Zerno just created this 64mm burr comparison guide and having tried most of these options, I couldn’t recommend it more to a newbie making the decision on a SSP burr upgrade!
Wish this existed when I was looking at burrs 2/3 years ago. While these reference blind burrs, the comments are synchronous across blind and screwed burrs.
by L-Industrie
11 Comments
This whole burr thing has got to be a marketing scheme and no one can convince me otherwise. Astrology for coffee grinders. Low fines with large grind size is one thing, flavor profiles based on groove geometry for espresso settings? Complete bullshit.
This why my butler made me buy 17 grinding machines. I have to pay for an extra servant called a “grinder” to keep track of everything. The grinder will choose which one to use depending on the bean origin and the roast level. At least that is what my butler tells me. I have never met this person because they are not allowed out of the kitchen, and I don’t know where that is.
Would have been super useful before I bought my Zerno 🤣🤣🤣
Seeing it all compiled in one place like this made me go from pretty bought-in to the idea of burrs mattering, to pretty much assuming that the differences are mostly marketing. I mean, the burrs that are for brew only still have espresso information, the second least uniform burr is literally called “High Uniformity”, the descriptions for each of them can be summarized as “has great X but maintains good Y!” It all just seems like they want to say “this one is really good!” for all of them, and can’t ever acknowledge any downsides, so the descriptions become meaningless.
I mean, is the HU or Mazzer 233 going to taste the same as a conical burr? Is the unimodal going to be bad for espresso? Is the multipurpose? How can the LSv3 produce body if you like filter *and* espresso, but sweetness and clarity but *not* body if you only like espresso? None of this makes any sense.
I’ve been drinking espresso with SSP Unimodal “Brewing” burrs for a few years, I call them my clarity monsters.. :O
What about grinding coffee? I do not grind body usually…
Which is the stock burr?
There’s this great app that will help you find the perfect grind settings for your beans and machine. It’s called Grindr. Highly recommend.
Someone should tell them not to just used the “Z” as a logo. Russians have ruined that as a logo for any corporation.
I also think this is a bit too much. I mean getting nerdy is always cool but grinders technically work kinda similarly. For sure there are flat burr grinders, cone grinders and there is a lot of stuff to consider. The grinder is probably still the most important tool, but the physics are the same. The beans get crushed and “cut” into smaller pieces. Differences between cone and flat burr grinders don’t matter here so I won’t go into depth but beans are brittle so it’s pretty much impossible to slice the beans in specifically shaped pieces.
The different burr sets might cause differently shaped grounds so one grinder might produce more round particles while those of others are maybe more flat but our influence here is rather small. The real key aspect is the particle distribution and the surface area of the grounds. That different burrs have such a big influence on the taste is kinda unbelievable, especially since the coffee is not sliced into desired pieces. If we could influence how the coffee bean particles are shaped we could maybe influence the surface area and how the particles behave when water is poured over them, but otherwise this seems like marketing not more. On the other hand it’s safe to say that different grinders and burrs produce different particle distributions but if the values are roughly the same it doesn’t really matter how they are cut.
Which one is most similar to the p80 burrs