Even the older small-burr hand grinders do 16g in less than a minute. My hausgrind does the same, and the aergrind takes a little longer.

So 1-2 minutes max for espresso with a decent hand grinder. There is certainly a Zen element to hand grinding - I've been at it for 20 years and still grind exclusively by hand. For me the experience of creating espresso is almost as important as the experience of tasting it and hand grinding fits into this. There are as many ways of experiencing espresso as there are home baristas and coffee beans, however, and hand grinding is not for everyone.

bakafish wrote:Helor 106 uses 4:1 gear down, so it is super easy to grind hard beans compared to the 47mm conical burr hand grinders. It takes 72 revolutions for 18g beans. My average speed is 2.5 revolutions per second, so it takes about 30 seconds for espresso.

The 106 is the ultimate grinder ever made as far as I'm concerned and still look fwd to using mine every day. I do 6-7 doubles daily for 1 yr now and it never disappoints. Over the yrs I've found keeping the RPS consistent definitely affects the grind quality to a degree and find the 106 to work great for me at 2 RPS. Just a natural feel/momentum that I stick with. Too slow and those large burrs really dig into the coffee and can affect momentum, but I don't like to crank away at it either. Still so impressed with the performance/build quality/longevity of it I rarely use the electric flat sitting next to it.

A related, and in my opinion equally important, aspect is the overall ergonomics and experience of the grinding process. It's not just about speed, it's also about how much work you need to apply. Higher-end manual grinders make it so that the beans almost disappear from the user's consciousness, offering very little to no resistance as you turn the crank. A well-engineered manual grinder with reasonably-sized steel burrs is a pleasure to use and entirely in a league of its own compared to cheaper ceramic burr grinders, which many people probably have in mind when first thinking about manual grinders.

I got a reminder of this recently as I was travelling and had to grind all my coffee (for pour over and aeropress) for over a month using an inexpensive Hario. Not only did it take significantly longer, I also always felt like I had to really fight the grinder. It would jam all the time, slip in my hand, etc. I didn't time it with a stopwatch, but impressionistically I would say it's about a threefold increase in time - and about a 30-fold increase in frustration - to grind for pour over with the Hario compared to grinding for espresso on a Kinu or equivalent.

No matter how long it takes you to grind your shot it will take a lot less time than servicing your motorized grinder when it fails. Check the broken EG1 thread for reference...