DeGaulle wrote:I am curious about your experience with the OE single dosing weight. Did it improve grinding consistency on par with using it with a filled hopper (or better?)

Absolutely. I used it on my K10 for a year until I got my MonoCon.

malling wrote: I would strongly advise against any traditional grinder companies like Mazzer, Compak, Fiorenzato and Quamar who uses cheap low quality burrs

I don't think everybody agrees that Mazzer burrs are low quality.

Mazzer burrs costs 1/5-1/12 of Ditting/Mahlkoning and SSP burr set, there is no way mazzer would be able to manufacture a comparable quality at that pricerange. The burrs might be slightly better than italmills, but only slightly. I have seen multiple mazzer burrset over the years and I always found them rather crude with allot of defects that loses it sharpness quickly with light roasted coffee, the lesser quality is obvious when you place them side by side with those from ditting and SSP.

The 151b Tin coated burrs I have in my ZM are not that far from the ssp burrs that I get for that grinder!

malling wrote:Mazzer burrs costs 1/5-1/12 of Ditting/Mahlkoning and SSP burr set, there is no way mazzer would be able to manufacture a comparable quality at that pricerange. The burrs might be slightly better than italmills, but only slightly. I have seen multiple mazzer burrset over the years and I always found them rather crude with allot of defects that loses it sharpness quickly with light roasted coffee, the lesser quality is obvious when you place them side by side with those from ditting and SSP.

SSP supplies one set of conical burrs. These are made by.... Mazzer!

I am not so sure if a high price tag alone is an indicator of quality, Mazzer burrs are pretty decent IMO..

Obviously not alone, but even then there will be a upper limit for how much you can charge for a pair of burrs. Besides it's not the only parameter i'm looking at, i'm also looking at cupping results, particle distribution, longvity of the burrs, the overall look of the burrs, all things put together it's obvious not on pair with the more expensive ones, the mazzer ssp burrs are of better quality and yes mazzer can make better burrs if they want to, but there might not have been a large enough demand for mazzer to bother to put them in or mazzer might not find it that important, anyhow the ZM is a fantastic grinder I just wish the actual bothered to put a higher quality burr in it.

Secondly I don't hold them in higher regards simply because I drink light roasted, the mazzer burrs get dull within a very short timeframe allot shorter than those listed at their page, never had that short longvity problem with Mahlkonig and ssp less so.

I don't have higher thoughts about conical burrs in general, never seen a pair that came close to the quality you can find in the flatburr world, I have seen quite a few, and all where rather crude, the fact is no one really cares much about burrs and burrs design 10-15 years ago, it's a relatively new phenomenon, grinders used the same design for ages, mazzer became a synonym for an industry resting on their laurels and it took them ages to realise that world changes and so dos demands, I wonder how long it'll take then to put better burrs in their grinder, it's actually a pity because mazzer make some very robust grinders, I just wish they'd be more up to date with burrs and design, having one grinder living up to modern expectations and then putting cheep burrs in it, is just not where we are today, mazzer seriously need to up their game.. rant over

malling wrote:Single dosing is the only reasonable method in the majority of homes, with a hopper your ultimately going to waste allot of coffee on a daily basis and with coffee prices consistently creeping upwards, coffee waste is something you want to keep to a bare minimum.

Single dosing is not that bad and time consuming when you get use to it.

Whether you should go for a conic really depend on your subjective taste and preferences towards roasting styles

Depends on how efficient you are with your grinder. I average extracting 5 18.5 gram doubles every morning. I load the hopper with exactly 94 grams and when finished I have wasted maybe 1.5 grams. I can live with that as I'm home roasting and average spending around $7/lb.

Yes the only practical way to work arround the waste problem with a hopper is filling it up with ones need for the day and making allot of succesive shots, however that isn't how most end up using it. Let it sit for too long and you'll need to purge all the stale coffee out, this results in allot of unnecessary waste, unless you're satisfied with a cup brewed on partly stale coffee, i'm not. Another issue is that the particle distribution changes when hopper load drops, most grinder actually work best with a more or less fixed pressure when that pressure changes so dos the particle distribution and that has an effect on the extraction, this is a problem that is difficult to work around and why some have tried incorporated a weight on top of the beans in a tube.

When you get obsessed with consistentsy you end up single dosing, because it's the only way to get there, you wont have beens sitting in a hopper exposed to oxygen light and heat for hours, all aspects that impact the extraction, you won't have problems with constant changes in bean pressure, you won't need to purge before every session or problems in general with stale grinds that typically will mix up with freshly ground coffee, there is so many reasons why not to use a hopper, certainly more then the benefit of using one, yes it is quick and easy but that does come at a price.

malling wrote:you won't have problems with constant changes in bean pressure,

I think you do. If you want constant pressure you need a column of beans or a controlled bean feed like the EK43 has.