My grinder tests

Here's my take on grinder tests. A follow up for my coffee journey so far. Most the grinders are fairly new, so there could be inconsistencies caused by not breaking in the burrs, but I don't know.I did not do any taste tests as I still have a fairly hard time differentiating between coffee flavors and when I tried doing taste tests, I very quickly go "taste blind." So this is mainly to just report on the grind consistency. I also haven't spent very much time dialing in for taste nor have I been keeping journals on when I made good coffee vs bad coffee. I mainly just picked a recipe/grind size that I thought would work, and kept it at that. I do notice taste differences between the grinders, but that might be due to different grind sizes.​====> The settings I used for the grinders were arbitrary. I did not align the settings among the different grinders to match grind sizes, I just picked some arbitrary settings that I believe represented the full grind range of said grinder. <====​Beans - Some of my own home roasted Ethiopia Agaro Nano Challa Coop from Sweet Maria's. Roasted 30s after FC with bread machine heatgun 1lb roast => 12oz output in 14 min.​Hario Mini Mill - Bought new, not broken in, less than 2 lb grounded. There is a lot of play on the dial so expect lots of burr movement at each setting. 0 clicks was the tightest I could set it. 2 clicks is very fine, probably espresso fine, but you'll never be able to dial it in and it was super super slow. It already starts to get very inconsistent at 5 clicks and even more so at 9 clicks, so the step sizes are very very large. It should be a good starting point for most people, would not recommend for daily use due to speed, could be a cheap compact travel grinder. V60 pourovers got clogged at the end at setting 6.​Lido ET - Bought new, not broken in, less than 2 lb grounded. Burrs touch at 0:-1 (0 full rotations and -1 marks from the alignment "0" marker). 1:8 means 1 full rotation on the dial and +8 marks. There are 16 marks per full rotation. The full range of the ET is supposed to be around 4 full rotations, but at 2 rotations it is already very coarse. You can clearly see that it is much better than the Hario Mini Mill. The espresso range on this is stated to be 0:4 to 0:8. V60 pourovers at 1:4 did not have any clogging. It made very good coffee and can well be your daily driver for espresso (i never used it for espresso though) and brew. It can also be a large travel grinder too, if you have room. Possibility an "end all" for all coffee brewing methods.​Baratza Encore - Bought new, not broken in, less than 5 lbs grounded, stock no M2 upgrade. The burrs started singing for me around setting 5. At setting 8 it was still very fine. As a lot of people state, at coarser settings, this produces very inconsistent results and I agree. I would say that this produces fairly good results <24. It is not as consistent as the lido across all grind ranges, but it does a good enough job. I got a small amount of clogging at setting 18 for pourovers. Most people would probably be satisfied with this grinder for non espresso use for a looong time. I heard the M2 burr upgrade will help with the fines at all settings. Though the M2 bottom burr + top burr puts it close the a refurb virtuoso, and I would just recommend spending a little extra and buy that instead.​Baratza Sette 270 - Bought refurb from baratza, standard AP burr. Probably 5lbs or so through it. This is straight up an espresso grinder. Anything coarser than espresso is going to have too many fines. At 18C you get into the pourover range, but it is inferior to the Encore and Lido already at this point. I did not do any pourovers with this. Could be your "end all" espresso grinder. From what I've researched on the BG burr, is that it'll probably put it on par with the encore but changing out the burr is a bit troublesome unless you also bought another adjustment ring. I would just recommend buying a separate grinder for brew.​Grindmaster 875 - Got this on a whim to play around with for cheap. It is likely from a starbucks store and has seen tons of use. The burrs looked in good condition, but I could not tell if they were worn. I cleaned it out best I could and aligned the turkish to when the burrs just started to sing. Even on the turkish setting it was pretty coarse. I would say this is straight up a brew grinder. It produces pretty good results across all the grind ranges. I have not made any coffee from this. I got it mainly to grind my self roasted beans to give to friends who do not have grinders. I hear people using smaller bulk grinders for pourover, it does a great job, but the retention, size, and mess it makes doesn't make it ideal.​Aergrind - I have this on order for portable travel use since the Lido is a beast to carry around and the Hario isn't very good. So no testing results on this yet. Initial thoughts just from research is that, it'll probably work well as a daily driver and travel grinder. Just be annoyed when grinding the 35g aeropress world championship recipes or larger batches.​All in all, if I were to just do this again and without the wife wanting lattes factor, and it turns only she only wants maybe one a week, if that... I would just get an aeropress and encore for home use, and throw in an aergrind or mini mill for travel. And if wife wants a latte, just get a standalone milk frother. I'm just not that into espresso right now.​Here's my summary of different brewing methods.Pour overs - makes great coffee, but pouring it is a pain in the ass, can be hard to get consistent.Espresso/Americano - Other people take up to 5-10 min to do a shot, I got mine down under a min and half now including cleanup. Super fast, super quick, just expensive for the machine and grinder.Aeropress - Best of both worlds, cheap and quick, it's not annoying to do at all. Simple clean up too.Drip - Can't find a single cup brewing machine, moccamaster might work, but don't wanna buy one and hate it. Larger good brewers are bulky and not ideal for single cups.​And also, don't spend tons of time doing research. The more research you do, the more you think that your perfectly capable "entry level" grinder is "just not good enough". I'm almost slipping into the rat hole of wanting to get a niche for espresso and OE apex or fuji royal for pourover. via /r/Coffee https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/bvedec/my_grinder_tests/?utm_source=ifttt