[Closed] Iberital grinder

No experience of the Sage but the MC2 is really harshly noisy and retains a lot of grinds. Whether there's better for the money, I don't know.

I've got one can't comment on the sage as I've never used one, but the iberital is a great grinder, loads of adjustment, indesctructable, does what it does very well, I've had mine 10 years and it gets used every day it's never missed a beat. Only two things which may or may not matter to you, it's noisy, like if you lived in a flat it's make your neighbours hate you noisy. It's also messy, it drops ground coffee and statically charged ground coffee at that, so it gets all over the grinder and on the worktop. I wipe up every time I use it. It's also pretty big which has been a pain in some kitchens we've lived in.

What makes a grinder great btw? I have a £10 Lidl one. It works. Not being an ass, genuinely interested.

Not a niche dating site then?

A £10 Lidl one is probably a chopper rather than a burr grinder so won't produce a uniform grind

I have an iberital. It grinds coffee brilliantly and is a good price. As said it’s bulletproof and infinitely adjustable. It is noisy, a lot noisier than a sage. I wouldn’t get one if you have sleeping children. I keep it on a tray with my coffee machine and it keeps it tidier.

Comes up a lot on here 😂

Basically the main function of a coffee grinder is to turn beans in to uniformly sized pieces of your desired coarseness.

Burr grinders mill the beans and so do a good job of that. Blade ‘grinders’ (they’re not) chop them into randomly sized chunks and there’s no control over the coarseness.

The latter may be alright for some styles of coffee but personally I wouldn’t even use one to grind my fair trade garam masala 😇

We have 2 Iberital MC2 grinders. Mrs BigJohn drinks Happy Donkey Costa Rica and I drink their Brazilian blend.
The loud noise is useful as it wakes her up when I'm making the morning coffees.
The downsides are that it's a proper faff if you want to grind a whole batch (say a week's worth if you're going away), it's a proper faff if you want to switch between fine and coarse grind and if you want to try a sample of new beans then you need to turn the whole thing upside down to effectively empty the hopper (all over the floor).
But those limitations don't apply to us so we love them. Although yes, there is a bit of cleaning up to do

The downsides are that it’s a proper faff if you want to grind a whole batch (say a week’s worth if you’re going away)

You're doing it wrong

You are if you're grinding a whole week's worth in one go. At least according to a right proper coffee snob ex-work mate of mine who espoused a theory that (in order) the priority for good coffee is:

1/ Good beans from a good roaster. No artisan burr mill will make shit coffee taste good.

2/ Correct temperature water. Too hot or cold and the extraction (by whatever method, but for daily long coffee he liked Aeropress FWIW) won't be correct. Especially too hot.

3/ Freshly ground. Ideally, right before using. He reckoned a day tops, before the grounds would start to disflavour.

4/ Grind method. Bottom of his list.

Note - he didn't say that a burr grinder wasn't better than a blade or whatever, he said it was. But that before you notice that difference, there's a host of other things to get right or wrong that are far easier and less costly that you should be addressing.

He also didn't really have a strong theory on extraction method, because that is taste as much as anything. If you don't like espresso, no sense having the world's best beans, grind, etc., it's still espresso. That would have been his choice, and was what he had at home but for long office coffee he preferred aeropress as opposed to cafetiere (less chance of someone buggering up his coffee machine basically)

At work we had a Krups mill, good beans, an aeropress, and he used to grind a day's worth in the morning and keep in a foil bag with the air squeezed out as much as possible.

Thoughts?

Serious question on the above. If you blind tested and changed any one of those parameters, do you think he'd actually notice?

Freshly ground. Ideally, right before using. He reckoned a day tops, before the grounds would start to disflavour.

A day? Minutes, more like.

OK, noticeably / detrimentally disflavour to where they no longer taste 'good' (that of course is subjective)

@MM

absolutely. I reckon most if not all regular coffee drinkers could tell the difference between well roasted beans and beans that have been burnt. I reckon you'd be surprised at the taste difference between extraction temps (and time, I should have included that)

Try making a coffee at 75C with 10s between water on and the squeeze through the aeropress and 100C where it's left for 3 mins. OK, extremes but once you know there is a difference and it's a sliding difference - now it's in the eye of the beholder and their ability to taste it, how subtle a difference they can spot, but spot it they can.

3 and 4 - harder, but of course, to someone who has a hobby that is coffee, not that difficult.

Could you blindfolded tell the difference between eg Deore and XT just by the way the rear derailleur feels (same shifter, cable, etc.) - I reckon I could.

If you don’t like espresso, no sense having the world’s best beans, grind, etc., it’s still espresso.

One of the questions on the support script for the Flair espresso maker I have is "Hoe do you normally drink your coffee? Do you drink espresso?" as the number of people who buy this maker but don't actually realise it makes a short strong coffee seems to be amazing!

I’d notice. Absolutely.
A click on the grinder might change the extraction enough to make it taste distinctly over or under extracted. Would I notice if you put the teabag in before the milk? Nope.
Could I tell the difference between red and white wine blindfolded? No chance.

Same as I would notice 1psi missing from a road tyre but would equally arrive at the bottom of a descent not noticing the fork was locked out or the rear tyre almost flat. It’s just what you’re used to.

Comes up a lot on here 😂

Basically the main function of a coffee grinder is to turn beans in to uniformly sized pieces of your desired coarseness.

Burr grinders mill the beans and so do a good job of that. Blade ‘grinders’ (they’re not) chop them into randomly sized chunks and there’s no control over the coarseness.

The latter may be alright for some styles of coffee but personally I wouldn’t even use one to grind my fair trade garam masala 😇

Right, variation of coarseness, got it. Thanks for the explanation. Tbf, I'm far from a coffee snob. I buy the big bags of Lavazza beans and the Lidl grinder grinds them really fine, which seems ok to me. Regarding Aeropress; I have one gathering dust. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong but I've broken at least two mugs with the confounded thing. The effort to push the bloody thing down in the morning is just not worth it.

the Lidl grinder grinds them really fine,

The effort to push the bloody thing down in the morning is just not worth it.

I'm only a very occasional Aeropress user, but that's ground too fine. Shouldn't be breaking mugs (or in my case, pushing so hard the filter bursts and the kitchen is covered in grounds). Should be a similar grind to what you'd use in a drip filter, not a coarse as a French press.

In my defence, When we're at home we always grind straight into the (warm) filter basket immediately before making the coffee. However when we camp we don't have a hook-up so we need pre-ground. But when we stay in a self catering place I usually put the whole kit and kaboodle in the van and the first job there is to install our coffee station in the kitchen.

I got one of these in January, very very happy with it but nothing to compare it to, been using pre-ground up until then.

https://www.coffeedesk.com/product/2294/Wilfa-Svart-Wscg-2-Automatic-Grinder

Using it for pour-over with a Hario Switch dripper also from coffee desk, who are brilliant.

Not for espresso though unfortunately