I've owned and used an HG-1 for the last 6 years. While I love the grinder, the HG-1 prime has really piqued my interest due to the 2.5:1 gearing. I'm hoping someone who has experience with both grinders can help me answer a couple questions.

• For darker roasts where effort isn't a concern, do you find increased gearing to a negative? I'm assuming I would need to grind for 2.5 times as long as my current HG-1.

• For light roasts, are they still difficult to grind? Some lightly roasted, dense beans are extremely difficult on my HG-1. Will I still struggle with the HG-2, or is the advantage from the gearing significant?

I've ground the entire range from Nordic to charcoal with the Prime, and it handles them all with ease. I currently have the grinder on a large glass table, and whatever material Craig used for the bottom of the unit basically adheres to the glass like glue. The amount of force necessary to take it off of the table (which I never do anymore) is insane. So this gives the grinder a lot of leverage. If it wasn't adhered or bolted to something, I'd imagine you would have to deal with a bit of rocking from the unit that may slow things down. But as far as actual force exerted to grind the beans...it's minimal. I grind an 18g medium-ish espresso dose in about 25 seconds.

I absolutely adore this grinder.

I couldn't really find an overview of this grinder when I was looking to buy it, so I made one:

GregoryJ wrote:I couldn't really find an overview of this grinder when I was looking to buy it, so I made one:

EvanOz85 wrote:I've ground the entire range from Nordic to charcoal with the Prime, and it handles them all with ease.

Have either of you ground from frozen? Wondering how it would handle that (I always freeze beans anyway but I dose frozen). Curiosity has me wanting to play with a large conical and I had an HG1 back in the day. I would think the Prime should handle frozen beans with ease given it's gear setup.

Almost exclusively grind straight from the freezer. No issues whatsoever on the HG-1 Prime with the very light roasts I drink.

Awesome. I've been wanting to play with another large conical vs my flats.

I made a 2-piece magnetic lid I've been pretty happy with. Usually I just lift it up to load the beans in. You can see what it looks like below. Here are the files on thingiverse.

I just ordered my HG-1 Prime this week and expecting it to arrive next Monday! Very excited. Coming from a Niche, and have a Zerno on the way as well. Hoping the Prime will be quieter compared to the Niche for when I have family/friends staying in the guest room closest to the kitchen. It's a rough morning when I have to walk by my machine before work without pulling a shot for fear of waking people up.

By the way, love the magnetic lid idea. I have fairly limited tools at my disposal, but depending on the dimensions, I may look at ordering something like a wood lid for the P64 and modifying it to cover the Prime. Time will tell how bad the popcorning will be.

Craig Lyn had recommended a laser cutting service to me called Ponoko (https://www.ponoko.com/laser-cutting). You could get bamboo from them to match the skid plate, but you can only get flat parts cut. If you want things 3D printed for cheaply you can post on reddit.com/r/printmything and you could probably get the 2 lid parts mailed to you ~$15.

Been using mine for about 2 weeks, I had a darker roast that was pulling ok with some spraying and channeling. I have a med Brazil SO right now and my Prime is making a mess lol. Probably the worst spritz and channeling I've ever had from a grinder all these years (and I had an HG1 back in the day). All over me, machine, counter. And yes obviously wdt'ing, and even slayer mode or PI on BDB. Probably about 2lbs of beans through it so far. This is on ephq baskets which are very forgiving in general, especially ridged 14 I primarily use.

Think on Craig's site it said that was normal breaking in, but I've seen a few others even elsewhere day never had that issue. But I'm wondering if something is wrong, haven't checked alignment yet.

Crema also super thin, damn near disappears immediately, was thin even on darker roast. On other grinders the beans pull flawlessly.