The grinder in my coffee machine will not grind
Author: AMT Serwis
For many of us, aromatic coffee from the machine is not just a good drink but a ritual the day cannot start without. Nothing tastes as good, or wakes you up as effectively, as coffee made from freshly ground beans. That makes a grinder that refuses to grind a real problem. What can cause a grinder fault in an automatic coffee machine, and how do you fix it? That is what this article is about.
A dirty grinder in the coffee machine
One of the most common reasons a grinder stops grinding is simply the lack of regular cleaning. Coffee beans are fairly oily, so to a greater or lesser extent they coat the burrs and the rest of the grinder. Grinders that have to deal with flavoured beans are particularly exposed to this. So the first thing worth doing is choosing your coffee carefully. The second is cleaning and maintaining the grinder.
A jammed coffee grinder
If you notice that:
- the grinder does not grind at all
- the machine grinds the beans, but with great difficulty
- the appliance makes strange noises while grinding
- the grinder gets excessively hot while running
- the grinder produces the same grind whatever you do (the grind adjustment stops working)
then it is very likely that the grinder is being held back by built-up residue or a stray bean jamming the mechanism. What you can do here is use a dedicated grinder-cleaning granulate. If that does not help, the grinder will have to come out of the appliance. Unfortunately, removing the grinder from an automatic coffee machine yourself can be quite a challenge — if you do not feel up to it, this is a job better left to professionals.
A burnt-out grinder motor
A burnt-out motor is also fairly common. Every appliance has a working life, and grinders in automatic coffee machines are no exception. Overfilling the machine with beans can contribute to a burnt-out grinder motor, but this kind of failure most often happens in machines under heavy load — office coffee machines, for example, where the number of cups made per day is well above average. In that case the only solution is to replace the grinder motor.
Worn burrs in the coffee grinder
As with a burnt-out motor, the number of coffees the appliance has made matters here too. The more beans your grinder has processed, the more worn it will be. In every grinder, steel or ceramic alike, there comes a point when the burrs are worn out. At that stage the sensible move is to turn to a trusted workshop that repairs coffee machines and have the grinder serviced.
Faulty electronics
We have said more than once that an automatic coffee machine is simple to use but complex inside. The electronics are the part that lets you prepare a delicious, aromatic coffee at the touch of a button. But there is a downside: they can fail — through water ingress, a chafed cable, a damaged control board and so on. If that is where your grinding problem lies, tracking it down and fixing it will not be straightforward for most people. The best, and often the cheapest, solution is the support you will get from a repair centre that specialises in servicing automatic coffee machines.