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June 12, 2015

I was having some problems with my coffee setup that were proving very difficult to overcome. I had discovered my favourite kind of coffee was actually ristretto (after getting some excellent examples in cafes), but found that removing milk from my coffee highlighted significant flaws somewhere in my coffee chain. I made every adjustment to technique that I possibly could, but the coffee was still not up to scratch. Fingers eventually pointed to my flat burr commercial grinder, which was designed for high volume use in a cafe. As such it retained easily 1/2 a shots worth of grinds in the chamber, and since I only ground a shot or two at a time, this led to a crazy routine of trying to extract stale grinds before each shot, and then trying to make sure I got all the grinds out afterwards as well. Finally, this also meant accurate dosing was very difficult, even with weighing the dose (with a 1gm scale), leading to lots of waste. I set out to find a commercial quality grinder that would happily grind a single shot, made dosing easy, and had low grind retention. I found the HG one and thought it looked ideal, but it was sold out, which gave me some extra time to do more research. It all pointed to the HG one being a perfect solution, especially as I loved the idea of grinding by hand, and I loved the mechanical simplicity. I was patient and ordered the moment they came into stock. A bit of practice and I am now making far and away the best coffee I have ever made – this thing is simply awesome. Not only does it perform as it says on the tin, but the aesthetics and tactility are beyond what I was expecting and hoping for. By comparison the old grinder was bulky, noisy, messy, difficult to use, and ugly. The HG one is not only an awesome grinder, but is beautiful on the bench, simple to use , and there is virtually no mess at all. It has turned my morning coffee routine from frustration into an absolute joy again. I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

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