Carneiro wrote:Hi, Frank!

Can you tell us how the grind adjustment works? I heard about something like macro and micro adjustment, but couldn't confirm that anywhere.

And how about the timer - does it have 0.1 s steps?

Thanks!

Márcio.

A lot of speculation I read above, let's wait and see how it develops before jumping into conclusions. The ProM is a commercial grinder in the first place and is made for the small volume market. The strange hopper with the bin inside was also something that I did not understand. I also would like to see a full usable hopper. Let's see what happens in the future, I saw someone wrote that a full hopper will be available.

The ProM is, just like the Home Vario, belt driven.
The housing and inners are full metal, no plastic parts as in the Home Vario.
The knob on the side lifts or lowers the lower burr. There is a kind of gear in the knob that makes adjusting very precise.
The inner (white) scale divided into 3 sections: Coarse - Medium - Fine. You can rotate the knob 3 full rounds to go from coarse to fine. So it is just one knob with a micro setting.
As you set the grind, a metal pin pushes against a simple but effective mechanism that lifts or lowers the bottom burr carrier.

The timer is a potentio meter, so stepless. I heard that Mahlkonig is planning to place a small display in the future, to show the exact grinding time. I'm not sure if the setting will become digital also.

Here some pics.

Gr. Frank

Grinder bottom (for those who are wondering)


The adjustment mechanism, hard to see without completely dismanteling.


I could not figure out how to get to the burrs, but still a small part to show the burr.

Frank, thank you for taking the time and effort to post info about your new grinder. Appreciated!

How is it working for you, and how does it taste? (and in comparison to what other grinder(s)?)

Thank you Frank.

You are helping dissipate a lot of those speculations that you noticed.

Sounds like the adjustment is like a Vernier mechanim. Reading your description I get a feeling that it is very analog... Even the timer ajustemnt is... analog. Very new-retro-techno. Personally I like this type of touchy feely hardware. More artistic in nature. It makes it difficult to repeat the same shot when going back and forth in the adjustments. Again that does not fit the commercial application but this is just an impression based on your description and am extrapolating a lot again.

Please bear with our silly speculating. We are all very eager to get our hand on one to try.

yellow_speedster wrote:I could not figure out how to get to the burrs, but still a small part to show the burr.

How much beans are retained inside the grinder when you remove the hopper? From that picture it seems that quite a lot of beans are needed to fill the space above the burrs. What about after the burrs, how much grounds are left inside the grinder?

Is there a latch in the bean hopper, similar to K30?

The reason I'm asking these is that I'm trying to figure out how easy it is to switch between beans.

I just got home from the SCRBC that was hosted in Austin this weekend. If you're in that city and didn't go, all I can say is you deprived yourself of a great time! Anyway, I volunteered and was placed doing station maintenance, basically backflushing machines and polishing them up in between competitors. As it happened I got to meet and work with Gary Horne, the VP of sales/marketing with Mahlkönig USA.

Gary was a hugely personable guy, really passionate about grinders and grinder tech, and of course quite knowledgeable about all things Mahlkönig. He told me a number of things I didn't know about the ProM that may be of interest to you guys, and I wanted to pass them along. For what it's worth I am recalling this as best I can from our conversations in a crowded room, so I can't vouch for every single detail. The main things I'm quite sure about.

• Availability: The ProM is not available in the US yet because they're having a bit of delay with NSF certification. The grinder isn't exactly the same as the one in Europe, and so is having to be certified separately. He said something about a switch and its amperage rating that I wasn't really clear on. Hopefully soon, but he made it sound like a good bit more than members have reported hearing from vendors in this thread.
• Burrs: Unlike the European ProM, the US version will sport a smaller 58 mm burrset. However, they're pretty unique burrs, with much 'gentler' cutting surfaces. I told him that the partial shots I've seen of the Euro version (above) reminded me a bit of the flat sections of DRM/hybrid burrsets, and he said that sounds right and the 58 mm set will look like the 64 mm ones from the Euro version in slight miniature. They're going to be made of the same alloy of hardened steel that the K30 uses.
• Motor: The motor is belt driven, but apparently it's "double belt driven." I was a little unclear on what he meant by this beyond the obvious.
• Pricing: The Grinder is going to retail for about $1300 in the US, but the street price is going to be more like $700.

