I was just reading the thread talking about another_jim's observations of the Sette:

Baratza Sette: The Good, Bad, and Interesting

In the thread, Jim mentions:

another_jim wrote:Extraction is nearly invariable over the grind range I used. From this I infer the grinder is mainly changing the fines proportion rather than the grind fineness.

Which got me to thinking. If cost was no object, I wonder if it would be possible to design a grinder that could independently adjust the ratio of fines, and separately adjust the overall particle size. Presumably, that would allow you to separately adjust for flow rate, and for extraction.

Perhaps with a multi-stage grind path - for example, think 5 sets of conical burrs, through which a particle makes its way through, while being ground. The first few of these would have geometry and adjustment that leads to creating as many fines as possible (and can then be adjusted to reduce them), followed by the final set of burrs to trim the particles down to the final desired size.

Not saying we need a grinder like this, or even that we want one - but it's perhaps an interesting thought exercise!

It appears that based on users report, the Kafatek Monolith Flat can do something similar by adjusting the rpm of the motor without adjusting the grind setting. USD2.5K will allow you to verify it.

gr2020 wrote:Perhaps with a multi-stage grind path - for example, think 5 sets of conical burrs, through which a particle makes its way through, while being ground. The first few of these would have geometry and adjustment that leads to creating as many fines as possible (and can then be adjusted to reduce them), followed by the final set of burrs to trim the particles down to the final desired size.

Not saying we need a grinder like this, or even that we want one - but it's perhaps an interesting thought exercise!

PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE COFFEE MACHINE WITH YOUR HANDS UP.

Lol! Ya, these are the crazy ideas that pop into my head while waiting for my Monolith to arrive.

I think you could accomplish this pretty easily with a home hack. It would take about 3-4 seconds to crush a few beans down to fines in a mortar and pestle. It would probably only take a gram or less of whole beans being crushed to create "too many" fines that turns your shot into a choker or a gusher. With a collection of sieves, you could then run extraction experiments to determine the optimal ratio.

I would guess the results of this experiment would show that most grinder already produce a good number of fines, but there is only one way to find out.