Cold brew is often pitched as the "easiest" way to make coffee. You just throw some coarse grounds in water, wait 12 hours, and strain it. Simple, right? Though if you know me, you know I tend to find that word easy usually means a poor cup of coffee.
Except if your cold brew tastes like muddy, bitter sludge, the problem isn't usually your recipe. It's your grinder (and of course the beans). Cold brew requires a consistent, extra-coarse grind that most cheap grinders simply can't handle. To get that smooth, chocolatey sweetness, you need the best burr grinder for cold brew.
When you use a blade grinder (or a cheap burr grinder) to grind coarsely, the beans shatter unevenly. You get big chunks ("boulders") and tiny specks of dust ("fines").
In a 3-minute pour over, this is annoying. In a 24-hour cold brew steep, it is disastrous. Those tiny fines over-extract, releasing bitter tannins into your concentrate. Worse, they slip through your mesh filter or cheesecloth, leaving a gritty layer of silt at the bottom of your glass. A high-quality burr grinder eliminates this by shaving the beans into uniform, salt-like crystals.
Most home grinders are designed for medium-fine drip coffee or espresso. They struggle to go truly coarse. The Fellow Ode Gen 2 was built differently.
The Ode uses 64mm flat burrs that excel at the coarser end of the spectrum. It produces a particle consistency that rivals commercial shop grinders. This means your water extracts flavor evenly from every distinct particle, resulting in a cold brew that is clean, articulate, and naturally sweet—never muddy.
Plus, the Ode has a large catch cup, which is essential when you are grinding 80–100 grams of coffee at once for a big batch of concentrate.
Check out the Fellow Ode 2 here
If you already have a grinder for espresso (like the Timemore Sculptor I use for my shots), you might be tempted to just crank it to the coarsest setting. Resist the urge.
Espresso grinders are engineered to produce fines (to create puck resistance). Even at their coarsest settings, they often produce too much dust for a clean cold brew. Keep your espresso grinder for shots, and let the Ode handle the slow brews.
Cold brew should be refreshing and smooth, not gritty and bitter. Investing in a grinder that can handle the coarse work will transform your summer morning routine.
To see how the Ode fits into my complete filter coffee station, check out my Work From Home Guide to the Best Coffee Setup.
And remember, cold brew uses a lot of coffee. I use Trade Coffee to keep a steady rotation of beans arriving at my door so I never run dry mid-steep.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through them, I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It helps fuel the coffee, the testing, and the writing. Thanks for supporting the work.