Dear friends,

Recently I roasted a couple of a little too light batches, nice tasting, however quite hard.
Lido 1 had no problem whatsoever with them , for pour over, but grinding for espresso misaligned my Pharos and was really hard to turn the HG-One, really not a pleasure ...

I don't want to abuse my well cared equipment and, as I make coffee for my enjoyment I don't want to spoil the occasion with unnecessary hassles.

That said, IMHO, hand grinders (at least all I know) are not a good choice for hard bean espresso grinding, and that's one of the main reasons why I still keep my not often used MACAP.

Cheers,

Bernardo

To keep the nature of this thread from drifting further off course, I'm suggesting it end for now. Tests of each perspective grinder can still be carried out and reported on individually in their respective threads.

The only value I thought this thread would provide would be a same time, heads up comparison, keeping it as fair and neutral as possible, hence the added effort of a double blind analysis that ultimately showed the beta Lido 2 superior in flavor. If Josh who currently has both grinders in hand would like to share something here, by all means, I'll unlock it or he can freely start his own thread. But I think any more discourse independent of having them together and standardized, will only be less effective and prone to more argument. Both grinders have great, attractive selling points and I think both will do quite well. One video of a tiny Salvadorian working on a hand grinder shouldn't be the only perspective and I hope and encourage others to provide their own videos and see for themselves.

By and large, what we're looking at are hand crafted, extremely precise instruments from both parties. I'll leave this thread with how it was said best:

another_jim wrote: I'm glad OE, Knock and the other companies for creating these high end hand grinders. It's clear that there is still room to refine the designs; but these grinders are brand new, so it's unfair to expect them to have the refinement of designs that are over 50 years old. Just think how much of an edge either of these would have over a conventional Zassenhaus or Peugeot grinders, which are the old peak of hand grinderdom.

** Edit, I should have added from the beginning that we're talking about a beta unit more clearly. I've changed the title accordingly.

Further discussion about efforts on manual grinding, one grinder over another, or comparisons of either to titan grinders belong in separate threads.