Hi,
So I agree, I'm no longer concerned with equipment. The Conical made my coffee experience so much better, I rarely even visit HB anymore. My process:

• Pour beans into the Lyn Weber Blind Tumbler and weigh on a Acaia Lunar Scale
• One spray of water
• Cover the Blind Tumbler and shake
• Pour milk into pitcher
• Grind into the Blind Tumbler while spinning it, remove funnel and tap
• Weigh again for retention, sometimes I get a little retention
• Put the Blind Tumbler on the portafilter
• WDT
• Pull the Tumbler
• Tap the portafilter
• Tamp
• Put the cup on the Lunar scale
• Pull the shot with cup on the Lunar scale, with auto-time and weight
• Steam the milk
• Drink

jmarcus wrote:Hi,
So I agree, I'm no longer concerned with equipment. The Conical made my coffee experience so much better. ...

My thoughts exactly. This grinder just takes the equipment out of the picture and lets you focus on which beans you want to use and which method you prefer (preinfusion parameters or none, ristretto vs normal type shots, nuances of slightly longer vs shorter extractions, etc). No more sink shots, period. Even my dial in shots range from very good to great.
Having gone through several machines and grinders before striking gold with monolith conical, i strongly believe that the grinder is responsible for 90% of the espresso quality, while an espresso machine 10%. Don't quote me on percentages though . But my point is that you can make a killer espresso with a top of the line grinder and $200 espresso machine, but not the other way around, and not even with mid range grinder (at least not consistently). And imo baratza vario (I had two of them) does not cut it as an espresso grinder. I was surprised to hear this from a top notch barista who owns one some time ago, but now my experience confirms this. So save yourself a lot of hassle and go for the gold. There is no cheap way to make shop or better quality espresso/Capps at home.

Does anyone have an updated video of the Monolith workflow? As someone who is less lucky with no first hand experience, I can't fully understand how the Monolith is more convenient and better than, say, a Compak K10, Malhkonig K30 or the Caedo E37S? Cup quality wise, is the Monolith Conical better than the Compak K10, or even a Pharos with similar burrs?

The Baratza is kinda infamous for its finicky/tendency to lose grind setting so it's not totally unexpected, but also not really fair to compare it against a grinder 4 times its price...just saying

MadBarista wrote:Does anyone have an updated video of the Monolith workflow? As someone who is less lucky with no first hand experience, I can't fully understand how the Monolith is more convenient and better than, say, a Compak K10, Malhkonig K30 or the Caedo E37S?

Really quite simple: put X beans in get X ground beans out, zero retention.

Cup quality wise, is the Monolith Conical better than the Compak K10, or even a Pharos with similar burrs?

Can't speak to the Pharos manual since never had or used one. K10 wise I single dosed a similar class M7D for a year. Cup quality wise probably not much if any difference with the Monolith. Ease of use single dosing HUGELY easier with Monolith. I usually pull back to backs of different coffees in a session and also much easier/faster to spot on change/adjust Monolith to previously known setting for a bean.

Compass Coffee wrote:Really quite simple: put X beans in get X ground beans out, zero retention.

Can't speak to the Pharos manual since never had or used one. K10 wise I single dosed a similar class M7D for a year. Cup quality wise probably not much if any difference with the Monolith. Ease of use single dosing HUGELY easier with Monolith. I usually pull back to backs of different coffees in a session and also much easier/faster to spot on change/adjust Monolith to previously known setting for a bean.

Thanks Mike for taking the time to respond. So the secret recipe is because the Monolith is ergonomically designed as a single-dosing grinder. All these positive reviews almost had me the impression that the Monolith will add some fairy dusts into the espresso shots (which I wouldn't mind if it's true).

K10 wise I single dosed a similar class M7D for a year. Cup quality wise probably not much if any difference with the Monolith. Ease of use single dosing HUGELY easier with Monolith...

Thanks for this input Mike. I'm quite content with the quality of grind I'm getting out of my K10, but the ergonomics of single dosing the Monolith appeal to me.

I know that burr alignment is big with the Monolith, and was curious how much of a difference one might expect to taste in the cup over a similar Titan conical. I'd love to do a side by side w/ my K10 if any local Monolith conical owners are interested. Please PM me if anyone is interested.

I have a Ceado E37S. It has quite a lot of space in the grinding chamber (where the burrs are) and it retains 5-10 grams of ground coffee. If you thoroughly vacuum clean it out, then put 25 grams of beans in it, grind them and weigh the output, you'll get 15-18 grams of ground material.

The same is true of most commercial grinders, like the Mahlkonig K30. It isn't a problem in a busy coffee shop that grinds through several kilos a day. At most, they come in the morning and purge whatever is in the grinder from the night before and get to work.

Nor are these grinders really designed for "single dose" work. (where you weigh out the beans before grinding). Most of the traditional grinders have a large bean hopper on them and you put in a kilo or two of beans and refill it with the same stuff all day. Most of them are inconvenient to use in a single-dose workflow, or they just don't work well without a hopper full of beans on top of the burrs.

At home though, I have one grinder and I don't want to purge it every morning, or purge it if I switch say, between regular coffee and decaf. I just want to weigh the beans I want, dial the grinder to whatever I've determined is correct for that particular batch of beans, and grind exactly enough for a single cup of espresso.

That is what the Monolith excels at.

Single-dosing work flow, with all the grinding quality of a tip-top commercial grinder, suitable for use in a home, low noise, fits under most standard kitchen upper cabinets.

I waste essentially zero coffee purging it and every single cup I make is 99.9% freshly ground whatever I just put into it, and the cup quality is top of the line.

Single-dosing work flow, with all the grinding quality of a tip-top commercial grinder, suitable for use in a home, low noise, fits under most standard kitchen upper cabinets.

I waste essentially zero coffee purging it and every single cup I make is 99.9% freshly ground whatever I just put into it, and the cup quality is top of the line.

I have the "Flat" but I totally agree with the above!

Same here and I own both Conical and Flat. My grinder search is definitely over and I am saying that after I've been using them for couple of months.

How do you determine which type of grinder to use with any particular beans? I guess you could dial-in new beans on both to see which you like better, but after a while you might begin to notice that cerain origins, roast levels, etc indicate that one type of burr would be more suitable than the other for certain types of beans.

Matt