We just ordered a Royal Vienna Vacuum Brewer as a sort of Chanukah/Christmas present for our selves.

I'm looking for a grinder that will grind medium for the siphon, and coarser for a French press.

I'd like to get something which doesn't wreck the coffee, and looks good in our coffee room. Since neither vacuum nor cafetiere require espresso levels of fineness, consistency or exactness, I think it's reasonable to keep the grinder price below $300. I don't know this end of the market very well and my initial inclination is toward the Baratza Virtuoso, and hate to admit that I like the looks of the Kitchen Aid. I'm obviously writing from ignorance and am wide open to alternatives.

Specific suggestions?

BDL

Having owned a KitchenAid I'd suggest skipping that one. The Breville Smart grinder actually does a very nice job at both syphon & french press settings. Lists for $200 but can be had for $160 with a Bed Bath & Beyond 20% off coupon available on line.

I use a Baratza Virtuoso for everything non-espresso, and believe you'd find it well-suited.

{Edit}Haven't used one but OE has the Tiamo grinder to consider for non-espresso. Price is right at $100 and has a semblance of that KitchenAid.

http://www.orphanespresso.com/Tiamo-HG0..._4327.html

Dave, I just ordered a Tiamo grinder (600n) from OE and it's a great price. Manufactured by Yang-Chia Machine Works, retail in Taiwan is @$100 and $80 if you pick it up at the factory in Taichung. But you misread the comments by Doug, as he feels this grinder falls short in the non-espresso range for press and drip. "slowrain" has had one for awhile so maybe he can comment on the performance.

Here's a link to the instruction manual for the 600n:
http://www.feima.com.tw/en/detail.html

But you misread the comments by Doug...

Fair enough -- I edited for clarity. I have used these units and do not obtain 100% consistency for pourovers and presspots. They all become inconsistent at larger grinds:

Kyocera hand unit
OE Pharos
Kitchen Aid
Virtuoso
Baratza Starbucks
Solis 166

As such, I give the unit the benefit of the doubt when Doug writes:

The grind settings produce about 80% consistent size according to the set point on the dial, and about 20% other. For example a coarse grind for press appears very consistent, nice big, even size particles, the expected & unavoidable by any grinder extreme fines, but also about 15% by weight particles that are more medium sized...

Short of a Ditting, Grindmaster or a Bunn, I would take the 80% for $100.

Since the Royal Vienna (no, somehow I just couldn't put "RV") rates so high on the decorative scale, is there anything that Zassenhaus makes - for instance the tall brass hand grinder - that would make for an appropriate companion piece on a side-board?

I just don't have any idea how well that might grind, but is it's relatively even and doesn't produce many fines, it might be one good alternative. Makes for kind of a cool process end-to-end too, especially given such a great vacuum/syphon set.

+1 on the nice Zaussenhaus grinder for aesthetics. I have no firsthand experience with them as far as grind quality or consistently but it sure would make a nice presentation.

Thanks but no manual grinders.

BDL

It was the old topic on the Fuji Royal which led us to order a few of the Tiamo 600N/Feima grinders in our continual quest to find a great grinder for midrange and coarse grinding. Boldjava was spearheading the discussion on the Fuji and since the thread just dropped we can now assume that he shared the same experience as we have....the cast "ghost tooth" or "dragon tooth" burr is the one we wanted but the flat cutting burr is what we got. I think that the similarity of the ghost tooth burr to the grindmaster burr led us all to some conclusions of better consistency...a sort of derivative thought process...but this still cannot be verified as we have yet to use one of these burr sets in the grinder. Communication with many Asian companies is a bit difficult as they often supply a product that they consider desirable for the US market and even getting a correct description of the burr we want to register with our sales representative is a challenge...what we get is what they send.

Perhaps our expectations on the 600N were too high but I ran some sieve tests on the grind (coarse to fine) using 1mm and .5mm screens and got the approximate figures reported on....very disappointed but again, we may have had overly high expectations as we are looking for a grinder with a consistency level on par with some high end equipment (or huge as in the case of Bunn) for a fraction of the cost....and the twist to the story is that we have never done these same sieve tests on a well maintained Bunn in a controlled experiment or others to establish a baseline for quality (the samples we grind on Bunn bulk grinders from the grocery stores are worse than the Tiamo as far as consistency, but one might expect that....worse than the consistency is the STENCH of flavored coffee that we bring home in our store ground samples).

Our next step is to bite the bullet and get a Ditting/Mahkonig to establish a baseline for what is reported to be the best grind consistency and then have a solid comparison that will allow us to report relevant grind size data on grinders that will hopefully be of some use in evaluating the cost/quality equation for grinders used in coarse grinding. It seems to us that for we consumers the comparison to some "gold standard" may be a relevant bit of information.