How's that Hario treating you? I'm still thinking of getting one.
porlex would be better, only $10 more, but you get a stainless steel body that won't electrostatically hold your coffee.
Huh, I never thought of that before but that makes a lot of sense.
Yup, I've heard quite a few plastic grinders/bin hold the ground beans. It's only a bit annoying, just hit it a bit to shake them loose. Also, you'd have to wash it more often due to the ultra fine particles.
How's that Hario treating you? I'm still thinking of getting one.
It's great. It's amazing for my budget and personal use. I'm still experimenting with brew methods and grind size, and the grind size is consistent every time. It beats any automatic blade grinder I've tried. Plus, I don't think I'm ready to upgrade to an automatic burr grinder since the cheap ones are garbage and the nice ones are $$$.
When you do eventually decide to upgrade, I would highly recommend going straight for Baratza. They make some of the best performing, and most reliable grinders available today. Like Beast mentioned, the encore is probably the best choice in the price range of around ~$100. If you can manage to set aside a little more, I would go for a refurbished virtuosos, you can buy them directly through barazta's website(refurb list gets updated every thursday) I've had mine for close to a year now and it was one of the best coffee purchases I have ever made. If you go for a virtuoso refurb, you actually get the burr's from the upgraded model, the precisio, only without the macro grind adjustments for people brewing espresso, so it's really a great value.
I too had one of those hand grinders before I eventually upgraded to an electric model. While I loved the quality of the grinder for the money it cost, I found it a little too difficult to set aside the time needed to grind enough coffee for an aeropress cup on mornings before school, and wanted to move to something electric that could grind the beans almost instantaneously. Let me know if you have any questions about grinders, or just coffee stuff in general, I'm a real geek for this stuff!
I love my encore, my coffee intake has maybe doubled since it's so easy to get grinds. Hand grinders aren't bad, but they do take a bit of time. About 3-5 minutes to grind 20 grams needed for an Aeropress (or the dosage/grind size I use for AP). When I think "Oh, a cup of coffee would be nice right now" it's super easy to measure up some beans and brew a cup in 5 minutes including cleanup time. Hand grinding is "Oh, a cup of coffee would be nice right now but I'm 10 minutes away from it (without cleanup), forget it" Or when using a siphon/vacuum brewer, it would easily be 2+ hand grinding sessions. I think I've brewed twice with a siphon hand grinding. Now, most weekends, that's how I'll brew coffee.
In terms of coffee storage, the place I go has some really nice plastic bags with the CO2 vent. Plus, I tend to buy 2 half pound bags and drink it before they would go stale. I'd say about a pound every 2-3 weeks. It's SUPER nice to have a local coffee roaster!
I feel so underclassed busting up my beans in a magic bullet.
UPGRADE. Any burr grinder is better than blade. Even a super low end, $40 electric burr is better than a blade grinder (and fresh beans, but that's a given). If you have the money, I'd go right for an encore. It's pretty much perfect for everything except espresso. You can do espressos with an encore, but if you have a decent espresso machine, you should for SURE have a decent grinder. I've heard so often that a grinder is more important for espresso than the espresso machine itself, unless you have a really low end espresso machine.
So far, my favorite bean ever has been a light roasted Ethiopian harar. Also, always try to get lighter roasts, dark ones tend to have a burn taste IMO. Plus, I've heard light roast have more caffeine