Looking at those photos again made me wonder, and maybe the only one around here who could answer this correctly would be Doug from OE, but if those burrs were cranked together tightly, wouldn't they lock up against one another and you'd have to disassemble the whole thing to get them apart?

Nah, you could just smack em with a hammer

Giving the Comandante the benefit of a doubt, I ran one pound of minute rice thru the grinder and rechecked a few things. I still really love the ergonomics and ease of use. It's going to really bum me out to have to part with it. But this copy is pretty much garbage in my opinion.

It's evident that there's a great deal of axle or shaft slop. The inner burr can be wiggled almost like a loose tooth, simply because it's not locked in place well, or the shaft is flimsy. There's nothing loose per se, just sloppy. Looking at the space between the burrs, the off centered gap is clearly evident, without much more than a glance. The burr seems like it can wander quite a bit, sometimes it looks centered, sometimes it's off quite a bit. I imagine if I were to tighten down the setting when it's off axis, I can replicate the same exact problem that Henry and Chris have noted. I have a strong suspicion that these aren't isolated aberrant units, but I'm wondering what the prototype units specs were. I've contacted Able (who've already forwarded this thread to Comandante) and will replace this unit for another and retest it. I'm hoping that I'm wrong, but we'll have to see.

The same coffee, same dose as yesterday produced 2.2g of fines, much more than yesterdays batch,which was 1.65g I believe, but this is hardly scientific. I had hoped to see less, not more. It took 25 seconds to grind 20g, down from 30 seconds yesterday, and subjectively, felt a bit easier and smoother.

Here's a few snapshots of the inside, showing the fixed outer burr and you can clearly see how either the burr itself isn't properly aligned, or the blue material isn't perfectly round.





Another thing that was slightly disturbing, was when grinding at fine settings, I can feel the inner burr seize up against one side of the outer burr.

Seasoning the burrs did nothing to help with grind quality. It's still a mix of very large chunks of coffee, twice as big as any French press grind, all the way down to granulated salt sized grinds. The troubling thing is, the grind was set for a moderately coarse grind, but the spectrum of particle distribution leaned heavily on the finer side, and all these photo's are after sifting out the 2.2g of fines.

Here's a shot of the dry grinds



After brewing in the Kalita Wave, it always seems to stratify the grinds well, and you can clearly see the massive chunks of beans. Extraction efficiency with this grinder is clearly hampered.

What does it do for Espresso ? Did you try any of that?

Interesting, so I would like to know how this compares to a Hario Mini

Guess I'm going to find out! I won one on the traveling road show! This little PeDe is doing a " fine" job!!

I won one on the traveling road show! This little PeDe is doing a " fine" job!!

What roadshow? What PeDe?

The road show was on GCBC. The Pe De i'm using I'm not sure which model number it is.

Basically, the grind output is just as bad as the grind output by my Zassenhaus Heidelberg espresso grinder. I use it for drip/pourover preps and the uneven grind is very similar to what I see in Tom's pictures. The last few beans without weight basically just crack into large enough chunks to fall through the space between the burrs. I paid $60 new, $150 for the C40 is overpriced if what Tom is seeing is legitimately how it functions.

sonnyhad wrote:What does it do for Espresso ? Did you try any of that?

After seeing how poorly a job it does on simple drip grinds, I haven't been too enthusiastic to try grinding an espresso shot with it. I might, just to satisfy other peoples curiosity.

At $150, this should be three times the quality, precision and function of a Porlex. It's no better, in any regard. $150 should be able to buy a relatively decently designed tool, without slop or wobble. It doesn't need to be Rosco hand built precision, but it should be a lot closer than what it is. This is a design concept that would be extremely useful and easy to use, unfortunately, it's all sizzle and no steak.