While on vacation in the Mexican fishing village of Barra De Potosi I met a lady who sells coffee beans. Mune's coffee is organic shade-grown songbird coffee. I'm not sure what all that means, but when I had a cup I knew it was good! At 70 pesos/kilo, that's less than $3/lb, I couldn't resist!

When I got home with 6.6 pounds of fresh-roasted coffee beans I realized that I didn't have a way to grind the beans. It was time to buy a coffee grinder!

I went to the local Big Box discount store and straight to the aisle where they keep this kind of stuff.

After reading all the propaganda on the boxes about all the great features I settled on the Hamilton Beach CustomGrind 80365 Electric Grinder. Twenty bucks and I was out the door!

I got my new grinder home and pulled it out of the box. The first thing I noticed was that there was only a couple inches of cord! That seemed weird. I figured I'd go against my better judgement and I pulled the manual out and actually read a little.

Okay, the Hamilton Beach CustomGrind 80365 Electric Grinder has a hidden cord storage feature. Cool! Just pull the base of the grinder down and you can unwind as much cord, up to about 2 feet, then push the base back up. All the extra cord is stowed inside the grinder.

Then I looked at the front of the Hamilton Beach CustomGrind 80365 Electric Grinder. A dial, a button, and a slide thingy. Clean and simple.

First, the slide thingy. Four different settings. Four, eight, ten, or twelve cups. Take your pick.

Then, turn the dial to pick one of the coarseness settings. Your choices are Percolator, Drip, Espresso, and two that fit in between.

According to the manual I just have to set these things to the right settings. That's where the button comes into play. The button is right there in the middle of the coarseness dial. It says ON/OFF.

Now, the moment of truth.

I wanted to make about 4 cups of coffee in my French press.

I took what Hamilton Beach calls the "Removable Grinding Chamber" off. I call it "the clear top". They say it's dishwasher safe. I'll take their word for it. I just wiped it off when I was through.

When I went to put beans in I realized that the graduations only showed how full to fill it for 8 or 12 cups. But, being an engineering sort of guy, I did a quick calculation and decided to fill the chamber halfway to the 8-cup level for 4 cups. Pretty smart, eh?

Since I was using a French press I set the grind to the coarsest setting. Then, I locked the clear top... umm.. I mean... the "Removable Grinding Chamber" into place. I lined the big black triangle up with the "unlocked lock" symbol and turned it about 1/4 of an inch to the "locked lock" symbol. Nothing to it. After reading some reviews of the previous model, this wasn't as easy as it is with the Hamilton Beach CustomGrind 80365 Electric Grinder.

The manual says I just have to plug it in and the stainless steel blades will automatically spin around until the beans are ground to perfection.

I stuck the plug into the outlet...

The first thing I noticed was the lack of noise. I could probably grind my beans while everyone in the house is still asleep.

When the Hamilton Beach CustomGrind 80365 Electric Grinder stopped grinding I turned the grinder upside down and removed the "Removable Grinding Chamber". The beans were a little coarser than I expected, but not bad.

I dumped them in the French press and brewed a great cup of Mune's coffee.

While the coffee was brewing n the French press I popped the brush out of it's built-in holder and gave the grinder a quick cleaning.

Since that first grinding experience I've found that it's easy to adjust the coarseness or fineness of the grind by using different combinations of coarseness and number of cups.

The Hamilton Beach CustomGrind 80365 Electric Grinder is about as easy as it gets to use. The only thing that was a little confusing was Hamilton Beach's claim of "hands-free grinding". How the heck are you supposed to put the beans in, close the top, adjust the settings, and plug it in without your hands?

Just curious...

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