The burr diameter is a bit of a let-down, but I'm happy to withhold judgment there—pretty easy to do after seeing how the Vario performed. The price was the real shocker for me, and I'm guessing that will get your attentions more than anything else too.

It'll be interesting to see how it fares in the market.

In terms of pure functionality, the Baratza Vario is more than fast enough for home use, and the grind quality is already very good. So the ProM would have to taste test at titan levels, i.e, one notch above the SJ or B.Vario, to be on the price-performance envelope. A year ago, I would have been completely certain that a 58mm flat would not be able to do that. But the B.Vario shows that Mahlkoenig is using a different design manual; so who knows? Even if it turns out to be no better than the B.Vario, the sleeker and maybe more robust design will get buyers.

But there's no doubt that with this lineup, Mahlkoenig is going to take a large bite out of the 3rd wave market, both pro and amateur.

I don't know if this is the way Mahlkönig sees it, but at least it is the way I see it: It seems likely that ProM will be the best grinder that fits inside "regular domestic dimensions". I mean, anything bigger than Mini-E (with small hopper) does not easily fit under many cabinets. For example, in my little coffee corner SJ with a hopper would be too tall and K30 is too wide.

shadowfax wrote:Burrs: Unlike the European ProM, the US version will sport a smaller 58 mm burrset. However, they're pretty unique burrs, with much 'gentler' cutting surfaces. I told him that the partial shots I've seen of the Euro version (above) reminded me a bit of the flat sections of DRM/hybrid burrsets, and he said that sounds right and the 58 mm set will look like the 64 mm ones from the Euro version in slight miniature. They're going to be made of the same alloy of hardened steel that the K30 uses.

Why don't these high end Mahlkonig grinders use a ceramic burr set like the Vario; benefits being less heat transfer, better quality (no burrs), and longer life?

Heat transfer seems like a non-issue in the intended usage, but I'm also curious if it really is a fact or just an assumption that ceramic burrs are better about heating up. In a grinder, the vast majority of the heat is frictionally generated right at the point where the burrs smash and cut the beans, right? Seems like from that perspective steel might perform better at conducting the heat generated at the surface away from the burr surface and reduce the heat that is transferred to the coffee bean. Is this totally wrong?

What does "no burrs" mean? If you mean notches and hanging metal bits on the burrs, this is a defect that transcends materials used and is more an issue of craftsmanship: I suspect that it may be more an issue of German vs. Italian than ceramic vs. steel. Also, steel comes in many alloys, and can be superior or trashy depending on many factors that aren't clear even from terms like "hardened steel," "tool-grade steel," etc.

As to longer life... again, I am not sure here. You can't extrapolate burr life from a bill of materials; it's better to look at the burr's expected lifetime ratings. Is the ceramic thing more of an advertising pitch? Do you get more burr life/$ with the steel ones? I have no idea, but I don't think it's valid to assume that ceramic gets you all these benefits.

The basic question (why steel and not ceramic?) is an interesting one, and I suspect someone in the know could enlighten us realistically as to whether the advantages you ascribe to ceramic over steel are really true and to what extent. It can't hurt to ask...

Ceramic is a silicate, like glass, and more abrasion resistant than steel. This along with its lightness has made ceramic the "material of the future" for the last 30 years. But the future is still pending. I guess the challenges of working with ceramic parts are still a lot greater than working with steel.

Because it is more abrasion resistant, ceramic stays sharper longer than steel. For instance, Kyocera's ceramic knives almost never need to be sharpened. I assume the longer burr life ascribed to cermic burrs like the Vario's or the LM Swift's are due to this.