First, an apology dear readers. Back in early 2022, we reviewed and recommended the O-Kettle, a (then) new kettle with an interesting handle design and some advanced features.
Turns out this kettle has flaws, and the company has up and disappeared. But not before they fleeced hundreds out of their hard earned money on Kickstarter. All of that happened well after our review was published, but since the company used our review (without permission) to promote and launch a Kickstarter campaign in the spring of 2022, I feel some responsibility here.
We’ve amended our review of the O-Kettle (yup, it’s staying online, but now as a cautionary tale) to hopefully steer people away from this company should they resurface in the future.
This episode (and there’s a lot more to it, which I detail in the amended review) caused me to scrutinize, not for the first time, CoffeeGeek’s editorial and review policies. It is one of the most important things about how we run our website.
The Responsibility of Influencers
Influencers are called that title because they do in fact wield influence. Influence over your wallet. Influence over what you decide to covet, want, and buy. We have more than a few influencers in the world of specialty coffee, and many of them exist on Youtube and Instagram.
CoffeeGeek launched in 2001, and it took me a few years to realise how powerful that influence was, and how I had to bear a lot of responsibility for it. We knew that a positive review of coffee gear on our website could result in many tens of thousands of dollars spent with a vendor or a product. I didn’t care so much about the vendors. I cared that consumers got a good deal and felt good about their purchase.
So starting around 2003, we began a series of internal guides for how we reviewed and rated products. These guides (there’s seven: espresso machines, manual espresso machines, grinders, manual grinders, auto drip coffee makers, siphon coffee makers, and coffee + espresso accessories) have been updated and expanded on many times since then, all with the principles of a) making our reviews better and more consistent, and b) making sure we present you, the reader with the best and most objective information.
One big change to our site policies came in 2016, when we put a blanket moratorium on any reviews or promotion of crowdfunded projects. This came about after two spectacular failures in the Kickstarter realm – the ZPM Espresso machine and the La Fenice machine project. We heavily promoted both of these as exciting projects to be part of, and both resulted in our readers and others losing 10s of thousands of dollars.
I couldn’t stand this loss. So our policy changed. No more reviews or promotions of crowdfunded machines and equipment (we’ll still write about projects like books and documentaries). We also refuse to review any successfully crowdfunded coffee equipment until it is available in regular retail channels.
I still get emails, almost daily, from various Kickstarter projects asking me to promote and review their projects (many of them not even launched yet); some of them even offering payment or some kind of kickback. I refuse every single one of them, no matter how big or small.
Sadly, this is not the case with all coffee influencers.
There are far too many reviews out there for crowdfunded gear that isn’t even in full production yet. This has got to stop. The desire to “be the first!” with this information is playing fast and loose with coffee consumers’ wallets. To coffee influencers out there, no matter if your subscriber base is 100,000 or 500, I implore you to consider your audience the next time you get the urge to promote an unknown crowdfunded project.
Some may seem fairly safe to promote. Take the Timemore Sculptor Grinder. Timemore’s been around for a while, and they seem fairly safe to promote when they launch a new product. Their first electric grinder, the Sculptor was launched on Kickstarter and the company sent out pre-production units to most of the popular Youtube influencers, who happily reviewed the grinder. All this before it was even available for sale. I also had comms with Timemore, but told them I would wait until the grinder was in full production and available through retail channels before we would do a review on it.
To me, reviewing and recommending an expensive coffee product that is still in its initial production run (or still a pre-production prototype) from a company brand new to the space borders on irresponsible. Unless you’re constantly reminding your readers or viewers of the product’s status and potential risk.
Reviewing Early Production Products
Another example comes to mind: the Option-O Lagom Mini. We are just wrapping up a five month evaluation of this grinder, and spoiler alert, it’s going to be one of the highest grinder recommendations we’ve ever made.
Our review is also going to be for a very different product than almost every published video review you’ll find for the Lagom Mini. That is because our review is based on a version that’s been stable for over 12 months now, a model that incorporates a range of improvements and changes Option-O brought to the grinder in its first year of production.
Option-O is a tiny, almost cottage industry company producing some pretty exceptional products. But they do limited production runs, often with waiting lists for their grinders, and this affords them the ability to update and improve the products based on early adopter feedback. They take advantage of this, to future customers’ benefit.
Keeping this in mind, most of the Lagom Mini reviews online and on Youtube are for the literal first generation, first production run of this grinder. Those reviews are all now quite out of date. They talk about 38mm burrs, or two choices of 48mm burrs. They talk about the grinder stalling when using an extra light grind. They give number set point recommendations for various brew method grinder size settings. None of that is relevant to the product as it exists today, because Option-O has made some significant changes to this grinder in its first year of production.
I get the eagerness to “be the first!” to get reviews out about an exciting and ground breaking new product. I also fully understand that the public out there wants this kind of information, so I don’t begrudge the Youtube influencers for doing this.
But there is a price. That price is, almost all the reviews available today for the Lagom Mini are out of date and are passively spreading misinformation about this grinder to someone looking to buy one today.
Therein lies another benefit of the long form, written review format. We can review early versions of a product here on CoffeeGeek, and if the product changes or evolves, we can just update the review to reflect the new details. Video reviews can’t do that (other than updating the description field, but no one reads those).
We published the First Look for the Bambino Plus only a few months after it was introduced, and really hammered Breville for not including a hot water function. They added it (via a 2 button press to get hot water out of the steam wand) about a year after introduction, and we were able to update our review to reflect this.
Our Policies Keep Evolving
We’re reviewing, with some caution, the new Turin Legato espresso machine. This is a white label espresso machine with a very short history of a lot of changes. Indeed, there’s an even newer variant of this machine available from MiiCoffee that addresses one of the flaws in our test unit (the poor implementation of preinfusion). No doubt other revisions and newer variants will come down the line.
This machine is a bit of a game changer ($500 for a dual boiler setup, PID control, 58mm portafilter, quick heat up times, solenoid valve, etc) so we believe it is of interest to our readership to review and rate it. And to be honest, putting aside the worry of future updates and upgrades to the white label machine, the unit we are testing right now is a fantastic value for what you get.
This machine has caused me to further revise our website’s review parameters and guidelines. Going forward, if we do review a product from a) a brand new company, b) a company with a history of quick revisions to their products (in effect, treating early buyers as beta testers), or c) a small cottage industry company that frequently has “production runs” and “waiting lists” for their products, we will make this information part of our review. We will also include a caution note to those who might be on the fence about making a major purchase.
Because at the end of the day, every review we post is about giving you accurate, truthful and objective information designed to aid you with your purchase of some potentially expensive equipment you should expect years, if not decades of performance from.
This is a heavy responsibility I take very seriously at CoffeeGeek.
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
