halfcupofcoffee

My homemade coffee comes in three forms: Filter coffee, espresso and moka pot. I have a PID modded Gaggia Classic in my Studio and if I don't forget it in our sweden summer home, I have an Aeropress there and a Hario V60 02 to make filter coffee there. My grinder there is a DF64/G-Iota which I am very happy with.

At home, so far, I had a small V60 and two moka pots, a simple single one and a Bialetti Brikka (Which I used to love but now basically don't use anymore). As grinders go, I used to have two small handgrinders, one of them being the ubiquitous Hario Slim and one being a slightly more sturdy aluminium body grinder with no brand name to mention. And after got the DF64 for the studio, I moved the relatively ok Saeco Mac 001 espresso grinder to my home kitchen.

The two smaller hand grinders are not very consistent unfortunately. The Saeco is more consistent, but produces a lot of fines even at coarse settings.

One thing was clear, I didn't want to shell out another 400 EUR for another DF64. I don't drink a ton of coffee at home, so I am actually happy to hand grind.

A new era of hand grinders

Fortunately, the world of hand grinders for coffee has been completely uprooted by a small german producer, Commandante. The C40 was the first hand grinder in a new generation of grinders probably best described by the following properties:

• solid metal enclosure for increased stability
• actual ball bearings for more stability and precision in holding the drive shaft
• bigger steel burrs, often with interesting and new burr geometries, massively increasing grind speed, but also allowing for much finer grounds to be produced, making it viable (if exhausting) to grind for espresso.

The Commandante C40 is still a very well regarded grinder, but it is also a relatively expensive grinder, starting at ~250 EUR. From what I can tell, it is worth the money given that it is built in germany with high precision and good materials.

Then, as it always happens in these modern times, knockoffs began to appear. And then the knockoffs began to get better and better. The companies, mainly Timemore, Normcore and 1zpresso, began to innovate beyond the Commandante, but also, produced good, consistent grinders at much lower price points.

And I am super late to that game. I am currently testing two grinders I specifically selected for their features and their price point.

The first I got was a Normcore V2 (38mm, steel burr). The grinder costs roughly around $100 but is unfortunately not shipped from within Europe which makes shipping a bit painful. It feels very solid, grinds extremely fast and ... had a defect. It is supposed to grind espresso but I believe there are some issues with the length of the drive shaft on my grinder, which means that I can't adjust the grind size into these very fine territories. I am now in contact with them (oddly, the only way of contacting them reliably seems an Instagram DM?!?) and they promised to send me a new drive shaft.

Apart from that, the grinder seems great and I like the fact that they have a rubber sleeve (maybe silicon?) that holds the crank and that the whole grinder actually fits into an aeropress.

Then I also got myself an 1zpresso JX. 1zpresso has a wide range of grinders and the JX is (clocking in at around $130) one of their cheaper grinders, but has a much bigger burr set (48mm) and more capacity, which is great for larger batches and cold brews, for example. The burr set seems to be a bit slower and a bit less consistent than the normcore but I need to verify this in further tests. The build quality is super solid, it fits my hand size, grinding is very fast as well and it also looks very nice.

I'll report back with some more findings soon, hopefully.

A new brewer

The last addition to my home filter coffee setup is an April brewer. I was looking for an alternative for my V60 but I was a bit afraid of the Kalita with the usual stories of stalling brews because of the small holes in the bottom – The April brewer is a very nice thing to look at, even in the plastic version I ordered. It came in a set with some paper filters which April claims are better for their brewer than the same sized Kalita 155 filters and a very nice Coffee, their Ethiopian Zewde, a natural process Krume variety.

The April brewer has been interesting to test because if feels like it's a lot less finicky than a V60 and following April's recipe has given me, generally, very good and much more consistent results, and, probably more importantly, also something to benchmark against – Drawdown times always were very inconsistent for me in the V60 and with the April brewer I finally get consistent enough results so that playing with the grind settings actually starts to make sense.

Fun and Danger

Of course it is great fun to explore new gear, so much is true for technology as well as coffee equipment, but there obviously is a problem: You can only drink so much coffee in one day. Let's just say that I have probably exceeded my recommended dose for a couple of days in a row now. And my sleeping patterns are already slightly affected, so yeah, that needs to change.