Whitecrane wrote:Am I the only one who's considering this grinder as a minimal play brew grinder for my daily Bonavita Auto-Drip? Sure I'd like to learn how to make pourovers, but 99% of my coffee comes from my auto drip.

Is this grinder too rich for me? Like buying a Ferrari and going 20 mph to pick the kids up from school?

Nothing wrong with a BV + Ode combination ... I'd say that the analogy is more like picking the kids up in a Prius .

baldheadracing wrote:Nothing wrong with a BV + Ode combination

And I won't need a high end super coffee scale for making simple brew pots, right?

My Breville auto doses, I have never had to manual dose before. Happy to get away from this feature. I have a cheap digital scale I would like to use.

Whitecrane wrote:And I won't need a high end super coffee scale for making simple brew pots, right?

My Breville auto doses, I have never had to manual dose before. Happy to get away from this feature.

The Ode is intended to be used with scales - you only put enough beans for one pot of coffee (or whatever) in the Ode's hopper. You could count scoops/use a measuring cup instead of weighing beans, but either way you will have to measure out the beans and load the hopper each time you use the grinder. (The grinder runs continuously until it's hopper is empty.)

A $10 kitchen scale will work just fine. A starting point is 55g/2oz beans for every litre/34ozUS of water you put in the Bonavita's reservoir.

baldheadracing wrote:A starting point is 55g/2oz beans for every litre/34ozUS of water you put in the Bonavita's reservoir.

Okay. I have a cheap digital kitchen scale. 1.67g per oz of water. I know you shouldn't mix metric and imperial, but it really is easiest this way.

Received my Ode last night and made a cup this morning. I have to say overall I'm pretty impressed, perhaps all the reviews just had my expectations really low.

I ordered the grinder directly from Fellow, so I assume it was a fairly recent production unit.

First Impressions
This thing looks really nice. From pictures I expected it to be mostly plastic, but the main body at least seems to be all metal. It's also a little bigger/heavier than expected. Still a small grinder.

Functions
I ran half a pound or so of cheap beans through it for a little seasoning and to test out all the different functions. The grinder has a lot of slightly gimmicky stuff, but I actually appreciate most of them. The auto off works pretty well, usually shuts the grinder off 2-3 seconds after I hear the last bean. The grind thwacker works, I usually get around .5 grams out using it. The catch cup is probably net neutral for me. The magnetic hold is nice, the rubber top is okay, but sometimes a little unwieldy, and the fins are kind of annoying. With the fins though I just pour from the other side of the catch cup and there is no issue.

Grind Quality
I've only made one cup with this so this is far from a fully formed opinion. Visually the grinds look pretty uniform, I don't see a lot of boulders or fines. I have been brewing a light roasted washed Ethiopian using a kalita wave with the Onyx labs recipe, 19g beans, 300g water. Using setting 2 on the ode the total brew time is about 4 mins. I may coarsen the grind a bit and try to aim for 3-3.5 mins. So I don't have trouble grinding fine, but I doubt I will ever use any of the settings 4+. Not really an deal breaker, but you lose a lot of the dynamic range with this grinder when half the settings are way too coarse.

Quality in the Cup
I have been using my Lido E/T for brews, and for the same coffee, same recipe etc the Ode is definitely an improvement. A lot more flavor clarity and cleanness to the cup. I expect it to get even better when I fully season the burrs and dial in the recipe a little more.

Overall I'm happy with the purchase, for $300 this appears to be a very solid brew grinder. I do have a set of SSP mulitpurpose burrs on my Super Jolly right now, I may put them on the ode to experiment but as of now I don't really see a need to.

JohnB. wrote:The Kickstarter Update #18 that I received this morning had some good news for backers. The new improved catch lid will be sent out free but that may not happen until June.

In what regard is the catch lid new / improved? No data on that on their website.

Im still waiting for mine to come. I really want to support Fellows but man so many excuses and people who backed a local kickstarter platform in Taiwan already got theirs months ago.

I got the 1zpresso JP6 hand grinder and really like it so far. I had a Lido 3 but after a few years the catch cup on the plastic threads wore out and alignment was never great on it.

Is it worth keeping this grinder? I just want to sell it and never support Fellows again.

Whitecrane wrote:In what regard is the catch lid new / improved? No data on that on their website.

No idea. Some owners have complained about a poor fit so maybe they addressed that. My daughter hasn't had any issues with hers. Guess we'll find out in June.

I suspect the new catch lid will be made of a different material. The original lid is rubber or silicone or something and is quite a magnet for grinds and chaff as they exit the chute. I used mine maybe the first two times and then just set it aside and went sans lid.

JohnB. wrote:No idea. Some owners have complained about a poor fit so maybe they addressed that. My daughter hasn't had any issues with hers. Guess we'll find out in June.

The owner of Fellow made a video saying they're swapping the composition of the lid, so flex-y material where it's hard plastic on the current one and vice versa.