I've been contemplating an HG-1 purchase. All the videos I can find with actual use don't make grinding seem very laborious or difficult. However, many still state that light roasts are challenging to grind even with the HG-1 and require considerable strength.

Can someone with an HG-1 make a little video of themselves grinding a light roast? I'd appreciate being able to see if this is a bear of a task or just requires a little more muscle that perhaps only older users find difficult.

A video isn't going to tell you anything about the strength required. In the beginning all beans will be hard to grind because handgrinders have a learning curve. Once you get the hang of it and are able to maintain a constant speed of grinding everything will get easier. In the beginning it's especially hard to keep the flywheel turning because you're not used to keeping the momentum going which makes grinding much easier. Startup is the only point where you really need some more strength.

I ground around 40KG of light roasted beans through my HG-1 and it can easily be done with some practice. Buying an able extreme mat makes a huge difference in grinding because of the added stability. If you don't have any physical conditions you'll do just fine after a couple of KG of grinding.

Here's a video of me grinding some light roast with the HG One.
Here is a newer video with me being a bit better at it. These where very light roasted beans.

Awesome! Thanks for posting those. It doesn't look bad. I was envisioning myself putting the HG-1 on the floor, standing on the base with one foot and using two hands to turn the flywheel crank.

I use pretty much exclusively light roasts. The TiN coated burrs are pretty smooth and easy to crank, except for Minute Rice at finer than espresso grind.

spearfish25 wrote:I've been contemplating an HG-1 purchase. All the videos I can find with actual use don't make grinding seem very laborious or difficult. However, many still state that light roasts are challenging to grind even with the HG-1 and require considerable strength.

Can someone with an HG-1 make a little video of themselves grinding a light roast? I'd appreciate being able to see if this is a bear of a task or just requires a little more muscle that perhaps only older users find difficult.

Mike/Mivanitsky brought up a good point. I know two happy long term Hg-1 users and they both have the TiN-coated burrs.

I am pretty young (mid-late 20s) and fit (if I say so myself haha) but found grinding on a new HG-1 a bear. It has the non coated burrs (which is now the standard and only option). It wanted to skip around with light roasts, and took quite a bit of counter space (you need quite a bit of clearance to do the flywheel cranking). Even after the learning curve, it still felt like a small (but manageable) battle. I dislike the fact that I have to battle against the grinder on top of having to WDT and RDT, and not being able to grind directly into the portafilter. It punished greatly (more so than other grinders) when I skipped WDT (not sure if it had to do with alignment but mine wasn't perfect).

If you can swing it, I think an electric single dosing grinder makes more sense, and is an investment that won't get old (hand grinding can be, and I certainly feel that now after owing a good proper one). I think many put up with hand grinding (me included) because the alternative (hacking and doing weird ritual on a commercial grinder) didn't appeal.

Not sure if you've seen mine, but this was with a medium-light roast. Lots of hacks to make it work and it's still a bit messy in the end.

Do you have the Able Extreme mat? It really does make a big difference in grinding. Using the HG-1 with the original feet is pretty hard, esprecially with light roasts because the grinder wants to move around. Securing it to your countertop takes away that part. Mine had the uncoated burrs and it worked pretty well. Have to say I'm 6'7" and 230Lbs and fit .

I re-aligned mine with shims from LWW (first batch HG-1) and it kept it's alignment even after a couple of years. I did try to make it even more perfect but every attempt at doing that made it worse so it was aligned as best as it could. Quality control is much better now.

Hi Javier,

As I said, lots of hack to make it work..That was the 'doser-sweeping' mod I did.

Without the mod and without WDT, a quarter of the puck can come out dry after extraction!

I wasn't able to try the extreme mat, but only with the black anti-slip mat (in this video it wasn't placed properly). I had also tried some G-clamp to clamp down the grinder to the counter top (solved one aspect but there're still the others). It works as a grinder, but just not as straight forward.