After a recent machine upgrade to a Brewtus II I am looking for a new grinder to put the final nail in the upgrade coffin. I am ready to get this monkey off my back.

My current grinder produces fine espresso but it is doserless and painfully slow. This means I have to stand there while the machine is grinding instead of doing some other productive task. It currently takes about 25 seconds to grind 18 grams and another minute or so to sweep out all of the retained coffee from the chute. Read 6 or 7 minutes at the grinder for 4, 18 gram doubles. I want something faster and something that requires much less time to clear the chute after grinding.

I am looking hard at the Cimbali Max Hybrid from Chris' Coffee. I understand this machine seems to build a love hate relationship for some owners. Opinions seem to rate it a stellar grinder capable of remarkable shots, but usage annoyance appears to be high, as does the noise level. What I am interested in is trying to determine if it will be a good fit for my usage.

I order 5lbs at a time and freeze what I am not going to use in 2 or 3 days. I tend to keep the same coffee on hand for about a month. I like to run a semi full hopper and keep 10 or 12 oz of coffee in the hopper. From what I understand this fits the CMH nicely.

I usually pull shots in groups of 3 or 4 doubles over a 15 minute period at various times of the day. What I would really like to be able to do is grind all of the shots at once (about 72 grams) and then work from the doser. I want to have easy access to sweep out the grinding chute after grinding to reduce as much loss as possible and to keep things moving nicely and clean from use to use. Is this something the CMH can deliver, 72grams at a time, or will the chute choke before that? How long does it take this machine to grind 72 grams?

I am under the impression that it is essentially clump free? Is it? Is it still pretty clump free if working with a full doser?

What amount of time is necessary to keep the machine clean and ready to use from session to session?

How accurate is the doser? Can I set it for 9 grams and actually get 18 grams out of 2 pulls of the lever?

I usually take apart and clean my grinder thoroughly after each 5lbs bag ~monthly. Will the CMH tolerate this type of cleaning schedule? According to some posts it will but I thought I would ask.

What I want is a grinder that can get out of my way similar to the way the Brewtus has gotten out of my way. I no longer futz with waiting for the espresso machine to be ready, and I get a solid repeatable result time and time again. I would like the same from my grinder. I want to be able to turn the grinder on for X amount of time while I pour the 2 or 4 pitchers of milk needed for the drinks I am about to prepare, turn it off, and with a brief cleaning of the grinding chute, be able to start filling baskets from the doser.

Sorry for all of the questions, it is a rather substantial purchase. I appreciate any feedback from owners regarding this type of usage. Thanks for your time and consideration.

The doser is going to be as accurate as most other dosers, however if you are really trying to reduce waste by cleaning out the chute going into the doser after each grinding period (and using the resulting coffee), no doser will be able to maintain dosing accuracy. I do not use the doser to set dosing levels and prefer to weigh the ground coffee in a ramekin, then spooning it out with the tare function into a PF. This economizes on coffee usage and standardizes the dose for me in a way that I think is more accurate than any doser can replicate, however to each his own on this.

As a ballpark guess I'd say that you could grind 72 grams in about 25 to 35 seconds. I do occasionally grind enough coffee to make two double espressos at the same time (28g in total, or so), but never more. This is not to say that I don't ever serve more than 2 shots in a session, but rather that if I have to make more than two in a row then I go back to the grinder for another session.

I haven't a clue why you would want to clean out the internals of any grinder frequently in the way you are proposing. This sounds to me at best to be unnecessary, and at worst to risk misthreading into the brass threads, causing needless and perhaps irreparable damage. The above comment can be generalized to this sort of cleaning regimen with any of the other commercial grinders you might consider in addition to this one.

The Max Hybrid is a nice grinder and I'm glad to own one. It is noticeably noisier than the original Max, however it is smaller and cheaper and easier to find in the USA. I don't see any difference in grind quality between the original and the one that Chris is importing.

ken

Thank you Gentlemen, I was hoping you would respond.

Grinding 72 grams at once would not be the norm but the extreme. Grinding enough for 2 doubles at once would be the average use.

As to cleaning, maybe once every 5 lbs is too often. On my current grinder there are only 3 screws to remove to pull the top burr and allow access to the grinding chamber. I am not disassembling the entire grinder, just getting down to the burrs. If once a month is excessive I would be perfectly happy to drop that back to twice a year or even less. I just wasn't sure what kind of schedule this machine requires. Perhaps I should have asked what you recommend for a general cleaning schedule.

