In terms of breakdown and rebuild, here’s what reddit coffee says about the BunnZilla:
How difficult is it to make a Bunnzilla?
Anyone ever done this? My father-in-law has a used Bunn that he’s willing to give to me. I know you can buy the Ditting burrs and conversion ring, but they are $400 and I don’t want to invest that kind of cash unless I’m confident I’ll be able to install everything correctly.
It only takes a few minutes to remove the floating burr assembly. It’d be almost impossible to mess up the task of putting everything back together. All you’re adding is the spacer.
Bunn brewers and grinders take KISS to a whole new level. Which is probably why they’re so goddamn reliable
To do it in it’s most basic way: incredibly easy. To mod it a bit more fully: still really easy.
This sounds significantly easier than swapping the burr on the Baratza fwiw. Also, I’ve seen used BunnZillas go for $300-$400 on home-barista. Might be something to consider if you’re willing to spend $250 on the better Baratza. The Ditting burrs alone cost almost twice as much. Look at these fuckin’ things.
What are these? You didn’t mention them earlier. Also i do appreciate the posts and explanations, glad you understand that my level of commitment may not be that high. I see from this thread and the chairs one that you enjoy that kind of tinkering quite a bit and I respect that, it’s just not for me.
The Virtuoso+ (old model Preciso) is the next step up from the Encore. It has the slightly sharper / more aggressive burr and a grind timer. Also slightly better build quality but meh they are both tanks. So in terms of list prices:
Encore ($145) + M2 burr ($35) = $180
Virtuoso+ = $269
I’d look for the refurbs on their site (link below) and save a bit. Don’t get the Sette it’s not for drip coffee. Should also mention that Baratza is notorious for having amazing customer service.
Encore refurb $99
Virtuoso refurb $149
Virtuoso+ refurb $195
I think the differences between Virtuoso (discontinued) / Virtuoso+ are minor. I’d go for the Virtuoso refurb at that price point if you don’t want to mod. Doubt it’s going to be a huge improvement over what you currently have, especially since you aren’t into super light roasts iirc. Tough to say. The grind really starts to matter a lot when you’re trying to pick out the subtle notes in delicate coffees.
For anyone that wants to geek out on this (@pvn?) I found a spreadsheet with particle size distribution comparing known high-quality electrics (EK 43 and Vario) with some of the premium hand grinders.
Well things escalated quickly and I ended up having to buy a new machine - my old one was clogging or something, leading to it generating a ton of steam and brewing less coffee than I expected extremely slowly. After going through some reviews I went with this one since it seemed to be the mostly highly rated: https://www.oxo.com/8-cup-coffee-maker.html. I love how small and sleek it is in my kitchen compared to my old machine, which was unwieldy to open and filly.
Interestingly though I think I proved lawnmowerman’s point for him with my first pot, which was not to my wife’s liking and only moderately to mine. The recommended ratio is a little higher coffee:water than I’m used to (usually do 6oz of water to two tablespoons but I think this says to do 5oz per two tablespoons, will have to check again, is that crazy?) and I don’t think I ground it fine enough. Also the coffee I’m currently using is a little flat and it may benefit from something with a darker roast or stronger profile.
Yeah I was just looking into that and it’s not clear to me what the correct conversion is. Come to think of it my measurement might be in teaspoons, not table, since some cursory searching says 1 teaspoon ~4.2 grams, so normally I would do 6 oz. (or 180 ml of water) to 8 grams of coffee for a ratio of >20:1, which also doesn’t seem right…feels like I’m adding something wrong somewhere.
5oz of water (150ml) to 8 grams coffee would still be a ratio of 18.75, right? Seems higher than I’d expect
Nevermind I’ve been doing about 180ml water to 10gram coffee for ratio of 18:1, so I can probably add more coffee when brewing.
Not a bad idea to get a gram scale for your kitchen. Most people recommend the Jennings CJ4000 ($29) which has 0.5 gram accuracy. It’s built well and has features you’d want for coffee (like not shutting itself off if you get distracted for 30 seconds).
18:1 is still in drinking range but depends on grind obv. I pretty much always go for 15:1 on hand pours but haven’t tinkered with a machine in a while.
So this morning I used the recommended ratio (1 scoop per 5oz. cup which translates to 18.75:1 although perhaps my scoops were on the generous side) and made sure I ground my coffee fine and…wow. Night and day from yesterday’s botched brew and heaps better than my previous drip machine, which was consistently decent but tended to make most coffees taste the same. Instead it’s clear that I’m drinking a medium roast coffee, albeit one that I don’t think is particularly good. The machine is also designed to make single cups so I might mess around with some different ratios when I get some time.
Would you put one through a drip machine, even a good one? I use water from our tap which goes through a filtration and softening system so it should be equivalent to bottled water, I think - maybe a little less calcium and magnesium content. I am also using the filters that came with the machine until they run out, which ones should I get? Previously I was not using filters as the machine had one built in.
Good news everyone. I tried ‘good’ coffee that i didn’t dislike yesterday.
I really like the coffee culture but i drink mostly cold brews cause i don’t like hot drinks and everytime i tried a quality single origin whatever it was wasted on me. Had some Guatemalan single origin in an iced americano (which i guess is among the worst ways to enjoy good coffee) that actually tasted fruity without being weirdly sour. Progress!
Yeah try one of the cheaper geshas like $30/lb or so. Might even be worth having them grind it for drip if you use it quickly. Water sounds fine. For basket filters I dunno if there’s an upgrade over Melitta but there are plenty of cheap awful ones so avoid those. Get the white / bleached.
This was super interesting to me, even if I don’t actually have any experience tasting stuff like that. James Hoffmann did a huge coffee blind tasting live (he sent out 15000+ kits i think)
I skipped through to where he started describing them but stopped before the reveal. Descriptions start around 49:45 if anyone wants to try. Here’s what I guessed based on the descriptions:
A - Kenyan AA
B - Central or South America washed
C - Gesha (any country) or Ethiopia washed
D - Ethiopia natural
E - Sumatra
I was most confident about A and was wrong obviously. His description characterizes my pick almost invariably, but the actual origin has a very diverse range of coffees. He throws a curveball on E which is rare to find at that quality.
