Ah, how sad. It would be wonderful if they did offer more of them or a different chopped edition to the NA market. I must say they're pretty popular among cafes around here and I imagine that more would gladly add them to their workbenches if they weren't quite as substantial.

Compass Coffee wrote:Highly doubt it unless much much smaller hopper. Standard hopper 12".

By the way, they posted about it last month on their blog stating it sold out at the expo at which it debuted: http://www.mahlkoenig.com/events/news/143
It's also pictured with a smaller hopper - which is still tall though not as massive as the standard one.

You could quite easily do the modifications yourself. The legs of the EK are largely pretty hollow, with the actual electronics taking up quite little room. All you need to do is get in contact with your local Santos reseller and ask them for a spare set of lets from their Santos 01P mill (http://www.kcm-catering-equipment.co.uk ... ml#SID=647) which just so happens to have the same legs the special edition EK. I once got a quote on the replacement legs and I think it came to around £200 at most.

Right, but AFAIK there's no Santos distribution in the NA market. Judging by the UK thread I read regarding the LE model the price was suggested to be about £150 over that of the standard EK43, so less than just the legs of the Santos and you also get that fancy push-button power switch

I would bet that if that grinder was made very available worldwide that it would fly off of the shelves of the distributors!!

On the bright side, the email reply I received said they are currently working on "something like this for North America for 2016."

CrabRangoon wrote:Ah, how sad. It would be wonderful if they did offer more of them or a different chopped edition to the NA market. I must say they're pretty popular among cafes around here and I imagine that more would gladly add them to their workbenches if they weren't quite as substantial.

Mini hopper is what you're after, will be tiny with this

You can also use as a very small hopper, the funnel of an Aeropress. Could you tell me how wide it is at 18" of height? (i mean the regular EK43).

The issue for me is the EK's height without hopper. The chopped base would appear to allow it in my kitchen, as it's pictured beside an espresso machine and the body/case looked to be a tame height there. If I had one, I'd likely use something like FotonDrv's chute replacing his Ceado hopper instead of a hopper. Our home is a little 50's bungalow type with cabinets only 17" above the counters - and the kitchen is quite small. The only way I could fit an EK is with a chopped base and sans hopper - even my Mythos must in the room attached to the kitchen (just steps away from my machine) due to it's size

Séb wrote:You can also use as a very small hopper, the funnel of an Aeropress. Could you tell me how wide it is at 18" of height? (i mean the regular EK43).

The width of the tower?

I took the EK to a couple of engineering shops to cut it and they said it would be around £200 to chop and reattach to the base (the black lines on the side are where I was thinking), but both said they couldn't give any guarantee about the quality of the finish which put me off.

Waiting on quotes for a Santos base at the minute...

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