I have the glass Hario carafe with the slotted plastic lid that snaps into the top and that does all the heat retention I need. If I need more volume or long time retention, I have a Zojirushi airpot for that. Next carafe I’ll get is the Hario olive wood.
If you’re talking traditional espresso flavor, encore will perfectly suit your needs. The type of coffe profile I’m trying to extract would be considered more of a Euro / Nordic / modern espresso that isn’t chocolately or nutty but rather fruity, floral, jammy, etc. You can still get those with encore, it’s just somewhat tougher and the flavors are a bit more masked. You can also diy upgrade the encore burr if you’re mechanically inclined which is what I did, and that produces some really good cups for the price. Cheap hand grinder → encore is a huge jump in quality, whereas encore → flat isn’t as big unless you have a refined palette for specialty coffee.
What if you drink your coffee from a hexagonal pitcher inside a pyramid? That might fix the coffee temperature and fix your spiritual essence at the same time. If you shove a crystal up your ass at the same time you could really be on to something.
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Thing about double walled is that the walls usually extremely thin and fragile.
ran all the old stale beans I had on hand (~2lbs) through the new machine this morning then made two cups.
so far:
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wow it’s easy to clean. remove the burr, a little brushing, and then just blow and it looks great
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very, very little retention
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I can’t figure out how to get it into “override” mode, and even attempting to calibrate/align without getting into this mode will be a huge PITA. Instructions say just plug it in then hold down the start button and “—” should appear on the display but that doesn’t happen. tried a bunch of variations but can’t figure it out. I’m guessing the instructions are actually for the older model and something in the firmware has changed and they didn’t update the manual.
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alignment seems pretty dang good, my eye test says at any setting that the output looks extremely consistent, and in the two cups I made I see a very, very small number of high and drys.
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BUT, I hear a chirping noise that sounds an awful lot like the burrs touching, even though I’m like at grind setting 5M (basically the exact middle of the adjustment range). But I only hear it when there are beans in the machine. If I spin it up with nothing in there it sounds perfectly normal. FWIW I did run the machine through the settings as described in the manual to check the factory calibration (eg start with both levers at the bottom and move up), and I did not hear the chirping until I got to like 1C or 1D, so that seems pretty much in-line with what I should expect. The output seems fine, I don’t know if this is just normal noise or what.
the cups themselves were… OK. I need to dial it in more. BUT I can tell one thing VERY clearly, the taste is much more… focused. Less… noisy. I may make one more cup today, though that would make 4 cups total (I made one with my old grinder before I started on this) which is 2x what I normally drink in a day. But it’s for science.
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ok, the chirping disappeared, maybe a bean was just wedged in funny or something, but it sounds totally normal through two cups this morning.
Still can’t get it into override mode, though. And while the alignment seems great, the small number of fines I’m still seeing are going to drive me nuts as long as I know I can tune it better, so I’ve got to get that figured out.
Dunno about the override. Maybe shoot them an email. Their cs is top notch. I’m on the road atm and can’t do much right now.
yeah I already shot that off, we’ll see what they say (not expecting a reply until tomorrow due to the holiday). Been googling for a while and I’m kinda surprised there’s no mention of this anywhere on any forums or whatever.
also asked them to confirm that the hopper is the same as the original vario models, which I’m 96% sure is the case, but just want to be sure before I order a single-dose hopper
You’re gonna have some fines obv. Maybe the difference is visually different from the breville, but the difference between an encore and vario is really difficult to see with the naked eye imo unless you’re partitioning by sifting into different sizes. Same would be true for a hyper aligned ek43. The difference would be like instead of 15% below 300 microns it’s only 9% or whatever. Flavor profile and drawdown times should be a better indicator. I have to grind almost to a powder and try really hard to clog a v60 now and the tabbed filters seem to drain as fast as untabbed.
does using a v60 with paper filter make better coffee than a stainless steel mesh filter?
Yes, I haven’t really seen anyone reputable claim they can make good coffee with the mesh filter. The mesh is almost certainly going to make a dirtier cup by letting stuff through that the paper catches. That may be desirable if your goal is something like a V60 cup that’s more similar to a French press than a Chemex, dunno.
