Bentwood Vertical 63 - Page 9

Grinders are one of the keys to exceptional espresso. Discuss them here.
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Hugonl28
Posts: 135
Joined: 11 years ago

#81: Post by Hugonl28 »

The Bentwood Vertical 63 uses a pre-grind worm-gear. It effectively increases the relative size of the flat burrs compared to the coffee parts that arrive at them. It has been tested that pre-grinding beans to a smaller size, then feeding them to the Niche also gives results similar to larger burrs. I don't understand why other manufacturers haven't implemented this too. Also the pre-grind worm-gear ensures a constant feed-rate, making the pressure of beans on the flat burrs independent of the amount of beans in the hopper. This is why they don't implement variable RPM: the grind speed has been selected to perfectly harmonize with the pre-grind feed. People have said this setup effectively gives you the same results as 98mm flat burrs, but with more consistency and more balance between body and clarity.

To the price-point: the tighter tolerance of milling is one of the main factors driving price. This results in more binning. Also it is over-engineered, ensuring no amount of grinding could ever generate heat in the burrs, which could affect consistency. So you can rest assured you will forever get a good cup no matter what you throw at it.

Taste wise, from my own experience, yes it is very balanced. But what sets it apart mostly for me is the extreme sweetness it produces. With some beans we sometimes ask if someone secretly put some sugar in the coffee, it's that pronounced.

Workflow: grind size adjustment is very, very nice. It feels like adjusting an expensive Canon L-Series lens. There is no locking needed. Switching from pour-over to espresso is done in a second.
It can be modified to do single-dosing, by adding a bellows, removing anti-static-flap and using RDT. You get around 0.1g consistency this way if you bellow enough. Still maybe there are grinders out there that give a better single-dose experience, but this is good enough.

Jonk
Posts: 2176
Joined: 4 years ago

#82: Post by Jonk »

Obviously there are satisfied customers of the grinder. But back to Randy G's point - it sure looks like those burrs - as seen in post #3 Bentwood Vertical 63 - could benefit from better manufacturing and at the price point it doesn't seem far fetched that it would be possible.

Doesn't mean that it's not a good grinder or even overpriced, but perhaps it could be even better?

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Jeff
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Joined: 19 years ago

#83: Post by Jeff »

Primacog wrote:All our comments speak for themselves so while I regret your annoyance, I do not regret making my comments which had to be said...
TL;DR -- Primacog thinks the Bentwood is overpriced based on his evaluation criteria and won't buy one.

As a reminder, Guidelines for productive online discussion states that "Dogmatic or repetitive replies are rarely welcome" and requests that users "Stay on topic."

The apparent attempt to pull the thread off topic into a discussion of other grinders has been removed.

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truemagellen
Posts: 1219
Joined: 14 years ago

#84: Post by truemagellen »

Bentwood is a commercial grinder with NSF/ANSI 8 registered. This is part of the cost of having equipment in cafes in certain jurisdictions.

Something to consider.

https://info.nsf.org/Certified/Food/Lis ... andard=008

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