Greetings fellow HBers,


I had an Instagram DM with folks at Weber workshop, asking about the reasons for their 5 microns stepped adjustment. Is there literature or studies out there on how Weber workshop landed on that specific 5 microns stepped adjustment for their grinders?

In complete honesty, I'm a diehard fan of stepless grinders. I was just wondering what happens when grinds need to be in between the two steps, I know 5 microns is .005mm and that it is infinitesimal and really small but I'm all about differences, and as we all know when coffee make a YUGE difference.

You mentioned at the start you had a DM with Weber, what did they say? Assuming they would know the reasons they chose better than us?

lrj13 wrote:Greetings fellow HBers,


I had an Instagram DM with folks at Weber workshop, asking about the reasons for their 5 microns stepped adjustment. Is there literature or studies out there on how Weber workshop landed on that specific 5 microns stepped adjustment for their grinders?

In complete honesty, I'm a diehard fan of stepless grinders. I was just wondering what happens when grinds need to be in between the two steps, I know 5 microns is .005mm and that it is infinitesimal and really small but I'm all about differences, and as we all know when coffee make a YUGE difference.

While not answering your paragraphs first question, I will say in two years of owning an EG-1 I never found a coffee that required a grind between steps. Anecdotal yes, but worth mentioning from ownership.

There's a stepped grinder called the Quantum that has a step size of 10^-29 microns.

This is what Weber workshop replied with

'Steps' is the wrong word as each step is infinitesimal, but still repeatable. "Stepped" always had a bad reputation because the steps were too big. 5 microns per step and it's actually a blessing... We create our own literature. When you understand the mechanics that well and the problems with typical "stepless," you can solve those problems. It will take a while for 3rd party literature to catch up.

I was hoping for some empirical evidence and a paper written on it.

Thanks for posting Webers reply. It looks like we will have to wait till Weber choose to share the literature they create.

lrj13 wrote:Greetings fellow HBers,


I had an Instagram DM with folks at Weber workshop, asking about the reasons for their 5 microns stepped adjustment. Is there literature or studies out there on how Weber workshop landed on that specific 5 microns stepped adjustment for their grinders?

In complete honesty, I'm a diehard fan of stepless grinders. I was just wondering what happens when grinds need to be in between the two steps, I know 5 microns is .005mm and that it is infinitesimal and really small but I'm all about differences, and as we all know when coffee make a YUGE difference.

What problem are you trying to solve?

5um is non-material when it comes to steps (red blood cell is about 8um). There is a reason many other manufactures have followed along with this. Having the flexibility of a stepless grinder with the repeatability of "steps" is the best of both worlds. I can not think of any use case why you would need to land somewhere between those two steps...

I'm not trying to solve a problem.

I was inquiring on how and why Weber workshops landed on the 5-micron adjustment. I wanted to know what led them to that decision. Just because others are following that model, doesn't necessarily mean that's the way it should be. In the literature, results come from repeatable experiments and then conclusions are drawn. The important question/s to ask are what were those methods that led to those conclusions. Hence, how did they land where they did? Isn't it up to us to ask these questions? And push the coffee world forward? Continue the journey?

You said it yourself there is "flexibility" in step less grinding. Also, it'd be hard pressed for me to say with certainty that with a stepped grinder that I would never want it to fall in-between two steps.

The perceived problem with stepped grinders stems from the days before the manufactures understood how fine the steps need to be for espresso. No one that I've ever seen has complained about the steps on the Weber grinders being to coarse.

Ira

Disclaimer: I don't have experience with conical grinders.

From my experience with flat burr grinders, with a known resolution of the grind adjustment dial, I would say that 5 microns is probably the perfect resolution. A change of 2.5 microns would for these grinders cause an average change in shot time smaller than the variations in shot time inherent from shot-to-shot puck prep differences.