If you have a coffee bar you know that coffee grinds make a mess. They have a habit of covering your bench top and getting stuck in corners of your espresso machine and grinder. A good coffee brush will help you get a handle on the mess and keep everything clean. In this post I'll be listing the best coffee brush sets for home and professional baristas alike.
My coffee brush set.
Best coffee brushes
Best for most
This is the coffee brush set I purchased and it has every type of brush you will need. It has thick brushes, thin brushes, and hard brushes to clean your shower screen and group head. It's also good value so a low risk buy.
Air blower
This is a good set as it comes with a normal brush and an air blower. Sometimes when cleaning your grinder or portafilter you can't get stray grinds with a brush - this is when an air bower comes in handy. Just give it a squeeze to blow away coffee grinds.
Single coffee brush
If you just need a single brush without all the accessories, consider getting one solid coffee brush. I like this one from Soulhand as it's well made and like the darker color pallet of the wood and bristles.
Portafilter brush
This brush from MHW-3BOMBER is a brush designed to clean stray coffee puck grinds. After you knock out your puck from your basket sometimes you get coffee left behind. This brush helps you clean it.
Why do you need coffee brushes?
Coffee brushes are one of those tools that you discover you need only after you've been making coffee for a while.
When cleaning you will often find stray coffee grinds that can't be reached with a coffee towel. Or when preparing your puck for extraction, you get some loose grinds on your portafilter that you want to genty wipe away. They are also essential when doing a chemical clean of your espresso machine to get rid of oil build up.
They are a part of the coffee cleaning process. A cleaner coffee machine and grinder leads to better tasting coffee.
Use a coffee brush to wipe away loose grinds during your puck prep. I'm getting some off my puck screen.
What coffee brushes do you need for your coffee bar?
You need two types of coffee brushes for your coffee bar, a soft brush and a hard brush.
A soft brush is used for cleaning of the portafilter and basket and wiping away loose grinds from your grinder.
Whereas a hard brush is used when cleaning your espresso machine's group head and shower screen. You need a hard brush for this as you need to give them a good scrub to get rid of stubborn coffee grind and oil build up.
A hard brush is used to clean your shower screen and group head.
What to look for when buying a coffee brush?
When looking to buy a coffee brush there are a few key things to look out for:
- What type of brush to you need? You want to get the tool that matches the job. For example, if you have an espresso machine, you want both a thin and hard brush. But if you use a small manual grinder, you probably only need a thin soft brush to get rid of hard to reach grinds.
- Build quality. Most brushes are affordable, but some are a little bit more expensive than others. Like all tools in the coffee hobby, you can pay extra for higher quality materials. Or you can get an entry level tool that does the job just fine.
- Looks. You want to get a brush that matches the aesthetics of your coffee bar. If all your other tools are dark, consider getting a darker wood brush that will match the look of your coffee bar. Us coffee geeks are like that - we want everything to match.
A thin coffee brush is good for hand grinders that are narrow.
Conclusion
We've now reached the end of this guide, I hope you've found a coffee brush that will compliment your coffee set up. If you have any questions about these brushes or coffee in general, feel free to leave a comment below. But in summary, if you don't have any brushes at all, I recommend getting the below brush set to start cleaning.
Best for most
This is the coffee brush set I purchased and it has every type of brush you will need. It has thick brushes, thin brushes, and hard brushes to clean your shower screen and group head. It's also good value so a low risk buy.
