# Option-O P80: Endgame or Just Another Great Grinder? **Channel:** Lance Hedrick **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EpiApUkmrE **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/4EpiApUkmrE ## Chapters - 0:00 — Introducing the Option-O P80 - 2:34 — Design, Controls, and Hidden Features - 9:02 — Build Quality and Burr Access - 14:20 — Comparing Burr Sets and Flavor Profiles - 27:58 — Espresso Testing and Final Verdict - 40:24 — Closing Thoughts and Farewell ## Transcript **[0:00] Speaker A:** What's up, everyone? Lance Hedrick here. And today we're finally taking a look at the option O P 80. This is one of their more recent additions to their lineup and is something that a lot of people have been very excited about. Now, Option O is no stranger to the grinder world. One of their more famous grinders is their P100. That came out some years ago, but it has now since been replaced by the 01, which I recently made a review of. You can go check that out on my channel. But now they have this 80 millimeter. Before this, they had in its spot in their roster the P64, which was around a $1,600, $1,700 64 millimeter grinder that was similar in shape and in size and in capabilities. **[0:44] Speaker A:** Over the last few years, however, the 80 millimeter platform has gained a ton of popularity. People really wanting to try out the different options at that size and just the advantages of going slightly larger with with their burr size. So Option O came out with their own 80 millimeter grinder. I had found that the 80 millimeter burr size was about as big as you really needed to get if you wanted to unlock a lot of the potential of flavor that the even bigger burr size give you. Now, of course, there is more potential with flavor with 98, 102, 120 millimeter, but I think that when you hit that 80 millimeter platform, at least with the currently available grinders and burrs on the market, you're hitting very close to peak, if not peak with some of these burr geometries. **[1:28] Speaker A:** When you go bigger, you're just pushing the ceiling or the potential a little bit higher. That doesn't necessarily mean that potential has currently yet been realized. **[1:39] Speaker A:** For me, with customs and shipping and everything, it was over €2,000. So it really depends on where you're at in the world. But at this price point, how is it going to stack up to the competition? And with competition, I mean, obviously the EG one, which is quite a bit more expensive, almost double in price. Then we also have the Zerno Z2, which recently released. And we have the upcoming Moto from Buku, which is under $1,000 and has a lot of promise to it. **[2:08] Speaker A:** If you have a grinder that is making you lovely cups, if you have a grinder that you are comfortable with the price of, if you have a grinder that you've been enjoying, please either don't watch this video, if you suffer from gear acquisition syndrome and upgradeitis, or. Or watch this knowing that you're watching to learn something else about what's on the market and what might be coming out innovation wise in the world today. With that out of the way, let's jump straight in. **[2:34] Speaker A:** First I'm going to talk about the features that it has and their efficacy. Then we're going to talk about the burr sets and we'll brew some coffee with those and we'll talk about some of the flaws. So strap in, let's get right onto it. Simple, no frills grinder. There's nothing crazy going on. There's not vertically mounted burrs with some sort of integrated slow feeder with all these other different features that you might see on grinders. This one's pretty bare bones. You have your grinder, you have two buttons on the side. One is manual, one is an auto. And then you have the RPM knob going from 300 all the way up to 1700 rpm on the left side. In the front we have portafilter forks, we have our catch cup and we have our chute with a little clicker that's built inside. And on top we have the hopper, which also acts as the dialogue. **[3:17] Speaker A:** And of course we have a mark here in order to line up where you're wanting to dial it at. Now, the thread pitch inside of this is 1 millimeter, which right off the bat is a bit disappointing. That's not a ton of resolution. Whenever you're doing espresso, each tick represents about 10 microns, which is bigger than their bigger grinders like the 01 where every tick is 5. **[3:37] Speaker A:** Like I said, there is RPM. This is one of the first features that we can kind of talk about. It starts down at 300 RPM. But what I have seen online and from optiono themselves is that the 300 is not necessarily really recommended for grinding coffee. It's more so for finding burr touch and doing things like that, experimenting and the like. They recommend going 600 and above and in some places I've seen them recommending not doing espresso below 900. It just depends on the time and where it was put and who put it. It is a bit odd to me to offer 300 and to not optimize the grinder for that. We'll do some testing