the picture on that box is definitely shopped since it doesn’t have the flap of excess material
Has anyone tried these? My local coffee shop stocks them so I was considering giving them a shot.
https://www.amazon.com/Alliance-Brew-Gear-Style-Filter/dp/B09G3JKNW3
Not familiar with those but they sound interesting.
Have been enjoying the La Colombe Nizza beans as espresso and visited the La Colombe roastery/bar in the Frogtown neighborhood of Los Angeles. Great beans and a cool spot, will definitely return. Also, was heartened to find that the espresso I had there wasn’t light years ahead of what we’re making at home, we’re definitely doing well.
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Do you have any observations on how these ultra lights grind? I’m still unsure why this most recent gesha I had grinded out perfectly with no fines and drained wicked fast.
There’s a guy with a theory about bean density that I think is sort of bunk (density.coffee or something), but his general point of using a graduated cylinder to measure density is something I’ve seen before. The idea is that roasting removes mass, so measuring density indicates roast level. Of course, that doesn’t account for different starting densities. For example, that Mexico gesha was very light and presumably dense, but this Ethiopia from B&W is more of an early medium, yet we know Ethis are usually dense. It’s producing tons of fines, and I’m not sure how much of that is related to roast level.
those in particular? I haven’t opened either of them yet, but in general I see wild variations from bag to bag. I usually start a new bag around 9K on the Vario and adjust as needed (though as I mentioned I am finding that adjusting the water ratio seems to give better control than adjusting the grind setting).
in general, my pours are pretty dang consistent within a bag but from bag to bag I’ve seen a typical first brew (15 grams, 16:1, 9K, with a 3x bloom (this isn’t part of the time, but I usually let it bloom for a minute minimum), 6x 1st pour, 7x 2nd pour) take anywhere from 2.5 minutes to 5 minutes.
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Still living out of boxes and shit for about another month if all goes well. But I broke down and pulled my Ode out of a box and slapped the new v2 burrs on her.
I did a stupid thing and started using it instead of the commandante on the same day I started using distilled water + 3rd wave packets again. One of those things has made an enormous difference in flavor.
I’ve been using the April brewer, with April beans, and the bean specific recipes and the results have been really great since those changes. Haven’t had anything wildly fruity yet but lots of complex and well balanced cups.
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Amazing how he is wrong about everything.
@Lawnmower_Man I just found out about this bad boy and am tempted to pick one up Orphan Espresso Apex Manual Grinder
Are you still enjoying your ghost burr experience?
Yes, but I think I need new burrs. The profile is great, just making more powder than expected now. Apex is a bitch to operate, see that video I posted.
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Thanks I’ll take a look
To expand on this, the ghost tooth profile seems even flatter to me than flat burrs, if that makes sense? The analogy I like is using an equalizer on audio to pull down loud ranges of the bandwidth while boosting others that are too soft. Ghost tooth seems to do even more of that. Very balanced profile—in fact, maybe too balanced for some coffees. I like having the option to try different grinders for one coffee.
The Jericho I bought is pretty old, so I was dice rolling the burrs still being good. After cleaning it thoroughly, it seems like the burrs are too dull and I noticed a few chips in several teeth. The grind at filter range appears to be a narrow band of spherical particles, but I’m also getting powder. The cups aren’t bad though, just too many fines that are noticeable but have less of an impact than you might think. I suspect the powder is mostly due to the condition of the burrs but not 100% certain.
My plan was to contact Fuji for a replacement set, but so far they haven’t responded which isn’t great news. However, there are a few other ways to get them that I haven’t tried yet. My plan was obv (1) buy a cheap J500 then (2) get new Fuji burrs for a sub $500 ghost tooth workhorse. The other option is buy a used Fuji R440 in good condition on Yahoo Auctions JP / Buyee. Only catch is those run on 100v, so you’d probably need to run a transformer. The Taiwan version is 110v and could plug straight in, but I haven’t been able to source those used.
*This is getting deep into the weeds but the Toshiba motor Fuji uses can operate at 50 or 60 hz, apparently because Tokyo power is different from the rest of Japan. At 50 hz, the RPMs turn down from about 1750 to 1350 which may be desirable. I’ll also point out that the more common R220 has a cheaper build and much weaker motor than the 440, which is a true shop grinder.
cool stuff
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Hmm I was looking at the R220. Cheaper builds when comparing to a professional level build maybe isn’t the step down it sounds like. I need to do some more research either way.
Aside from R-440 being entirely cast metal that weighs 12.5 kg, the big downgrade is really the motor. The 440 is a 1/2 horsepower motor = 360W output which you aren’t going to see in a home grinder. The R-220 uses a 130W motor, same as the Vario/Forte. Does it make a difference? I dunno. The burrs are also slightly smaller and appear to be machines, whereas mine are definitely cast. There are people who report getting amazing cups from the R-220, but it seems to have some idiosyncrasies that are sort of a mystery. For instance, check this out (this poster is very reputable btw):
I use this as my cupping grinder, where it does a great job. I also use for brewing, where it has been wildly inconsistent. After some experimenting and comparative cupping, I think I’ve found the reason.
