by another_jim on Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:32 pm
Good news for you multi-purpose and single dose grinding fans:
I tested how easily one can switch coffees or grind settings by grinding the hopper & burrs empty, changing the grind setting from espresso to FP (and subsequently back again), grinding a small amount for clearing the burr chamber, and then grinding 7 gram and inspecting the grinds. If you sacrifice grind 3.5 grams, the subsequent grinds will entirely reflect the change in settings. Moreover, the change back to espresso (no change to the fine slider), produced a shot with proper timing.
In all likelihood, a bit less than 3.5 grams will work too when switching coffees or brew methods, but a half table spoon of grind through is about as small as I want to bother with. In any case, the grinder is very practical indeed for multipurpose or multicoffee grinding.
A triangle test with my cupping grinder du jour, the Capresso Infinity, produced no detectable difference.
A note. A coarse FP grind is all the way at the bottom of the right side coarse adjustment slider when the espresso setting is all the way at the top. So if your espresso setting is 2 or more clicks down, you need to do the grinder tweak to get usable FP. If you are a disciple of finer ground FP (yech!), then the tweak is less critical.
(An aside on testing FP or Cupping grinders: I've given up on this; since I think almost all decent grinders are too close to call. The tests usually do reveal a difference between grinders. But it is never consistently one better, the other worse. The reason is as follows: Small changes to grind level or brew time produce about 2.5 point swings in the cup. Hand adjusting the coarseness of multiple grinders falls in this 2.5 point window, so the test simply doesn't produce enough consistency day to day if the two tested grinders are both decent and fairly close in quality. Espresso grinding seems to be much more of a technical challenge than FP grinding, so comparison tests do reveal differences)