Hi all,

Have a specialita, maybe 4-5 months old. Been great for single dosing, maybe retaining 0.05- 0.1g. Lately it's been retaining 0.5-0.8g.

Took it apart last night and chute, burrs and area around bottom burr were clogged up a bit. Brushed, wiped and blew out anywhere I saw grounds.

Pulled a couple shots of Temple Dharma this AM. Same thing happened with the retention.

Any ideas? I'm in CO around 5500'. It's pretty dry here. Maybe static? Would spraying beans with water help?

That sounds pretty normal to me. If I clean mine the next dose will be about 1 - 1.5 g light. Without cleaning, coffee out and in are pretty close, but with variation on some shots of up to 1 g. Usually that leads to more out than in, as the machine spits out some old coffee. It retains about 1 g.

5280grindz & cunim:

Have you guys weighed the total retention when you guys open it up and clean it? i would be interested in that as mine's total retention is around 4-6gms (not a eureka).

Also do you guys use light roasted, medium, or dark coffee?

I have been reading various things about this grinder on how it may not fare well with light to medium coffees.

Update, spraying beans and distributing/shaking before grind seems to be helping with retention. I weigh in and out. On avg it retains ~0.1g.

@Radio.YYZ, IMO it does fine with med and lighter roasts. I'm in CO and partake Dragonfly Crema Dolce and Leam Hammer more often than any other roaster. Specialita has bigger burrs than the other Mignon models, 55mm vs 50mm. It's not going to outperform a EK43, Monolith, EG1, E37SD but it holds its own. I think (Clive?) did a video test of the retention of several serious grinders and the Mignon was the clear winner.

@cunim, highly recommend you do a clean out and wipe the chute. There was a def improvement.

Nods, i know of the 55mm burrs, and i have a sette which has a lot of total overall retention so i was thinking of jumping to this one. I saw the video but wanted to get real life users experience!

I was due to clean mine out. However, It's been cold in CO and I'm running the furnaces more than normal which dries out already dry air further, so I think static is a legit factor in my situation. It's been pretty consistent at 0.1g retained since I cleaned it up and RDT/spray the beans.

I'm about 6 months into my Specialita here in Portland, OR.
Light/med roasts almost exclusively.
Single dosing exclusively (with my own homespun single-dose hopper mod: an empty inverted ibuprofen bottle).
Only bothered to clean it out once, just to see.
In/out dose accuracy remains consistently within an average +/- 0.2g or better, no water droplets, no static on the way out.
Nice neat pile-up into the portafilter, I can even do my little side-taps to settle the pile as it comes out rather than having to pause the grind to settle.

My routine:
I weigh the dose, load it into the hopper and then tare the scale with empty PF;
grind, w/side taps to the PF to settle as it piles, and just for good measure at the end I tip the grinder upward about an inch on its hind legs and let it drop flat again a couple times to make sure no errant fragments are hung up anywhere. This isn't really necessary but I do it anyway. (19.5g takes about 16-18 seconds for the final crumbs to fall, including with the rocking at the end)
weigh the loaded PF to confirm dose accuracy for peace of mind;
spin a distribution tool (not sure how much this helps but I do like tamping on what already looks flat and neat);
tamp with Reg Barber C-Ripple;
lock it on and enjoy my spro.

no complaints!

5280grindz wrote:I was due to clean mine out. However, It's been cold in CO and I'm running the furnaces more than normal which dries out already dry air further, so I think static is a legit factor in my situation. It's been pretty consistent at 0.1g retained since I cleaned it up and RDT/spray the beans.

I found for me only darker roasts have static, medium to lighter roast coffee has little to no static!

SpromoSapiens wrote:I'm about 6 months into my Specialita here in Portland, OR.
Light/med roasts almost exclusively.
Single dosing exclusively (with my own homespun single-dose hopper mod: an empty inverted ibuprofen bottle).
Only bothered to clean it out once, just to see.
In/out dose accuracy remains consistently within an average +/- 0.2g or better, no water droplets, no static on the way out.
Nice neat pile-up into the portafilter, I can even do my little side-taps to settle the pile as it comes out rather than having to pause the grind to settle.

My routine:
I weigh the dose, load it into the hopper and then tare the scale with empty PF;
grind, w/side taps to the PF to settle as it piles, and just for good measure at the end I tip the grinder upward about an inch on its hind legs and let it drop flat again a couple times to make sure no errant fragments are hung up anywhere. This isn't really necessary but I do it anyway. (19.5g takes about 16-18 seconds for the final crumbs to fall, including with the rocking at the end)
weigh the loaded PF to confirm dose accuracy for peace of mind;
spin a distribution tool (not sure how much this helps but I do like tamping on what already looks flat and neat);
tamp with Reg Barber C-Ripple;
lock it on and enjoy my spro.

no complaints!

It really does sound a lot better than the sette, but i wanna still know the total retention inside the grinder to compare... i have gone about 1-2 months with sette and once cleaned it was about 4-6gms of coffee.

Day to day, i am off by 0.1g max just like the mignon day to day retention.