Regrinding coffee can put a heavier load on the grinder's motor because the grounds will pack into the burrs more tightly. But when regrinding there is a lot more going on than just changing the particle size by readjusting the grinder. Regrinding will create a greater amount of fines ("dust") and change the particle-size distribution. Espresso extraction depends on a mix of particle sizes. Think in terms of baseballs, table tennis balls, and marbles all mixed together. If regrinding improves performance and product, then there is some other problem going on that should be addressed.
for the record, i don't regrind for espresso. i regrind cheap hotel room coffee, (sometimes it's starbucks), for either aeropress or for my reusable k-cups. and again, i never use my good grinder for regrinding.
probably one in every twenty of my coffee drinks are something other than espresso.
cheap - preground - - hotel packaged - - - Starbucks coffee - - - - re-ground - - - - - then brewed in an Aeropress for that full-immersion flavor
If "coffee is the song that fills the cup of silence" then the above list is the beverage equivalent of "We Built This City", by Starship (1985) [Ranked #1 worst song ever in "Run for Your Life! It's the 50 Worst Songs Ever!" list in Blender Magazine, and part of "The 10 Worst Songs of the 1980s", Rolling Stone]
Why punish ones palate in that way... Sometimes even free is not a good deal!
when you can control all the variables like you can with an aeropress, it becomes as good or better than you can find anywhere else out on the streets, except for the places that really understand good coffee. and when i find a place like that, i drink espresso instead of wasting my time with brewed coffee.
put another way: when i'm at intelligentsia, i don't waste my time with drip, (even their good pourovers). i get espresso.
for 99% of the other places, including some so-called-good restaurants, i can tweak cheap coffee with my aeropress and get at least as good or better result.
agreed on, "we built this city". in '85 i was in college, surfing, skating half pipes and listening to the jesus and mary chain, GBH, Husker Du. about as mainstream as i got in that era was the ramones, and they were almost too mainstream for me. i still haven't changed much in my embrace of the mainstream.
yeah, I have an Aeropress too, but I buy really good whole beans for travel. I also take along my Lido hand grinder when I travel. But, hey...everyone's different. I'm glad it makes you happy.
as i said, espresso is my game. i don't cut corners when it comes to espresso. drip (including aeropress), is just a distracting plaything for me.
most of my beans, (that i roast myself), are a little on the light roasted side for good drip, and are pretty narrowly focused on contemporary third-wave espresso flavors. they don't make good drip. that's why i don't have a lido, even though i travel for a living. and i don't travel with my aeropress, because most hotel drip-grind beans are ground too coarse even for aeropress. so i'm between a rock and a hard place when i travel--which unfortunately, is often. and when i'm home, i'm pretty much all espresso all the time. main reason i got an aeropress is i like neat coffee gear. i don't actually use it that often. but it IS good for honing your skills on the basics that affect flavor, (grind, temp, time, etc...) It's a great learning tool. so every so often, if i have some cheap hotel coffee lying around, i break it out and start an iterative process of optimizing time temp grind--blah blah blah. it's a fun game to find the best a cheap coffee can be. and i guarantee you, you can bollocks-up a good coffee and make it taste worse--ask me how i know?
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