It sounds like this may be a good fit for me.

Gus wrote:
As to cleaning, maybe once every 5 lbs is too often. On my current grinder there are only 3 screws to remove to pull the top burr and allow access to the grinding chamber. I am not disassembling the entire grinder, just getting down to the burrs. If once a month is excessive I would be perfectly happy to drop that back to twice a year or even less. I just wasn't sure what kind of schedule this machine requires. Perhaps I should have asked what you recommend for a general cleaning schedule.

It sounds like this may be a good fit for me.

I can't tell you what you should do, but I can tell you what I do. I would probably be more aggressive about this in a high volume setting like a restaurant or cafe, especially where multiple people operate the grinder, but in a home where commercial grinders get used only to a tiny fraction of their potential duty cycles, I do not believe that much effort is needed in keeping them clean.

Now I have seen at least one commercial grinder used in a home where all the owners ever did was keep adding overroasted oily coffee to a big hopper, keeping it mostly full for years. That grinder, especially the hopper was extremely disgusting, with a dried maple-syrup like ooze coating the hopper and to some extent the walls of the doser. With that on the outside, I would not have been real enthusiastic about seeing what lurked inside.

Forgetting about a case of gross neglect such as above, my suggestion would be to wipe out the inside of the bean hopper every few days to a week with a moist paper towel or cloth, and certainly anytime when the hopper ends up being empty. Don't run old and disgusting oily beans through your grinder, ever. Clean out the doser daily which is easy to do and can become a part of a coffee-saving regimen if you use a chopstick to dislodge ground coffee in the chute exiting the burr chamber going into the doser. You can clean out the doser itself with a grinder brush or a small vacuum.

As to the internals, I rely mostly on good fresh coffee regularly coursing through the grinder burrs and dislodging older stale coffee that might otherwise become trapped. The first time I use a grinder each day, I run 3g or so through at the beginning, to clean out the burrs of residue and to clean out the doser as well. If I am gone for a month as I often am to France, then I sometimes will run a grinder cleaner powder (such as Puly or potentially Grindz) through the grinder. I will open up the grinder to disassemble it seldom or never with this approach, although if I were to get an off taste from some coffee I knew to be good, then I would consider it.

I think if you are careful about what coffee you run through your grinder and use it regularly, that opening it up to clean the internals is mostly wasted effort and potentially dangerous in that you can misthread the soft brass threads easily if you are not careful, or cause other damage.

I am fastidious about keeping my espresso machines clean, including regular chemical backflushing on a weekly basis and water backflushing daily. I do not believe that grinders, properly used, have the same propensity to become fouled in daily use as do espresso machines. In the absence of proven benefit I remain unconvinced that regularly disassembling a commercial grinder (in home service) to keep the internals clean has any real merit exceeding the potential risks that can come from that practice.

ken

Gus wrote:I want to have easy access to sweep out the grinding chute after grinding to reduce as much loss as possible and to keep things moving nicely and clean from use to use.

There is a plastic tab blocking the chute from view. With the right implement, you can get around the plastic tab to clear the chute, but it's annoying. Unfortunately, you have to modify the grinder permanently to remove the tab. Keep in mind also that the tab serves a purpose (deflecting the grind spray downward). The best mod I have seen involves cutting the tab off but attaching a similarly-shaped deflector to the removable doser lid.

Gus wrote:I am under the impression that it is essentially clump free? Is it?

The Cimbali Max Hybrid I purchased was definitely not clump-free. Far clumpier than my Mazzer Mini. It's possible that I never managed to break the grinder in fully. (I probably ran 10 lbs through). The folks at Chris Coffee thought it could be climate-related -- worth mentioning since I live in Texas like you.

I did end up returning the grinder within the buyer's remorse period. Shame, because those hybrid burrs were a sight to behold. Maybe I just got a dud. The grinder has a lot of potential and you might just need to try one out to know for sure whether it suits you.

Ryan

I remember your thread about the clumping. It was an odd one. My Max grinds less clumpy than my Mini did, it was more on par with a Super Jolly and thwacking the doser while it grinds breaks up any clumps that are in the doser. The exception being very humid days (as in it has been raining all day and the air conditioner is not on). Then I will get a few small clumps but even then it is far better than my Mazzer Mini was. Oily, dark roasted beans also tend to clump more regardless of the grinder.