- Consistent grind, no mud in french press coffee - Decent range, fine enough for my Krups Gusto - Held together well so far
Negative Product Points
- Just plain ugly - Beans don't feed into the grinder easily - Grinds get stuck in chute - Significant static
Detailed Commentary
In the end, this is a perfectly decent all around grinder. One piece (the little plastic disk in the hopper) broke almost immediately, but other than that, its been sturdy under fairly constant use. The details, however, could use some work. Materials feel flimsy and cheap - especially the timer and grind selection dials - and the unit is noisy (my 3 year onld retreats into the living room if she sees me start to get ready to grind). I do a few things to compensate for the weaknesses:
The beans don't really feed in to the grinder by themselves at all. To compensate, I remove the top of the hopper and stir the beans with a spoon while grinding.
There are always a ton of grounds left in the shoot. To compensate, I run the grinder for a few seconds and toss the grinds before actually grinding the beans I'm going to use.
I clean every thing as well as I can every week or so - the hopper comes all the way off, which is nice.
For french press, I push the grinder as course as it will go - past the "maximum" setting of 7. For espresso, I use 1.5. When I upgrade my espresso machine, I assume I'll need to upgrade the grinder as well.
Its almost exactly average. Not aggravating enough to ditch it for a new one, but not good enough to be inclined to replace it with another of the same model. Were I to get a new grinder, I'd keep this one for non-espresso applications, and pick up a Rocky for the sole use. In the mean time, I'm perfectly happy puttering along with what I've got.
Buying Experience
This was a gift (price mentioned above is an educated guess). I know my wife got it from Aabree, and she said everyone there was extremely helpful.
