This thread needs some inspiration.... Chinese god said he likes hand grinder.

Incredible image, I guess it is a Pede 600.

Happy early Thanksgiving to everyone on Home-Barista! I am thankful to have acquire my very first Zassenhaus grinder. Looking through the Jive photo post was very cool. Lots of pictures of some very nice looking manual grinders. After about six months of using an electric grinder, I now want to switch to a manual one. I purchased a #1 Spong a couple weeks ago. The purpose was to hopefully find one that will grind good enough for espresso. I wanted an older vintage Zass and found this one which I believe was made maybe during the 1920's. It's currently at my brother in laws house waiting for delivery. Can anyone else provide me with any other informations on this Zass? Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving Home-Barista! I'm looking at my rosewood coffee grinder as I type this and feeling very pleased with myself. The grinder is really awesome, with it's rosewood exterior and brass finish makes it a nice addition to my coffee counter. It also has a vintage feel to it, which is excellent. Now I can't wait to wake up early in the morning to grind my coffee beans

(PS: To the person who posted the Chinese-God picture above, I think we can be friends)

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! While visiting my parents in Lynchburg, VA, I stumbled across this beauty at an antique store and had to have it. It is a Peugeot Freres, with a unique S shaped handle. I know the French grinders don't get as much love as the German ones on this thread, but for the age of this grinder, it performs quite well.

I don't know too much about these, so if anyone has any information, feel free to chime in!

You can find photos online of grinders like these at the Peugeot museum. For example:

https://nativefrenchspeech.com/en/artic ... -a-sochaux

The label here suggests these models were made between 1840 and 1936.

It's not so much that French grinders don't get as much love as the German ones, as there are far more German grinders on the ground in North America. Also, I think the tastes on this forum slant toward espresso, whereas French grinders are generally better brew grinders. (And any grinder built before the invention of espresso machines was designed for brewing.)

Thanks for the reply David! It definitely doesn't grind fine enough for espresso, but makes a nice consistent grind for Aeropress-Chemex. I really like it more for the historical appeal, and the unique handle shape since all others I have seen just have the single curve.

I have a PeDe that works just fine for espresso, that I am waiting to pair with either a Peppina or Caravel whenever I find the right deal. I think the overall quality of the PeDe is higher than the Peugeot, but then again it is likely newer.

Just curious - Germans make such nice hand grinders, capable of grinding for espresso, but are they really an espresso drinking culture? Also, why didn't the Italians make any quality hand grinders since they innovated espresso drinking?

Just thought I'd put those questions out there since most of you are much more knowledgable than I.

Cheers!

With the European hand mills you see a shift in hand grinder design as Moka pots increase in popularity. Moka pots were designed so that espresso-loving Italians could make a cup of coffee at home resembling an espresso. But the use of this device seems to have spread like wildfire. So more and more people started grinding finer to better suit these brewers. Hence you see a lot of advertising along the lines of: "Our coffee mill Grinds Moka fine." And mill vendors start identifying models with terms like Moka, Mokka, Mocca, etc. (These companies also stood to gain financially by selling customers new grinders to replace the ones that they already had.) To some extent there is truth in advertising and some mid-century hand mills can produce a grind that is both fine and consistent enough, say, for a lever espresso machine. In other cases, the advertising is just paying lip service to popular fashion. The mills the people covet here (Zass, PeDe, KyM) tend to be the products that were actually redesigned somewhat to accommodate finer grinding.

The vintage Italian hand grinders I've seen will grind fine better than coarse. But they do not have the build quality of German or French mills. I suspect that people who were able to buy an actual home espresso machine in the 1950s or 1960s would also spring for an electric coffee grinder. Also, more quality-minded German consumers may simply have been more likely to grind their coffee fresh (and hence buy a quality grinder), whereas Italian consumers accustomed to lower quality coffee beans may have been perfectly fine using pre-ground coffee or a lower cost grinder. (Generalizations like these are supported in Uncommon Grounds by Pendergrast, which is a fascinating history of coffee.) In any case, many of the European hand grinder vendors exited the market in or by the 1960s.

I have recently bought this Zassenhaus Record grinder. Can anyone identify the model and year of this grinder ? Thanks in advance for any information.

What type of lubricant should I use for shaft/upper bearing on one of these hand grinders? I've tried olive oil in the past, but it has seemingly gummed up and my PeDe is not turning as smooth as it used to. Obviously would need to be food grade, but not sure exactly what to use.

Also - can anyone post how to fully disassemble a PeDe 550 (with back adjust)? I could have sworn I saw it on this thread, but after searching can't seem to find it and don't want to read through all the pages again.

Thanks in advance!