OldNuc wrote:I suspect all of the worry over outgassing is way overblown and is a nonissue. I have only detected on beans that are still warm from the cooling tray directly out of the roaster and bagged in non valved bags at that point in approximately 1 lb batches.

I sent about two pounds of fresh roasted coffee to my brother, in four vac sealed bags. it was about a two day time span. He said when he got it the box was nearly a sphere and about to burst! A lesson learned early on.

Just for grins, I weighed each of the cellars with the cap in place: They range in weight from 96.5g to 97.9g, and the average weight came out exactly at 97.0g

Just refilled them for the week ahead. 18.5g doses. "Tall Boys"

I did check how much I could get in one of them and still be able to get the cap in place: with a little bit of tapping to settle the beans more as I added them, I was able to get 20.5g of the coffee blend I am using.

So, to get 24g in the tall boy, the coffee beans would need to be ~20% denser and/or a single origin that might settle more uniformly. I'm speculating, here, as I have no idea about plausible variations in density between coffee types/roast levels, or if same size beans would settle enough 'better' to matter.

My thoughts and experiences after using the cellars for around a month now.

The good:

-My weekday morning workflow is much simpler and faster. Twelve cellars is not always quite enough to get me thru a week, but most often it is. If not...

-Refilling is easy. Particularly if you open them all and work down the line, pouring the weighed doses thru the funnel, shifting the funnel, capping the just-filled cellar.

-The freshness is consistent. I didn't notice any degradation over several days, even with a roast that past my normal use-by timing. Nothing empirical, just a sense that this allows a little more time before staleness creeps in.

-I really like the cellar tubes and caps. They work well and have a Quality feel and look to them.

-I mostly enjoy using it.


The not so good:

-The individual cellars barely hold 20g of several different 'typical' roasts I have tried. As I noted in an earlier post, if your typical dose is above 20g, I doubt you will be happy with these. In fact, I just finished refilling it for the week, this time with one row of Scarlet City's Warp Drive, and the other with their Light Speed blend. 20g of Warp Drive filled the cellars to capacity. 20g of Light Speed would not fit. I had to dose it at 19.5g to get the cap on without cracking beans. I did order some Intelligentsia Inmaculada Colombia Coffea Eugenioides, which is a very dense, small bean size: for that atypical coffee, a filled cellar test came to 30g. But for 'typical' roasts/blends, 20g has been the best I could do.

-As some others have experienced, my base has warped (laterally). It will wobble side to side on a flat surface. It doesn't degrade performance, but it does degrade user experience.

-As also noted in earlier posts, the alignment, precision of the holes in the block gives a very haphazard look to the entire assembly.


The in-between:

- Regarding the hole precision, though, I found in regular usage that the looseness of the holes was important: it does allow placing the assembly a bit back on the counter, reaching over the top and removing/replacing cellars without any time spent trying to find the spot. So, I would say any solution to the imprecision and sloppy appearance would need to account for an easy way to align and lower the cellars back into the holes. Perhaps a slight funnel shape (like a counter-sink) so that you can feel some guidance into the more precise and snug fit hole that will keep the cellars vertical and aligned.

-I don't mind the look of the treated wood block (except for the raw wood color inside the holes). But the material itself is problematic. For the warping problem, they would need to add a suitably stiff and thick metal plate on the bottom, and then some non-marring but grippy feet (rubber, silicone, etc.) In the end, I would suggest they bail on the wood entirely, and create a machined aluminum base (does not have to be solid) that is consistent with the precision/aesthetic themes of their grinders. This would solve several of the problems in one go.


-Finally, I would guess that the tall boy size is the one being ordered the most. They may want to look hard at that: I think that, for most of us, the tall boy is the smallest size we could use, and a larger one would be more flexible to small variances in bean densities.


Conclusion

I am 'happy enough' with my cellars. The usage/functionality is very helpful to my morning workflow, and when I have guests. The imprecision leading to slop and haphazard appearance is a component of the daily experience, though. Add the insufficient (or barely sufficient) capacity of the cellars themselves, and this would be about a 7 overall on a scale of 10.

I could recommend them, but only with a list of caveats that might be deal breakers for some. And I won't bring it right out front and show it to guests. That seems a shame. This could have been a 10 without reservations.

I don't see any indications that LWW reads the HB threads, but maybe they do. I may paste this post into an email to them.

I found myself reverting back to using my scale for single dosing. Maybe once I get around to using my 20-dose stand (if my tubes ever arrive!), I'll only have to fill the tubes once per bag.

Single dosing tubes benefit me most when I'm pulling many shots in a single session, but these past few weeks, I just pull a single shot at a time for consumption, not for play.

Yep, I can see that. I find the cellars most useful weekday mornings when time is short, or when I want to experiment with other factors for a consistent dose.