My new toy arrived triple wrapped in bubble wrap, and in a heavy duty envelop via EMS. It only took a few days to arrive, so don't be afraid of buying from Japan, it's all good (kids were excited too, as all the packaging is in Japanese, which they are apparently learning at school), but I digress ...
The adjustment nut has some notches, and I twisted it tight, then back a notch or so, until that the ceramic burrs didn't give me that finger nail on the blackboard feeling when I turned the crank handle. I was aiming for a fine grind, hoping to make my machine choke, not really.
I filled the collection chamber with beans, to see how many would fit, and then I poured them into the top, using my hand as a funnel. There were about 6 beans that didn't fit. Not sure if this is significant, but over time I guess I'll discover (or create) some kind of significance. Maybe they were the lucky beans that were saved from the fate of the ceramic burrs.
I'd heard you need 100-200 turns of the handle to make a double shot. I started cranking, but soon lost count. I cranked, the kids cranked, then I cranked some more, and felt my muscles growing first larger, then tireder (awesome word play, if I may say so myself). I popped outside and grabbed my Bosch cordless drill, removed the handle, tightened the chuck and gently squeezed the trigger. It was delightful that my drill worked, but it is more delightful to cank the handle, I'm fairly certain you want to keep the RPMs nice a low too.
It didn't take too long to crank through a full hopper of beans (just enough for a double shot), maybe less than 5 minutes, not sure really. Next time I grind I'll time it to check.
There seemed to be a bit of static inside the acrylic collector, but it's essential that the collector is acrylic, not glass, because of the potential battering this thing takes, it's likely that you'll slip a little, and glass could very easily get smashed if you have stone bench tops or a loose grip.
As far as the grind goes, it was quite fine and the resulting shots that I poured were smooth in flavor, there was a nice rats tail, with just a few dark speckles around the edge of the crema. I didn't give the shot time to break and pulled out early. I'll let one run on tomorrow to see how much I can squeeze before it turns to dirty water. I made a couple of macs, and I think the slow grind improved the flavor over the old commercial grinder that I normally use. The kids were happy too as for once they were able to hear the tv over the coffee grinder.
Inspired by this, my next plan is to see if I can make up an adaptor for our kenwood chef. If I can make it neat enough, it means one less appliance in the kitchen. Not sure about the right angled drill adaptor, but it would be great to grind straight into the basket.
If you haven't got a manual grinder, this is definitely the one to get. It's awesome.