The grinder has a shutter that seals off the burrs (it is part of the grinder, not the hopper) When I cup, I use 8 gram doses. These feed entirely into the burrs and allows the shutter to be closed. When I brew, I often use doses larger than 10 grams, and this is too large to close the shutter. Turns out, that popcorning on the Fuji ghost burr grinder sharply reduces extraction efficiency.
So either feed in the doses in 10 grams lots and grind with the shutter sealed, or fill the hopper enough to prevent popcorning. Doing this gets stellar cup quality, otherwise not so much.
He’s talking about the shutter that closes off the base of the hopper. I can fit a bit more in my J-500 but haven’t really tested this thing he’s talking about. Of course, you could always improvise a single dose hopper or whatever. The way I see it, these Fuji grinders have massive potential for brew that’s still relatively untapped due to them being difficult to acquire and not much information existing, especially not in English.
Also, the videos that Hoffman and Lance put out don’t seem to map onto what the people who have owned them for a long time on forums are saying. Lance claimed the RPM are too high at ~3850 and that this causes too many fines, but the way he measured the RPM was idiotic: laser on the motor shaft with no load at all, not even the outer burr. That makes no sense because these burrs are heavy and have a substantial diameter.
Where do you plan to source one from though? The price that some people said they paid for a 220 seems stupidly high, like close to $900 with shipping. Sakura quotes a much lower price than that, albeit for a 100v model that you’d need a transformer for:
https://www.coffeesakura.co.jp/eng/fujiroyalcoffeemill.html
The other supplier I’m familiar with is Fengjen in Taiwan. They have all of the Fuji stuff, and maybe this is where the higher prices are coming from, but the great thing about these is that they are 110v and wouldn’t need any kind of power solution. A Taiwanese R-440 is probably my holy grail grinder right now because of that. Here’s the R-220 on their site but good luck with auto-translate.
http://www.fengjen.com.tw/product/detail/79?t=3
At some point I might just have to hire @Ikioi to come in and figure this out for us because the information is seriously limited, and Fuji isn’t responded to my English language emails. Also check this blog out below that shows a ridiculously small amount of fines for an R-220 ghost tooth grind which is not what Lance reported. Like I said, lots of conflicting info and mystery surrounding these grinders.
You can also look at used on Yahoo Japan auctions via Buyee. Even with shipping and the Buyee fees, I think the prices are quite attractive if you can spot one in good condition.
Looks like at the bottom of the thread the OP found a solid workflow.
I hadn’t done a ton of looking at sourcing but it seemed there were several eBay listings at not outrageous prices.
Do your research obviously. Coffee Sakura’s price looks cheaper than anything on ebay assuming their prices are still accurate. Site says ¥55,000 with ¥8,950 shipping to USA, so that’s about $450. I remember reading that there’s something different about the yellow model but can’t remember what. Burrs maybe? It’s tough to get accurate information on these.
If you’re looking for an upgrade, I’d expect more of a sidegrade to what you already have. I’m having a cup off the J-500 right now and it’s quite good, just sits a bit different than the same coffee in Vario. It’s about as flat and balanced as I could imagine a cup being, but I wouldn’t say that’s always a good thing. It has a tendency to be too tame where you’d prefer some of the key notes to pop more, so my current thinking is that some coffees will profile better on ghost tooth and others on flat.
The Apex would be interesting if you’re willing to bolt it down and go through the hassle of hand grinding. I’ve read most of that thread over at HB and it just seems like a gigantic pain in the ass, but many people there swear it’s in the same league as the 807 or EK43, and some prefer it. I haven’t seen a side by side comparison of it with the Fujis though.
Touching back on this point about motor RPM, I see that the brain trust thinks the Apex works best at around 400 RPM. That has led to people assuming they might get less powder by powering down electric grinders, especially the ghost tooth models but there’s a trend of people doing this in general. I’m not sure it makes a ton of sense though because you’re also losing torque that way by supplying less power, and it’s not clear to me that torque isn’t an important part of the equation (EK43 spins @ 1750 RPM with insanely high torque from a 1.75 HP (1,300 watt) motor).
Interesting thread here comparing the Apex to a hyperaligned Vario:
There’s another concept in here worth noting which is that grinders can perform quite differently depending on grind setting. His Vario appears to do best around 7L (2Q touch), but notice also that he’s dosing 12g. You can (and I do) make a strong argument that if you’re absolutely swinging for the fences, the correct approach to Yahtzee brewing is to find this sweet spot on your grinder and leave it there. The downside is that this could dictate your dose to a large degree, but then you have some workarounds in the form of different brewers, papers, ratios, pouring techniques, etc.
@blackize Check out post #6 in that thread.
I’m definitely on this team but having a hard time understanding why. In theory, it seems like if you are able to successfully align the burrs, the setting shouldn’t matter. You should still have the same distribution of particle sizes, all just shifted roughly uniformly in the “coarser” or “finer” direction.
I can see that different beans might shatter differently at different grinder settings, though, if you’re grinding very fine maybe the shatters are all roughly uniform but as you get coarser there could potentially be a broader distribution, but if this were the case to such a degree that it dominated then we should see a pattern indicating that every bean/roast has a unique sweet spot, shoudln’t we?