The ever wonderful Philip Le Masurier sent me a fascinating photo...
You'll remember Philip because he's the fabulous photographer who has captured all of my product images. Philip sent the above image... his hand grinder kept in contact with the kitchen faucet by that simplest of products, a rubber band.
The hand grinder manages to dissipate all of the triboelectric static that is generated from grinding via the copper which runs in the faucet all the way to the earth. It's a genius idea.
It might be useful here to remind you all why static is an issue. Firstly it's messy, static causes coffee grounds to stubbornly stick around the exit from the grinder. More importantly static causes the coffee grounds to clump resulting in differences in porosity of the coffee puck. These differences increase the likelihood of channeling (water running through preferential pathways) through the puck as you extract your coffee. Channeling means that your coffee puck is unequally saturated and will generally result in uneven coffee extraction... a negative for flavour!
Next week I'll be writing an extremely geeky newsletter... some of you may enjoy it! Until then!
To hear about why I love my coffee roaster click here
To learn about the effect of grinding speed click here