Quickstrike wrote:I can also recommend the Burr Conversion Rings made by Steve @ Mill City Roasters.

Very quick and painless process. Thanks Steve!

You are very welcome, thank you.

For the record, my son Alex made the rings on a big, clunky, borrowed lathe here in the building we lease space in. He's a much better machinist than I ever was. If I had done them they probably would have turned out square.

S.

I've created a thread to document reassembling the Bunn LPG with Ditting burrs. It's here and has many photos.

Bunn LPG with Ditting 804 Burrs Documenting Reassembly

happycat wrote:Thanks for sharing this.

Some other data points for people who might be considering this...

Ditting quoted me CDN$360 for a set of burrs (excl tax and shipping) before our dollar took a hit

Ditting sells reconditioned grinders... The KF804 is half price reconditioned right now ($1200) So it's worth crunching all the numbers (bunn price, burr price, machined part price, shipping all ways, etc.) to see if it works in a particular case.... Probably mostly depending on what you pay for your bunn

Keep your eyes pealed on Kijiji. I have seen lots of Bunn G's for sale for cheap. Burrs that size generally go for $250+, shipping from the U.S. Getting them from the U.S is the cheapest option. In my experience just about every Canada parts supplier really marks up prices for parts.

Burner0000 wrote:Burrs that size generally go for $250+, shipping from the U.S. Getting them from the U.S is the cheapest option. In my experience just about every Canada parts supplier really marks up prices for parts.

The burrs which make Bunnzilla Bunnzilla -- as opposed to just a Bunn with fresh burrs -- are a very specific set and not a matter of "burrs that size."

AFAIK there is no discount source for current, machined 804 burrs. Ditting's price is THE price.

And then there's the 200lbs of rice...

Rich

Nobody needs to run 200lbs of rice through the Ditting burrs to get good results. How many pounds of roasted coffee do you figure 1 lb of hard rice equals? The rice is much harder then roasted beans so it's definitely not a lb for lb equivalent.

John,

You and Nancy (President of Ditting USA) have very different views on what's required for complete break in.
Nancy famously says 300lbs. You say 15lbs. And -- since you raise the question -- I have no idea how to figure coffee vs rice break-in.

It makes more sense to me to just go ahead and break in the grinder, rather than trying to out-guess it; and to stop running rice, when running rice no longer, makes a positive, empirical difference. The last bag of rice I put my burrs' mileage at something like 120lbs rice and 40lbs coffee, and it made a small but still noticeable difference.

The difference was more visual (tighter particle size range at "press") than in the cup. In fact, if that last bag of rice made an in the cup difference, I couldn't taste it... but could with the previous bag.

Compared to other grinders I've used, Bunnzilla's taste signature for hot brewed coffees is decidedly "juicy," (in the sense of a very slight acidity which dances around the edge of the tongue) and it became increasingly distinct, though not stronger, as break in progressed. In my opinion, the "juiciness" is an inherent and desirable property which had been masked by lesser grinders; and a characteristic I'd noticed when using a Guatemala lab grinder for similar types of brewing and cupping.

BTW, when using raw rice as a medium, use a fairly coarse setting. IIRC, that suggestion came from Nancy as well.

More BTW, the "200lbs" was meant more as humor than prescription.

Rich

boar_d_laze wrote:John, You and Nancy (President of Ditting USA) have very different views on what's required for complete break in.
Nancy famously says 300lbs. You say 15lbs. And -- since you raise the question -- I have no idea how to figure coffee vs rice break-in. Rich

I never said that 15lbs of beans would fully break in the burrs which is what Nancy at Ditting is referring to with the 300lb figure. I mentioned the 300lb figure several years ago so it's nothing new. I said that the 15lbs of seasoning makes a big difference over just using the burrs out of the box. I've run over 70lbs of coffee & 10lbs of hard rice through mine to date. The 10lbs of rice was run through recently & I really didn't notice much of any difference afterwards.

Last I remember reading you were up to what? 100lbs of hard rice? If rice is 5 times harder then roasted coffee you could be wearing down your burrs at this point.

I got a different story from Nancy at Ditting about rice. They don't recommend running rice thru Ditting grinders except a cup full for cleaning. The Ditting design has a felt ring around the outside of the lower rotating burr carrier that can get contaminated (flavored coffee was an example). This is true for the Mahlkonig Tanzenia/Ditting 805, and I assume the rest are the same.

She also commented grinding rice puts an undo strain on the motor (Ditting). Of course her opinion's are specifically related to the products they sell.

Nancy isn't staying consistent with what she's saying or recommending then. She told me exactly what I've documented years prior about this subject.

Personally, on anything 80mm or larger on a flat burr from Ditting, as long as you go really slow, just a trickle, 5-10 pounds of raw dry uncooked rice before stripping, cleaning and proceeding with coffee should get you into the ballgame of far more consistent coffee. I've found out the same after only 6 pounds, I learned not to count the minute rice from previous attempts, but that was the 71mm conicals for espresso, and that mainly cut down the number of revolutions and effort.

JohnB. wrote:I never said that 15lbs of beans would fully break in the burrs which is what Nancy at Ditting is referring to with the 300lb figure. I mentioned the 300lb figure several years ago so it's nothing new. I said that the 15lbs of seasoning makes a big difference over just using the burrs out of the box. I've run over 70lbs of coffee & 10lbs of hard rice through mine to date. The 10lbs of rice was run through recently & I really didn't notice much of any difference afterwards.

Last I remember reading you were up to what? 100lbs of hard rice? If rice is 5 times harder then roasted coffee you could be wearing down your burrs at this point.

I've switched to Grindz for cleaning. Hard rice ate my Macap burrs for breakfast. I think I only got about 10 kg of coffee out of it before I was clogging it.. Damn this thread is making me want to hunt down a used Bunn LPG. :p