I looked at this a bit more and didn’t realize the Vario W/W+ doesn’t have a quick way to enter manual mode for grinding which surprised me. Mine is just a plain Jane Vario and I always use manual mode to grind which sounds exactly like the override feature. In fact, I think I see what’s going on here: the regular Vario’s manual button is the same as the tare button on the W, and they wanted to use the same panel / button layout to save costs. Therefore, it’s a button combo hack to boot into a similar feature.
I noticed that the manuals for these were uploaded quite a long time ago, apparently 2019 based on the WP directories they’re sitting in, so I have to imagine something changed in the interim. Here’s a comment I saw on a Youtube video:
If anyone need to calibrate, you have to unplug the grinder. Then while it is rebooting, press the start/stop and 1 and 2 buttons at the same time. Then you can calibrate with a 200g weight like the previous model.
This is a procedure for load cell calibration which isn’t even mentioned in the new manual. So I’m guessing they made changes since these manuals were written and it’s gonna be something like start + stop + 2 + 3 to get override mode. Surely there must be some way to do that because not having that feature is a deal breaker.
Assuming there’s a way to get override mode, I guess the next question is whether you’re happy having the W+ version with weight-based grinding being the default mode. Again, I never realized there wasn’t a quick way to manually grind on the W/W+, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I could at least see weight-based grinding being useful, whereas I’ve never used the time-based grinding on mine, always manual. On the other hand, I feel like there should be a way to get manual grinding without rebooting. I’m not sure if you feel strongly about that either way, but if so, you should be able to swap out for a base Vario+ and steel burrs for minimal or perhaps no cost to you since Prima has the No Hassle Returns policy.
I got the email back from Baratza:
Thanks for reaching out. The Vario W+ firmware as it currently stands does not allow for a run time beyond 3 seconds if coffee is not being ground into the bin. Override mode is not yet in place in this first round of Vario W+s. However, we are working on a new display that will allow for the grinder to run continuously for recalibrating.
Our rough estimate is that the updated display will be available by July of 2022. If you are in the US or Canada, we’d be happy to send you one of these updated displays or get your grinder replaced under warranty once the new display is available. For a replacement display, we would just need a good shipping address. For a replacement grinder, we would need both a copy of your purchase receipt and a good shipping address. Please let us know if you would like either a replacement grinder or display when the display becomes available and we can set that up for you.
the non-W vario+ plus the steel burrs is basically the same cost as the W+ (and I’d get the portafilter holder for “free”).
Wow that is bizarre.
I thought they were going to be the same price and that the steel burrs being included pushed the W+ over the top for brew, but maybe I am just not remembering that correctly? The Vario+ appears to come with the metal portafilter holder ($45) and remember that you’d also get the ceramic burrs ($40). The W+ has steel burrs ($60) and load cell ($20) instead of those parts and somehow costs $70 more? I’d be tempted to swap if it’s not a major pain in the ass and doesn’t cost that much shipping it back to them or w/e.
I’ve tried twice now to hyperalign my forte and I just can’t seem to get it right. The first time I gave up and took out the shims at the end.
Without shims I get good contact with 1/3, weak contact with 1/3, and no contact with the other third.
This second attempt took me Like an hour of tinkering and basically I was able to get it so that 2/3 of the burr makes good contact but the other 1/3 doesn’t touch. This required shims at the two screws in the sections that weren’t making good contact. The screw by the 1/3 that doesn’t touch? It has like 3 or 4 layers of tin foil compared to just 1 layer at the other shim point.
My first cup with the shims in place was less bitter and more complex than what I’ve been getting out of this bag though.
I may just try to find someone local to come and hyper align this shit for me.
yeah I’m thinking about what to do now. Prima’s return policy is really great but I would be out return shipping, but that’s not going to be enough to sway my decision either way.
Prima is currently out of stock for both the steel burrs and the single dose hopper, if they had those in right now I’d probably snap buy. In any case, I can probably survive on the ceramic burrs so I’ll probably just buy the + and return the W+ but I also like to overanalyze everything so I’ll sleep on it for a week.
You could order the parts direct from Baratza if you don’t want to wait for Prima restock. They charge for shipping which would be another ~$10 to you.