Hey,
I've been an avid reader of this forum for a few years now, and generally have found the answer to the questions I have, however I've not seen a thread (and answer) to give an indication on how long the burrs should last?
I live in the UK and have the Mahlkonig Vario (I believe this is branded the 'Baratza' over the pond), I've had the grinder for approximately 18mths (doing approximately 2-4 grinds a day) and for the last 6 months have been struggling to produce a grind fine enough with both levers set at their highest.
I've seen the very helpful post about calibrating the grinder and mine seems to be fall within acceptable parameters, but the fineness of the grain has still been a problem.
However a couple of days ago it sounded like the Vario was starting to labour when grinding. Previously a grind would run for 13.2 seconds and produce around 18 grams of coffee, now in the same period it's producing 16 grams if I'm lucky.
I've taken the burrs out and given them a good clean (they weren't particularly clogged up or anything), the burrs actually looked in pretty reasonable condition, but then I don't really know what they're supposed to look like new - cleaning by the way hasn't made any difference.
I'm now starting to feel a little paranoid about using it as I don't want to burn the motor out.
I'm just wondering if anyone's had any similar symptoms and if so, what fixed it?

The way I see it I have two options, change the burrs or get an electrician to look at, both will be reasonably expensive though (new burrs cost £80 ($125) and I don't imagine an electrician would be all that much cheaper...and if I have to do both... yikes!

A quote from Baratza answering this very question (This pertains to their ceramic burrs. They are said to last twice as long as their steel burrs):

"People ask us all the time about life expectancy of their burrs. It's hard to give a hard and fast rule as the life expectancy of a burr varies, depending on the type of coffee, degree of roast, grind size, volume ground, and any rocks you may run into! The increasingly popular lighter roasted beans tend to be a lot harder on the burrs. However, as a good rule of thumb you can expect the burrs on our grinders to last as follows:

Encore, Virtuoso and Preciso burrs 300 to 500 pounds of coffee
Vario and Vario-W 500 to 1000 pounds of coffee"

You might want to check your primary adjustment in addition to the calibration, as shown here:

https://www.baratza.com/wp-content/uplo ... al-new.pdf

Also, ceramic burrs for the Vario are $40 a set from Baratza, though I don't know what shipping would be.

Bkultra wrote:A quote from Baratza answering this very question (This pertains to their ceramic burrs. They are said to last twice as long as their steel burrs):

"People ask us all the time about life expectancy of their burrs. It's hard to give a hard and fast rule as the life expectancy of a burr varies, depending on the type of coffee, degree of roast, grind size, volume ground, and any rocks you may run into! The increasingly popular lighter roasted beans tend to be a lot harder on the burrs. However, as a good rule of thumb you can expect the burrs on our grinders to last as follows:

Encore, Virtuoso and Preciso burrs 300 to 500 pounds of coffee
Vario and Vario-W 500 to 1000 pounds of coffee"

Nice, thanks for that, I just gotta figure out how many beans I've been grinding now

wsfarrell wrote:You might want to check your primary adjustment in addition to the calibration, as shown here:

https://www.baratza.com/wp-content/uplo ... al-new.pdf

Also, ceramic burrs for the Vario are $40 a set from Baratza, though I don't know what shipping would be.

$40 for burrs would be amazing as they're about 3x that in the UK.
Thanks for the pdf, I'll have a look and see if there's any more on the calibration I can do.