Bean Grinders

[nrdlnd]

Hi,
This is an old thread and I still want to give my contribution and what I use.
Last autumn I decided to start grinding roasted beans myself as I was fed up
with the already grinded coffee. It didn't taste good any more and I had got
the opportunity to taste speciality coffee freshly grinded. By then I was mostly
in for filter coffee and I looked for a grinder for that and I found the Wilfa
Uniform; a single dose grinder but especially made for filter coffee in the
"Nordic" style. The nations drinking most coffee is Finland, Sweden and Norway
and mainly "filter" coffee. The Wilfa has 58 mm flat burrs and is developed
by Tim Wendelboe. I don't think this grinder is sold in NZ or Au. It works very well and
I'm very satisfied with it for coarser filter coffee. It works also well for fine grinds but
I'ts a little more difficult to fine tune at the finer grades. It has very little retention
maybe a little more than the Niche Zero but not much at least with filter grades.
I can't really say how the retention is at espresso grades as I don't have much
experience. I bought the silver stainless variant that doesn't come with a
scale as the black variant. It just has a lid on top. I have another scale.

My interest for coffee did grow. I have had an espresso machine before and
now I wanted one again. I bought a machine but I did also want a grinder that
worked well for espresso and was possible to fine tune and I didn't want to
switch between the settings for espresso or filter. I found out about the Niche Zero
also an single dose grinder with 63 mm conical burrs. It works very well and
even better since I have got the NFC disc that limits "popcorning" and seems
to make the grind even more uniform.

Now I stood there with two grinders! As much as I like the NZ I also like the Wilfa.
The Wilfa is half the cost of the NZ but still a very good grinder. The handling of it
is better than the NZ. You just push a button and it stops when the grinding is
finished. I have a picture of my setup. If someone wonders I've put black
pigmented oil/wax on the wooden parts of the NZ.

NZ+Wilfa.JPG (114.37 KiB) Viewed 5297 times

[fnq]

Hi

I had ever seen or heard of the Wilfa, thanks for sharing.

[sareea]

Nice !
Would the wilfa be suitable for fine grind ?

[nrdlnd]

Thanks for comments!

I'm very satisfied with the Wilfa but I haven't used it for espresso as I bought it for making filter coffee. It has 40 steps but it's possible to set it in between. I've tried a fine grind at about 2 and it came out as a very even "Turkish" a very fine "powder". Espresso should be around 5 I think. It was maybe "overkill" to buy the NZ for espresso when I already had the Wilfa but the NZ got such rave reviews. Now I've tuned the NZ for espresso roasted with the Kaffelogic Nano 7 and my focus is to learn to use the roaster. Later on I will test the Wilfa for espresso and I can report back here. The Wilfa is a very good alternative for coarser grinds and may also work for finer grinds. The main thing with these two grinders (the NZ and the Uniform) is that they are single dose and they are not bulky. The single dose workflow works really well for me. There are reviews on the net of both grinders.

[nrdlnd]

James Hoffman has a longish review of these two grinders. https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesHoffmann/ ... ear_later/

The stainless steel (cheaper!) version of the Wilfa is recommended (the one I have). The flat burrs on the Wilfa seems to get the best tasting coffee both for filter and espresso but the handling of the Niche Zero is better for espresso. Motta makes a funnel for the portafilter that could make it easier to transfer the coffee from the Wilfa. Someone asked me before if the Wilfa could work for espresso and apparently it does and could work well. But you will need something like a funnel when you pour the grind into the filter basket if you don't already have the NZ cup. The portafilter does not fit into the Wilfa grinder so the picture below is not correct it's just a picture of a funnel.

coffee-grinder-funnel.jpg (58.96 KiB) Viewed 5070 times