Finally bought these, version 1 with silver knight coating. First impressions being what they are.. but color me impressed! first few cups have had a certain juiciness and sweetness, both for espresso and pour over. Lots of body, while retaining enough clarity. A little heavy but not exactly bitter and basically no muddy flavors. Nice!

First try at espresso was just off chirp, as I expected low resistance. Sounded weird while grinding. Sure looked fine, and trying to brew with it turned the puck into clay - a turkish grind!
It'll be interesting to see how the results change after breaking in, but so far I can pretty much use the same grind setting as with the original unimodal v1 burrs.

I use a lot of agitation with pour over so the fines push to the top. Very muddy bed, but drawdown is faster than with unimodal v1. I have also experienced acceleration towards the end of espresso shots as have been described here.

Jonk wrote:but so far I can pretty much use the same grind setting as with the original unimodal v1 burrs.

aha. this confirms that the cast does indeed need very fine grinds. generally unimodal v1 is known to need extreme fine grind. im suprised of mention that people easily choke with LS. i'm only able to do so with df64 stock clump crusher, but that means lot of regrinds and fines.
my experience is also near burr touching is required for cast, although im using refurbished red speed.

In my case I have needed roughly 100-130µm burr gap on the Mazzer Mini E (no anti-static screen but a short horizontal chute) for normale espresso with unimodal v1. I dialed these LS v1 to 150µm for the medium roast used. 1:2 shot with long pre-infusion, so there are plenty of settings left to choke the Robot.

In the Ode the burr gap has been more like 50-75µm with those same unimodal v1 burrs, but I'm fairly certain the alignment isn't all there.. Either way, I've never had any issues grinding fine enough. Both grinders run at 1400RPM so that could be part of the reason.

The LS V1 was marketed as a Brew Burr and requires a fine setting to use for espresso.
HANSUNG said that the P64, which is a "low RPM" horizontal grind, is easy to use for espresso.At the time I thought it was a "high RPM" TYPO, but the LS Burr has the opposite characteristics of the UM/MP and HU.

In other words, it seems to grind finer as a result of slower powder ejection.So I think the ODE, which grinds vertically at the same RPM, requires a finer gap.

Does anyone have the LS v1 or v2 installed in their ode? If so, what settings do you:

have it calibrated to from touch? The standard 5 or more?

What setting do you use for April, V60, Kalita, etc?

I've had my cast burrs since May. They're mounted on a DF64 and are properly aligned. I must have run around 10kg of beans by now which makes me think that the burrs are seasoned. The burrs are almost exclusively used for espresso.

I like light roasts but I've also used quite a lot of medium roasted coffee with those burrs. On occasion I've used dark roasts (never oily stuff). I can say that the burrs work well for medium (or even dark) roasts but for light roasts they're really not ideal because they can't grind fine enough. For light roasts you need to grind finer than for medium roasts.

For medium roasts, my functional range is 2-5 from chirp. For light roasts, just off burrs touching I'm barely reaching 20s on a 1:2 shot (18g). For light roasts, I usually pull 1:2.5/3 shots. The resulting espresso is not bad but leaves much to be desired.

I have a Lelit Bianca machine and I use an Espresso Parts HQ basket. I've used Pullman and IMS baskets before and found those baskets did not work well because of their high nature.

I have found that, as the seasoning progressed, my functional range for espresso decreased significantly.

I don't think it's correct to pitch the cast burrs as burrs that can do everything well.

I need to find burrs that can do light and medium roasts well for espresso - keen to hear any suggestions based on your personal experience (too many people give advice based on what they read online...). I don't think MP burrs would be for me though because I still need to be able to pull traditional espressos for milk drinks when I have friends over.

Fraussie wrote: essay

Do you have the V1 burrs? They are very different from the V2. I had a similar experience with V1 but I've been using V2 for espresso since they came out and I've never had a problem. Admittedly I'm using a P64, but my grind size setting for HU, MP, and Cast are all in the same ballpark range. I had a similar experience with HU and MP when I had a DF as well.

I've got the v2

I would hazard that they aren't actually aligned then. I asked my DF friend with V2 and he's pulling in the 12-15 range.

I don't know what to say. I checked alignment 3 times - last was yesterday. They're aligned.