Bigw had a special on these for $25 delivered. How could I resist, a conical burr grinder with a bonus stick blender attachment capable of crushing ice. Extract your coffee and then use the stick blender to make an ice coffee! I am primarily buying it as an aeropress grinder, but I thought it would be interesting to put it through its paces on a Rancilio S24, which is usually paired with a la san marco sm95. The beans I used were Columbian excelso from mycuppa, roasted 5/3.
My cameras refuse to perform, so I will note some observations, and try and get some pictures later. First, grind speed is pretty quick from fineness 4 onwards, perhaps half the speed as the lsm 95. Any finer and it takes a long long time to grind. The burrs are 4-5 cm diameter, the top burr is attached firmly to the plastic. The bottom burr is attached to an axle which in turn connects to the motor of the blender. There is a fair amount of wobble of the bottom burr on its axle.
On setting 2 out of the box it chokes my machine.
On setting 3 the grind looks quite fine, not too unlike a fineness I would use out of my grinder. There seems to be a fair amount of fines. This is somewhat confirmed when tamping (I tamp firmly), the puck compresses a lot, and on polishing the puck surface looks completely smooth! Out of the machine the shot flows like a ristretto, but there is none of the thick syrupy texture. I would say that there are faint bitter notes.
Setting 5, again puck compresses by a fair amount when tamping. Shot flows normally but blonds early. A fair amount of crema in the cup, the aroma is pretty good, but bitter notes are much more pronounced.
On setting 7 grinds look fairly coarse, producing a gusher on the machine.
