BenKeith wrote:As coffee grounds leave the burrs at a high velocity and go flying through the air, they are going to generate static, plain and simple. Humidity and moisture content in beans and the air make a huge difference on how much static but no grounding, no magnets nothing short of possibly short of a de-ionizer is going to prevent that. That's why the couple drops of water or a mister spray works so well, they add that small amount of moisture to help keep the static from developing. Some materials are more static prone than others and something as simple as wiping the bin down with a solution of dish soap and letting it dry will help a lot to keep it from sticking but when the coffee goes flying, it develops static. The slower the grinding speed of the burrs, the better the static reduction also. The reason manufactures put a choke point on the output of most burr grinders is it will compress the grounds and prevent the static, then they depend on the dosser to break those up. That's also why you create a clump monster with you convert from a dosser to a dosserless on most grinders. When the grounds are packed through a small opening, they loose their static but then you have the clumps or the residual coffee left behind that those of use that might only run the grinder once or twice a day and some days not at all don't like having to deal with. Sometimes you use as more beans purging the grinder than you do making your espresso. This is not a problem for shops because they are running theirs almost constantly.

Basically what I've found is you either have to find a way to deal with the clumps or deal with the static if you want to grind single dosses and I've tried methods for both and not real fond of dealing with either. For clumps from a dosserless, I've made small basket strainers that fits on top of a funnel I made that goes on top of the porta filter. While the grounds are leaving the shut they are falling into the strainer and I using a small, bristle brush to break them up and send them on through into the porta filter. The problem is, some of the larger grinders can have a shut big enough to hold several grams of grinds and you don't want those left to go into you next cup. For my latest conversion, I completely cut the shut off because it was large and almost two inches long. Knowing this was going to make one huge static generator, I used 1 1/4 copper fittings, a 45 degree elbow and a coupling to make my down spout. Then I made me a plastic sleeve insert that slides in side of it and mates up to the grinder housing, I call in an internal condom, so after I grind, I just slide the sleeve out, tap it a couple of times to knock the grounds loose into the porta filter. A whole lot easier than all the brushing and other crap you have to do in some conversions. Grind retention in this latest conversion is almost nil.

Not quite accurate. I had plenty of static grind build up on the HG-One, which started the whole RDT trick to begin with. A manually powered grinder is running at much lower RPM.

rodcell, so did the grounding trick help?

Yesterday was cold and dry and static was crazy! Had grounds climbing up the outside of the grinder! Started to rain last night and today had a perfect fluffy mound in my portafilter. Guessing air humidity has a lot to do with it. Thinking I might run my steam wand for about 10 seconds a minute before grinding and see if it makes a flip of a difference. Worth a shot I suppose...

weebit_nutty wrote:rodcell, so did the grounding trick help?

haven't found any metal receptacle yet.

But this seems to work although I would rather not go through this because it's extra hassle
1. add one or two drops of water on the beans and mix well.
2. get the ground beans out of the chute directly onto the wet filter paper (for me that would be either hario v60, behmor brazen or french press).

by doing this, i avoided most of the static.
but i would rather skip the water drops.

weebit_nutty wrote:rodcell, so did the grounding trick help?

+1 on this

I ground my Pharos by connecting its bottom plate via cliplead to my Gaggia metal chassis. It gets plenty dry up here in the winter with electric heat... No problems grinding and dosing though.

Another followup.

Too much static is obviously a pain. But I have been playing with the idea of using lower levels of static for fines reduction. For a high end grinder maybe that's not an issue. For my Bunn G1, it produces just enough static on the chute and in the glass receptacle I use, to hold fine powder from the grind. With a light shake of the receptacle into my Kone on a Chemex, I get the coarser grinds and leave the powder behind. Something to consider.

happycat wrote:+1 on this

I ground my Pharos by connecting its bottom plate via cliplead to my Gaggia metal chassis. It gets plenty dry up here in the winter with electric heat... No problems grinding and dosing though.

I tried following your example by grounding my Pharos to a Rocky I keep nearby for Mokka and plunger grinds. It did nothing except make me appreciate the RDT that I usually employ. Perhaps I'm doing it wrongly.

Matt

I am loving my 2014 HGone, I have no doubts that it will be with me until the end.

Except the static! When its wet / humid here its not so bad and static wiper does a good job. But when its been dry for a week...even with RDT I can find almost a grams worth sticking to burr carrier and bottom / outside of funnel.

Thank you to those who had the idea of earthing the grinder! This has solved my static problems. Now, not using RDT results in about the same amount of clinging as using RDT non earthed. A tiny spray of water results in pretty much no clinging grounds at all. So simple and I probably would never have thought of it.

I remove the end stuck to the stove when in use.

Cheers

Kyle Anderson from Baratza posted this Blog post on static.

Anderson's post ends with a simple suggestion that might be worth emphasising:

"When you encounter static, we encourage you to wait 15-30 seconds after the grind has completed to allow the charge to bleed away, then tap the side of the bin and all the grounds should fall into the bin."