Hi.

I grind into a paper cup when preparing Chemex. And in the winter months, the lack of humidity (27% as opposed to 55% and up) makes the static build go up, which in turn, makes the fine particles stick to the walls of the paper cup. It almost acts like a sieve (filter). I haven't made any testing or anything. It is only an observation.

Could ever static become something positive in the future for coarse grind coffee preparations? Do you see it ever done in purpose?

Cheers

On my dad saeco grinder their is some static and some of the fines always stuck to the upper part of the box. I remove them and it makes great coarse drip or drip coffee.

I've always thought that static would be a good chaff filter, hadn't thought about fines. I'd been looking at the Brunopasso Micro Powder Separator MPS-50 as a fines sieve but it's not available locally. I've also thought about using a tea ball as a sieve, but not sure it's really worth all the effort. For me, it could help reduce sediment when using the new Kone and also help with the draw-down time with filtered coffee.

When I pour my freshly roasted beans through my AeroPress funnel or a plastic canning funnel into canning jars, some of the chaff gets stuck to the side, which is fine by me. Chaff doesn't seem to affect the taste to me too much so I don't go overboard to remove it, but an easy way to remove it is nice. I tried rubbing my beans with a microfiber cloth, but that only left the beans stuck to the cloth and I didn't enjoy having the pick off the beans one by one.

I've also noticed that when I hand grind my espresso in my Kyocera CM-45 CF which has a narrow, plastic cylindrical body, that a lot of chaff is left behind in the top chamber and doesn't make it into the grinds. I was wondering if this was the work of friction at first, but now I suspect it's static.

The down side of static, of course, is the grinds flying all over the place when they're charged up and spraying out of the grinder. The Vario's not too bad with this, though.

Electrostatic separators would be a very cool solution, especialy if it were part of the grinder. Think Ionic Breeze from sharper image. Here is a cool animation of a similar item:
http://www.dustcollectorexperts.com/electrostatic/
Particles with enough momentum ( the large ones) would pass right through.

Another cool trick would be a cyclone separator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclonic_separation
You could tune the cut size based on geometry and air speed. I doubt any of these would be more practical than a hand siev though.