Can You Grind Coffee in a Blender?

The other day I was making coffee using a pour over type of system. I’m no coffee connoisseur–in fact I usually use k-cups to make my brew–but sometimes I like to make it pour over style.

As I plugged in my coffee grinder and poured in a bunch of roasted coffee beans, a thought struck me.

Isn’t a coffee grinder just like a miniature blender?

And if a coffee grinder is just a miniature blender, could I use a full size blender to grind my coffee? I knew I had to experiment to find out.

The Hypothesis

My hypothesis was that the blender will grind the coffee just about as well as the actual coffee grinder, however, the blender might only work if I try to grind a larger amount of coffee beans.

More Precise Measurements

Normally, I just guesstimate the amount of beans I need to make my coffee, but this time I decided to double check the actual instructions. The instructions said to use two tablespoons of beans for each six ounces of water.

But how much water was I using?

I grabbed a measuring cup and filled it with water to measure the capacity of my pour over container. It turned out that it was about three cups, fully filled. Three cups time eight ounces in a cup equals twenty-four ounces. Divided by six ounces times two equals eight table spoons of coffee beans.

To be honest, that sounded like kind of a lot of coffee beans, and I usually don’t fill my pour over container to the top, so I decided to go with six tablespoons of coffee instead.

I poured the coffee beans into the blender and got ready to grind them.

Grinding the Coffee Beans with a Blender

At a low speed the blender blades seemed to just shoot the beans into the air instead of doing any real damage to them.

But after I cranked up the speed, the beans were pulverized. I turned the blender off after running it for nine to ten seconds.

Filling the Coffee Filter

I ran into a little trouble here. Most of the ground coffee poured right out of the blender container, but there was still a lot of finely ground powder that got stuck to the edges of the container.

I grabbed a spatula to help force loose the trapped coffee. I was a little worried I was going to end up creating a giant mess in my kitchen, but fortunately I didn’t.

At this point, I thought it would be a good idea to compare my “blended” coffee beans with coffee beans that had been ground in my usual coffee grinder.

Comparison

Below is a photo of the of the ground coffee. The coffee in the container on the left was ground with the coffee grinder, and the coffee in the container on the right was ground in the blender.

Overall, there wasn’t much difference. Perhaps, the coffee that had been blended had a finer consistency than the coffee from the grinder, but this difference was small. It is also possible that if I had ran the coffee grinder for a longer amount of time there would be no difference in the consistency. As I mentioned earlier, I do not actually know a lot about coffee, so I am not sure if there is an optimal consistency for ground coffee.

It was also much easier to get the coffee out of the grinder versus the blender container. The grinder is much smaller, so there is less space for the ground coffee to get stuck in.

Making and Tasting the Coffee

Both batches of coffee tasted great. I did not notice any difference between the two.

Video

Here is a video I made about the whole process.

Conclusion

So, it is definitely possible to grind coffee beans with your blender, but I do not recommend it. Perhaps you could use your blender if you suddenly find yourself in need of grinding a lot of beans all at once.

Coffee grinders are relatively cheap, and if you find yourself making a lot of coffee at home, it makes sense to have a specialized appliance for grinding your beans. I don’t plan on getting rid of my coffee grinder.