Hi All,
Its been a while since I have posted. I have finally upgraded my machine to a Quick Mill QM67. What a miraculous change that was. I am now looking at upgrading the grinder. I currently have a Mazzer Major converted to a doserless. I am looking at the K30 Vario (WBC) Single Espresso Grinder by Mahlkonig. I want something that is great for single dose, measured, and obviously an upgrade. Should I look for a different grinder. Any help would be much appreciated.

I'm really not sure the K30 is that much of an upgrade from the Major in the cup. From the looks of it, I'd say it's much worse at single dosing than the Major (Electronic dosers like the K30 work much better with a loaded hopper). The Mahlkonig Peak however, could be an upgrade. From what I've read the K30 is fairly staticy and clumpy (I'm sure it has been fixed, haven't done too much looking into the K30). What really makes you want to upgrade? If I were to upgrade from my Major, it would definitely be to the Compak K10, but I see no need to step up to a conical yet. IMO, the Major is a solid grinder seen in coffee shops all around next to huge La Marzoccos (Granted, Roburs and the Mythos are the new things around) and producing excellent, consistent espresso.. so I doubt the machine upgrade demands a grinder upgrade as well. Just my 2 cents.

Maybe consider the HGOne? IMO it's hard to justify spending more than $1500 on electric grinder when it's less than a grand. Not that I ever owned a good grinder

When I'm not traveling I work from home. I drink approx. 5+ drinks a day plus my daughter drinks a couple a day. I go through quite a bit of coffee a week so loading a bean hopper with a pound of coffee wouldn't be to bad. I really would like the ease of timed/measured dose.

Fishgod wrote: I really would like the ease of timed/measured dose.

Plug your Major into a Gralab darkroom timer.

+1 Auber also make one. I really don't think you will see much more from the K30 other than a big bulky object (I mean, it is a cylinder) on your counter.. at least height wouldn't be an issue. Also with the timer, you could try to fit it inside a doser-type lid to make it compact.. (Or if you're handy you could build something with a raspberry pi or that other thing)

This also looks neat http://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_ ... cts_id=297

personally ive found the major to be an absolute pain to get consistently good shots with. are you guys with majors using bottomless portafilters? At the shop, a major + bottomless was pretty much not possible. I hated knowing that we had to use a spouted portafilter and were in somewhat denial that we had major channeling issues.

when we switched to the k30, it was a dramatic upgrade towards consistency.

At this point, we only use bottomless portafilters(using a mythos1 and k30 for SOE). I think a grinder that does an excellent job at distributing into the basket is extremely important. The K30, even when it clumps, is a huge improvement over our old major.

I dont know if there is any high end commercial grinder that will really be very good at single dosing. Youre spending 1500+ on a grinder, you might as well spend a little more and just fill the hopper if you want more consistent results.

If channeling is a consistent problem, the explanation for this should be found on the user end of the portafilter. Many however, like to blame the grinder, but unless the grinder is off in alignment or had a small rock/stone or similar hard object through it, the one who we ought to blame is ourself, rather then our equipment.

Major is a consistent grinder, the only thing I never liked about it, where the stiff adjustment. The k30 is just that much easier to adjust precisely, but it dos not make much sense to pay the hefty price if you do not intend to use the digital timer based dosing system. There is only a few grams of retention in a k30, so your not going to waste the amount of coffee that is often the case with doserless grinders, making SD a bit of a waste of time.

If you want to SD, find a grinder that is good at it, save the money and use it on something else.

There is a small difference in the cup between a k30 and Major, personally I preferred the result from the k30, but I would not want to pay that much extra for it (I got a used k30) A PEAK is almost in the same price range (from new), okay a little more expensive, it should in theory give a noticeable difference in the cup and even retain less grinds.

Clumping is less of a problem with newer models so is static, the one I owned did neither after I upgraded it with new grinder chambers and chute. Perhaps I where lucky, but then others have expressed similar experience. Personally I do not find the k10 better in the cup, it's just different, it all comes down to what you drink and what you prefer.

frank828 wrote:personally ive found the major to be an absolute pain to get consistently good shots with. are you guys with majors using bottomless portafilters?

We pull every shot nekkid and used multiple Mazzer Majors for 5 years pulling literally tens of thousands of shots before replacing most of them with Macap M7Ds. Very consistent though large conic even more consistent. Channeling extremely seldom and yeah to be blamed on the handle side of the PF when it did happen. Of course we replaced burrs often, at more like 700-800lb not the mfg recommended max useful life of 1300lb.

maybe it was just our majorE. we had also used it for tens of thousands of shots and multiple new sets of burrs. One of the biggest issues we had was the velocity of the grinds shooting out of the chute. It would be so aggressive that the grinds would get stuck on the front of the dosing funnel. Unless we constantly tapped on the funnel while grinding, we would end up with a huge amount of stuck coffee that would fall through all at once. You can imagine this wouldnt help with the distribution of the coffee.

Mike, was yours an E model or a doser? Maybe a doser would have helped.