Dedicated filter grinder

Grinds for every method that is not espresso, at the coarser settings and much larger doses that batch and hand brewing need — and, by existing, stops anyone from moving the espresso grinder.

Mechanically it is the same pair of burrs at a set gap, but the job inverts. At filter settings there are fewer fractures per bean and the average particle is much larger, so fines are a small fraction of the mass — and they still dominate the cup, because filter contact time is long enough for them to over-extract completely while the boulders around them are still giving up their first solubles. That is why a coarse grind flatters a bad grinder for about a minute and then tastes bitter and thin at the same time. The second difference is scale: a batch dose is many times an espresso dose, delivered in one continuous run, so the motor works for a sustained period rather than in short bursts, and both the chamber and the grounds have time to heat. The third is range — a grinder that serves both a batch brewer and an immersion method has to reach from the fine end of filter to genuinely coarse, with the useful settings somewhere in the middle of its travel rather than pinned at the top of it.

• DECIDE WHETHER FILTER IS A MENU LINE OR A GESTURE. If filter coffee is on the board with a price, it needs its own grinder, full stop — the grinder is half the offer and the brewer is the other half. If it is a gesture, something you make for a regular who asks, then be honest and take it off the board rather than serving it from a grinder that is wrong for it.
• SIZE THE GRINDER FROM THE BATCH DOSE, NOT THE DRINK. A batch dose is delivered in one continuous run, so what matters is whether the grinder can deliver that whole dose without heating the grounds and without the motor labouring. Ask about sustained running, not about seconds per double shot.
• CHECK WHERE YOUR SETTINGS SIT IN THE ADJUSTMENT RANGE. A grinder whose useful filter settings are at the very coarse end of its travel has no headroom, so the day you add an immersion method you have nowhere to go. The settings you use daily should be in the middle of the range.
• ONE SETTING PER PURPOSE, and if you have two purposes, ask what the second one is worth. Batch and hand-brew want different grinds. A venue running both from one filter grinder is repeating the espresso/filter mistake in miniature — smaller stakes, same mechanism. Either accept that one of the two is compromised, or add the single-dose grinder that makes the hand-brew list possible.
• IF YOU SELL BEANS, BUDGET A RETAIL GRINDER. The alternative is that the batch setting is disturbed by the retail counter several times a day, and the person who resets it is not always the person who moved it.
• SITE IT FOR NOISE AS WELL AS FOR REACH. A filter grinder runs long and loud, and unlike the espresso grinder it is not tied to the machine, so you have freedom. Use it: put it where a sustained grind is not happening at a seated guest's shoulder.
• SPECIFY THE SAME LOGGING DISCIPLINE AS THE ESPRESSO GRINDER. Burrs wear here too, and the symptom is subtler — filter dulls into flatness rather than into a visible time drift, so without a kilogram count nobody will catch it.
• CONFIRM POWER AND BENCH SPACE WITH THE SAME RIGOUR AS THE ESPRESSO GRINDER. It is a second motor, often on the same run of counter, and whether the circuit carries both is a question for a licensed electrician and the local authority.