I own a stepless and had the opportunity to try a stepped version recently and I must say I am content with the stepless, BUT if I was going to buy a new one I would not hesitate to get the stepped one.

I have the 71mm burrs AND the 83mm burrs. It takes more strength to crank the 83's but at my age and level of infirmity (2 shoulder surgeries, 2 wrist surgeries and an elbow giving grief) I can still crank the 83. That said I use the 71 because of my physical issues. I tried the 83mm TiN and found it was the same level effort to crank as the 71mm Mazzer regular burrs.

After running the total of 1.5 kg of rice through the aftermarket 83mm burr Hg one the number of turns required to grind a sample not only decreased, but after grinding was finished the "clear out" time was reduced a lot, I think to about half a turn. It is just suddenly finished.

Since this is the time to experiment with the Hg one, I turned the adjustment 1.6 units toward closed, and ground 16.5 grams of a Peruvian coffee that I like. I took a sieve, 20cm in diameter with 300 micron screen, and placed the ground coffee in it. I kept shaking the sieve, and weighing the fine particles that passed until I had removed 2.5 grams of fines. Then I put the material with much of the "dust" removed in the La Pavoni and pulled a shot. Removing the fines made it actually easier to pull than before the adjustment to finer grind. There was lots of crema. The result was a fantastic shot, in fact.

I immediately reset the adjustment and ground 14 grams. It was still fantastic. I wish I had had a guest to compare the two! To me the flavours in coffee that I like most seemed to come through better with the partly sieved sample, at least with this particular coffee.

I haven't tried the stepped model but I really love my stepless HG One. I most of the time make minor adjustments so I really like the stepless concept although the stepped version has such small steps that it would also be fine for me.

Last week I ran 800 grams of rice through the new Hg one after running another batch of about the same size through it several days earlier. What is interesting is that in the three or four days since I ran the second batch of rice through the number of turns required to grind a given amount of coffee has decreased noticibly, and the time to clear it out after a grind has fallen even more.

Perhaps the oils in the coffee beans make a thin film over the TiN coated burrs that makes them more slippery? Titanium nitride has an extremely high crystal lattice energy, and is extremely hard. Metallic titanium will burn in a pure nitrogen atmosphere. Its melting point is nearly 3000C!

canuckcoffeeguy wrote:So that means you have the stepless version. I may have the opportunity to get an original, stepless HG ONE. Do you yearn for the new stepped model, or are you fine with the older stepless?

I played with several stepless models while deciding whether or not to get an HG-1 and then waited for the newer stepped version to come on market. I love it!!! I'm sure I would be fine with the stepless version, but I do like not having to worry about slippage. The increments of the stepped version are so minute that you have to move it 3 or 4 clicks before you will notice any difference.

With the 1mm thread on the HG One it's indeed not a problem that it's stepped whereas with most electrical grinders the steps are way too big. HG One again did a really fine job in making this modification to the 2014 model. The first version of the HG One can indeed slip a tiny bit sometimes after grinding the first time when changing the grind setting. After that everything is settled down and it doesn't happen again but it really isn't a problem.

canuckcoffeeguy wrote:Could it be a case of diminishing returns for espresso grinding, regarding burr size, as you creep over a certain threshold? ie. Beyond 71mm there's little or no payoff for espresso in the cup. And it could actually take longer to grind, to boot.

For example, Compak's entire commercial line uses 68mm burr sets. They don't seem to think bigger is better. And we know how well regarded this line of grinders is around these parts.

68 mm is the same size as 71 mm as the size declared is the outer diameter and what matters is the inner diameter/surface area. On the 68 mm and 71 m burr set specs I've seen the inner diameter is the same.

So as an example the Pharos, Robur (american) and original 71 mm HG One are all of the same size. The 83 mm is bigger though.

After three months with the Hg one, I am still at least as enthusiastic about it as when I initially received it!

This is great to hear as a few of us are looking for that box in the next several days. Tomorrow, going to raid my grocery store for Minute Rice