New here but some comments and questions.

Most of you have pretty hard to clean grinders (tools needed) so how often are you cleaning it? If you are making a few shots a day, how long is it ok to leave the grinds in before cleaning. I live in a humid climate and I'm cleaning my Breville Smart Grinder Pro after each use. Don't keep beans in hopper. Just weigh enough factoring in retention each use. My hustle - dismount hopper, clean burr with brush, disengage top burr, brush and slap grinders to knock out excess. For this reason alone I appreciate the above Breville grinder very much.

I'm not sure but I rarely clean mine and I single dose also - but I routinely use relatively light roasted beans. When I try darker roasts I find the grounds "stick" more and might lead to the kind of buildup I found in my first 2nd hand grinder... As it is the grounds are still powder and remove easily.

My commercial grinder experience may be irrelevant to your question as they're designed for much larger volumes than a home user, though.

I don't think commercial grinders need to be torn apart or cleaned nearly as much as some might think. If I had a hopper, I'd clean it. If I used a dark roast coffee and switched back to a light roast coffee, I'd brush out what I could from where I can reach and then check the resulting shots in sequence.

BTW, there is a pretty cool "search" function on this site. While typing in "how often to clean your grinder" it brings you more than 5000 hits.
/search-res ... ur+grinder

But maybe there is always something new to say about it...?

FWIW, I run some instant rice through my grinder roughly once a month (or maybe two months, I don't find it to be that big deal). And while at it, I do some vacuuming and maybe put in some compressed air through it. The hopper gets a run in the dishwasher.

Sometimes irregularly and very rarely I remove the burrs and clean them and the rest of the grinder thoroughly. I never use oily beans or dark roasts.

I run some Grindz through every 3-4 weeks but that's about it aside from a dusting of grinds from the chute. I dose through an acrylic pipe that stays clean so no hopper care necessary. To the OP, it sounds like you've made quite a ritual but it seems really excessive. The Grindz clean the burrs without disassembly. No need to pull it all apart especially every session!

mslim wrote:Most of you have pretty hard to clean grinders (tools needed) so how often are you cleaning it? If you are making a few shots a day, how long is it ok to leave the grinds in before cleaning. I live in a humid climate and I'm cleaning my Breville Smart Grinder Pro after each use. Don't keep beans in hopper. Just weigh enough factoring in retention each use. My hustle - dismount hopper, clean burr with brush, disengage top burr, brush and slap grinders to knock out excess. For this reason alone I appreciate the above Breville grinder very much.

Save yourself a lot of time & buy a small vacuum to use around your coffee bar. Run the grinder & vac with the vac nozzle over your exit chute & the hopper exit & you will pull out any grounds that might end up in your next cup. I do this first thing every morning with my K10 & then just sweep/pulse the rest of the day. Once every 4-6 weeks I remove the cover/upper burr carrier (no tools required) & clean out the grounds that pack into the nooks & crannies, stick to the bottom of the burr, ect.

Based on my experience running Grinds or rice through the grinder just adds Grindz & rice to the mix. Unless you are grinding really oily beans the cutting/grinding surfaces of the burrs self clean every time you run a dose through. Any of the packed on grounds in the burr chamber that the Grinz/rice removes simply get replaced with the Grindz/rice.

The designers responsible the Mythos One Clima Pro grinder recommend pulling the burrs out and washing them in soap and water once a week for a 1% increase in EY.

So I tried it on my Mythos Ones after the first week with it and WOW!

I do it every Saturday now!

I do not think you should need to clean the grinder more often than after about consuming 1 hopper. This is also because of grinder setting - It takes me about 3 shots to set the grinder properly for particular coffee I buy. So I leave the setting for at least 1 pack of coffee. I personally clean it after about 1kg, which is about 2-3 months.

Once a month with rice.

Rice does the same job as the expensive grindz tablets but is much cheaper and available. I have a Compak E10 OD conical grinder and it doesn't bother the machine to grind rice in fact it pulverizes it to dust. I finally give the grinder a good shake and that's all. No issue. Having said that The Compak E10 is a commercial grade machine with lots of power, you may not want to use this technique with "entry level" grinders.

I grind medium roasted beans (Danesi Gold Quality - a Brazil and South America blend).

newrevolution123 wrote:Once a month with rice.

interesting.. I assume you haven't noticed any problems with worn burrs grinding rice.. The kernels are much harder than whole beans, and I think depending on the kind of rice, it might strain some motors, or jam them completely.