Re grinders: I use a monolith flat at home, so obviously I'm a fan of good grinders. As far as cheaper options, I still maintain the pharos is the best bang for the buck grinder out there. The in the cup quality is great, and with such a large burr it grinds plenty fast. It does require quite a bit of hand strength though, especially for light roasts. For electric grinders, I've made some pretty darn good shots on the robot with my dad's Sette. I have also done alright with a baratza preciso (which means a virtuoso should also be acceptable, but will suffer somewhat from lack of adjustability). Please please please don't try to make espresso with a whirly blade. You will drive yourself insane.

evert wrote:Kinu M68!

There is one in the Buy/Sell area.

Nate42 wrote:Re grinders: I use a monolith flat at home, so obviously I'm a fan of good grinders. As far as cheaper options, I still maintain the pharos is the best bang for the buck grinder out there. The in the cup quality is great, and with such a large burr it grinds plenty fast. It does require quite a bit of hand strength though, especially for light roasts. For electric grinders, I've made some pretty darn good shots on the robot with my dad's Sette. I have also done alright with a baratza preciso (which means a virtuoso should also be acceptable, but will suffer somewhat from lack of adjustability). Please please please don't try to make espresso with a whirly blade. You will drive yourself insane.

Just as you were saying NOT to use a whirly blade I used my Krups whirly blade with my Robot. My Rosco Mini Mill is out of service and the Krups is all I had. Even though there was channeling and the espresso was somewhat bitter at least I was able to grind 40 grams of espresso in seconds, enough for two cappucccinos. My hand grinder is great for French Press coffee but for fine espresso grinds hand grinders are a pain. I'm thinking about getting the Niche Zero or the Baratza Sette 270Wi. I love the built-in weight calibration with the 270Wi and consider this feature a game changer. Weighing out espresso manually takes a lot of time. So I'm leaning towards the Baratza 270Wi. Any other suggestions are welcome. Because of the size of my small kitchen I need a small electric mill that doesn't take up a lot of room and I don't want to spend a fortune.

As a side note, Ross from Portapresso is being an angel. That locknut on the Rosco Mini Mill is a pain. He is trying to come up with a solution to fix my mill. The brass is all gashed to hell but he seems open to fixing it.

If you are grinding with a whirly blade, you're not tasting how good it can be, unless you are brewing Turkish coffee with an ibrik. I once did a demonstration, taking a very flavorful Ethiopian coffee to the shop of our hair stylist. I brought a whirly blade, a LIDO 2, and brewed with an AeroPress. Proper grinding makes the difference between bitter mud and being able to taste multiple layers of flavor without over- or underextraction. Please trust us on this.

Introducing Friends to Better Coffee

Workflow with a Niche Zero is incredibly easy. A proper scale costs about $10 online. I put a plastic container on the scale, press the button to calibrate this to zero, pour in the desired weight of beans, mist it with a bit of water to prevent static, and pour this into the Niche. I then grind directly into the Robot basket, stir with a dissection needle, insert the shower screen, pour in water from my Bonavita PID kettle, and pull a shot.

drgary wrote:If you are grinding with a whirly blade, you're not tasting how good it can be, unless you are brewing Turkish coffee with an ibrik.

Workflow with a Niche Zero is incredibly easy. A proper scale costs about $10 online. I put a container on the scale, pour in the desired weight of beans, mist it with a bit of water to prevent static, and pour this into the Niche. I then grind directly into the Robot basket, stir with a dissection needle, insert the shower screen, pour in water from my Bonavita PID kettle, and pull a shot.

I do have a scale and I've been using it for years. But the Baratza 270Wi has a built-in scale so I think this would make the work flow much faster?

"Much faster?" Any faster? Weighing on the scale is trivial. The Niche replaced my Robur-equivalent grinder. It produced more consistent results than my Pharos or HG-1.

Hi, How wide exactly is the included tamper with the Robot? I know the basket is 58 mm, but I tried the Robot's tamper on the basket included on an EspressoForge, which is I believe a standard 58 mm, and it seemed slightly narrow with some room around the circumference. Thanks in advance for any feedback.

LewBK - my Robot tamper measures 57.2 mm.

davidhunternyc - I improved my Robot workflow greatly by pre weighing doses into small containers. I found 70ml plastic containers with a hinged snap lid which were intended for storage of batches of baby food. However, there are many other similar small containers that would be suitable. I just do a pre-weigh session which only takes minutes and seems to last most of the week. Dosing then is simply a matter of taking the preweighed beans, spray of water for RDT, and grind. This is where the single dosing and zero retention features of the Niche will be invaluable. On the other hand have the reliability issues of the Sette been properly resolved?

Touché. I've been thinking the same thing all day today. I could get those beautiful glass vials with cork stoppers, pre-weigh my beans and keep the sealed vials in the fridge. Then when I want my morning cappuccino it's easy to turn on the Niche Zero and, voila! : )

Otago wrote: davidhunternyc - I improved my Robot workflow greatly by pre weighing doses into small containers. I found 70ml plastic containers with a hinged snap lid which were intended for storage of batches of baby food. However, there are many other similar small containers that would be suitable. I just do a pre-weigh session which only takes minutes and seems to last most of the week. Dosing then is simply a matter of taking the preweighed beans, spray of water for RDT, and grind. This is where the single dosing and zero retention features of the Niche will be invaluable. On the other hand have the reliability issues of the Sette been properly resolved?

FWIW, I got a dozen 2 oz glass jars similar to these. There are other identical -- or nearly so -- options at Amazon. You can also get 4 oz equivalents if you like supersized Big Gulp doses.

I like two things about these jars:

• They're glass (I suppose it's silly to worry about plastic in contact with food, so I guess I'm silly); and
• They're identical in weight, so you won't have to keep taring your scale when you're weighing out multiple doses.

As Otago said, it's very easy to pre-weigh your beans, and it makes shot workflow as simple as it gets. OTOH, if the Sette you're thinking about is reliably dead accurate down to .1 g, then that sounds like a possible option. Haven't done a search in the Grinders forum, but have to think someone has extensively tested the Sette's accuracy.