Well after lurking in the home roasting section for a good long time, I finally branched into other forums and discovered I needed to upgrade from my whirlygig grinder. I researched grinders extensively, everything from Mazzers to Macaps to Rockies and beyond. I do not have an expresso machine - I am a French Pressaholic. While the other grinders could certainly in theory handle a rougher, courser grind, they were specifically built for finer grinds - not my area of focus. I started reading about the Virtuoso and found that the most complaints / negs were regarding its espresso capabilities. No one knocked it for the courser grinds.
Being cost-conscious, I opted for the refurbed edition of the Virtuoso off of baratza.com. I had it out of the box the minute it arrived and was delighted with the very brief and to-the-point manual and the fully assembled machine. It's a sturdy little thing - nice brushed metal top, good solid weight to it, thick cord. The grounds bin slides into the body of the grinder easily enough but with just the right amount of resistance to let you know that it's air sealed. Couple of things that are good to know IMHO:
Course grind means COURSE. I guess after years of whirlygig powder I was just shocked to see the marbles rolling out of the courser settings. Dialed it down notch by notch and found the right settings for me. I guess I was expecting mathematically exact grinds - they are not all of the same exact size and shape. They are all roughly aligned, however, and there is very little sign of fines. No more dust n' boulders here.
Static issues. I don't have any! Sure, I've only been using it for two weeks or so, but so far I haven't seen anything even approaching serious trouble with static. The grinds either fall or are scooped out without a problem. Two solid knocks on the grounds bin gets rid of 97% of the clinging remaining grinds. I was concerned about static after reading about some of the issues noted in this forum, but evidently the static issues have been resolved.
Popping beans. Again, no issue here! Some users seemed to have had problems with beans dancing above the burrs, not entering the chute. So far so good - after about 8-10 grinds, I'm not noticing any beans that are hanging out above the burrs. The model I purchased has the speed reducer, which was intended to prevent the bean popping problems - and it works. There is also an interesting bean-guide above the burr chute - even if beans do pop up as they come into contact with the burrs, they impact on the bean guide and ricochet back into the burrs. Nice!
All in all, I really like this little guy. If I feel like using ye olde moka pot, it's super easy to move to the right grind (no moving while gears are moving, or guessing at the right position). Bottom line, if you are looking for a dedicated FP grinder, I don't see why you should look elsewhere. From what I've read about espresso grinds, there are better options - but for the Pressed, this is terrific. |
