even holding it at the seam, I thought I felt some movement, but other than that the build quality seems solid. The handle is long enough to give you plenty of leverage, and the ergonomics are overall pretty good.

I was able to pack about 33 grams into the top portion of the grinder, which I will refer to as a hopper for lack of a better term. Using a standard coffee to water ratio of 1:16, you should be able to get 528g, or a little over 18oz of brewed coffee from one full hopper. The knob at the bottom adjusts how far apart the burrs are from each other, which affects your grind size. The further away, the larger the grind, the closer the smaller the grind. With the knob all the way clockwise the burrs felt like they were touching each other, leading me to believe that trying to use it like that would be damaging to the burrs, so I started testing grind size at 2 clicks counterclockwise. I ground a few beans at a time for this little experiment, which belied how difficult it would be to grind to it's full capacity. I mean, I'm not Captain America, but I didn't consider myself to be a weakling either. Grinding to it's full capacity took me a little while and I had to adjust how I was holding it a few times from fatigue.

           


 2 clicks counterclockwise gave me a great espresso grind. I don't brew espresso (yet), but spent enough time around it to know what the grind is like. I'm anxious to get a machine down the road and try it out. From what I've read, and (any experienced barista's reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong) espresso grind is supposed clump together. This was the case at the setting, and there were no stray small grounds (fines) or rouge large chunks.
I arbitrairily decided to increase the grind size by 4 clicks each time, which ended up giving me a good representation of the grind spectrum. 

Normal filter drip grind seemed to come into focus about 10 clicks in and went until 14 clicks. These grinds are what I would use for any of the filter pour over methods, however visualizing the grinds with 4 clicks of difference in between kind of helps you see between the lines. Filter drip may be able to go as fine as 8 clicks and French press grind could start somewhere around 16 clicks. At 18 you are definitely in French Press territory and it seemed to cap out at around 22 clicks. Based on the fundamentals of brewing, any of these can be adjusted to your taste. Brewing coffee is all about extraction. The more surface area of the original bean you expose to water, the more extraction you will get. If the coffee tasted underdeveloped or flat (underextracted), you would decrease your grind size. If it turned out bitter (overextracted), you would increase your grind size, that is to say if all your other variables remained constant e.g. water temperature, brew time etc. 

                               

Overall I think that the Porlex offers a grind that is incredibly consistent, and has a solid build quality for the money. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to step up their brew game, yet not ready to drop the dough on an electric grinder OR anyone like me who needs a travel set up. 

Edit: Blogger is absolutely atrocious at it's ability to place pictures within text, and the lighting on the pictures themselves are not that great. Sorry.