later, but right now I'll tell you. I have had multiple coffees stall even in manual mode. At 300 there is an auto mode. So we'll go ahead and jump over to the other side. **[4:20] Speaker A:** We have two buttons here. We have manual, which literally is manual. So let's put it to where you can hear it. **[4:25] Speaker A:** It's a 500 watt brushless DC motor, so it's very quiet. We're at 1700rpm, very quiet. But this is manual. It'll run until I stop it. Now the top button is the auto function and the purge. So you can manually purge it by double clicking the top one. **[4:42] Speaker A:** Boom. It ramps up to really high RPM in order to purge out whatever's in there. Then you can stop it or you can do auto mode which is just clicking the top button and it'll go until it no longer senses beans inside of it and then it auto purges at the end. If you auto mode and then slow feed, it messes with the sensing and it can think that it's done early and it cannot be giving it adequate torque. There are a lot of people questioning if it actually is stalling based off of the permissions set. When you're going in manual mode, this is something I can say does definitely happen at 300 and 600. Go up to 900 and above and that's stalling largely goes away. But of course you go down to a finer grind setting, you might have it come back. That said, I've not experienced stalling at all, even at espresso when I'm at 1100 and above. **[5:28] Speaker A:** So that is a good thing. But it is something to note that you will have occasional stalling if you're doing, you know, below 900 RPM and use ultralight roasts, especially if you dump it all at once. If you slow feed and you're using manual mode, it becomes almost a non issue completely. So it's hard to really knock it on that because of course I've sung the praise of the EG1 for years, but because of the coffee that it gives me and I can work around the stalling pretty easily. Especially when you slow feed. When you slow feed the EG one, there's no stalling. When you slow feed this, you're not really going to run into that stalling either. I have found that with my higher clarity burrs, I do tend to like lower RPMs. So it's a little bit of a bummer that the low RPM doesn't really work as well. **[6:07] Speaker A:** But again, if I slow feed, especially when I do filter coffee, I am fine with that going up to higher rpm. You can do that for your traditional style espressos. There have been people who have noted that you produce more fines at higher amounts, but that's impossible to say. Generally because not all burrs act the same way. Sometimes you get less fines at higher RPM depending on the burr geometry. But one thing that is almost for certain with most every bur except for one that I've tested is you will get coarser grounds across the board. **[6:35] Speaker A:** The more coarse you go at a setting burr gap. So what I mean by that is if you dial in a coffee at 600 rpm and it's dialed in perfect, you get a 30 second shot or whatever it is that you're brewing, then you crank it up to 1700, it's going to come out way faster because the peak part has shifted due to the way it's coming out. The burr gap hasn't changed. But the way that the grounds react going through that with a faster throughput absolutely does change. There are some interesting easter eggs on here. **[7:09] Speaker A:** So one of them is if you hold down the auto button for 10 seconds, you hear this, it is kind of calibrating the torque inside. So this is something that can help you if you run into that stalling issue when you're using the auto mode. So you want to use it near espresso grind setting and want to make sure that the burrs are completely clean and that calibration can help you with that potential stall issue. This has fixed that stalling issue for a lot of people whenever they're using the auto mode. Another easter egg deals with the built in ionizer. 2 type of electrodes inside of the chute here. And you can turn on more ozone or less. And the way that you do that is with another little easter egg in here that is not widely talked about. Stock is 50% of its capability. **[7:51] Speaker A:** You can make it go to 100 or to zero. **[7:53] Speaker A:** The issue is you don't really know which one you' at unless you unplug and replug because you go back to stock, you turn on manual mode and then you hit auto five times, quickly turns off, then turns back on. And we have effectively changed up the amount of ozone that's coming out of this. So it's essentially generating more to lessen the static even more. The issue with that is you are going to be able to smell that ozone as it's coming out at 100%. And even at 50% I can smell it. Some people say that they don't taste it in the coffee, but it is such a big smell for me, I that it kind of ruins it. I'd rather deal with the static. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as the smell. Now this was a long video. We're here at the end and I mean, it was a marathon. **[8:35] Speaker A:** Hopefully you use the time cues down below as you go through this. But anyway, I just want to say if you're enjoying this video, the work I put in these, the fact that I've had this for months testing, and before I say a word about it, please hit the like and subscribe. It helps the channel a whole lot. And if you're curious and want a chance at winning this, actually go check out my Patreon where we do competitions. People win machines. We recently I gave away three LITs through competitions. This is going to go up there. So someone's going to win a free P80. I paid for it. You don't have to. **[9:02] Speaker A:** Now, as far as noise goes, the grinder is relatively silent. I mean, not relatively. It's very silent. I mean, that's 300, 600, 9001-100130-01500, 1700. Very silent when it makes noise is when you put in different burrs. There are burrs that get really loud compared to other burrs. And this is a known thing. You've switched out burrs before and notice a louder noise to it. That's gonna happen. Now, we could do a decibel test, but I've never really been a big fan of those. If you don't have a very specific setup, I think they're a little misleading because 55 decibels here may not be actually 55 decibels and it depends on the distance, proximity and the thing you're using. So I'm not dealing with that. But anyway, I've been a little critical in the past on the obsession with tight tolerances in order to achieve alignment, which some of you may say, well, how else do you achieve alignment? **[9:55] Speaker A:** There are other ways of achieving alignment, like the way that you approach building the system in general. Intentionally putting slop in some of the threads in order to allow for self aligning, different things like that. **[10:05] Speaker A:** We won't get into the merits of it now because I'm sure there'll be disagreements. Within the engineering community there are different disagreements, but for your satisfaction, there is a master's class at Stanford that talks about achieving alignment based off of the building of the system and not relying on tight tolerances alone. That all being said, this does have extremely tight tolerances. One of my big critiques of the P100 was how tight the tolerances were in the burr carrier. I had to use a blow dryer or a heat gun. Either one worked to have the different expansion rates of aluminum and steel in order to pop the burr out because how tight the tolerance was when I wanted to change burrs. And this is not much different which we're going to show you here in a second. This first part in order to open it I'm not a big fan of but once you get inside I think it's a much more clever construction. **[10:47] Speaker A:** This is one of the worst things ever that I'm about to show you and it's also on the 01. I've already complained about it but the way you take it off is this and you just feel like you're scratching everything. It's not a good time doing that. At least it's not annoying. Like the 01 where you have to like do a weird twist thing. This one you lift straight up and I'm just worried over time I'm going to scratch the tarnation out of this. Then we just have two screws right here on the side. This pushes the whole assembly down really nicely, really snugly and allows for decent alignment. As far as repeatability of getting that down. Now one thing I wish every grinder manufacturer would do is use recommend using torque wrenches like this. I love this wera. This is a go to of mine and I wish they would tell you how many newton meters for every screw. **[11:32] Speaker A:** I've just kind of done two newton meters on these because I'm not quite sure and it was looser than 2 Newton meters when I got it so I didn't want to over tighten it but I wanted to be pretty snug and something that's repeatable. Now we can just pull up the assembly before we look inside. I don't have the original Bursin because I was going to do filter first and then we're going to do espresso. The burrs that come with the Mizen which we'll talk about in a second or that come with optional are the Mizens. But anyway we have the red speed brew burrs inside right now but this is what it looks like. **[12:00] Speaker A:** So I put quite a bit of coffee in. It's relatively low. Not relatively. It's very low retention inside which can be had because the purge function is really effective. There's not many spaces here for coffee to be stuck. The wipers are really effective. Overall it's a very effective design. Of course it's 2026, we should have low retention but it is a positive. There are still grinders that suffer from that which is a bit ridiculous. That said it is necessary to use the purge function, which you'll see here in a bit. But anyway, this is what we have going for us to get the burrs out. Because of such tight tolerances and the fact that they're magnetic, you have to use magnets. For your knowledge, I bought 30 kilogram fishing magnets. That's what some other people with them had recommended. Bought those from Amazon and they worked well. **[12:43] Speaker A:** But the issue is, you know, it's metal on metal, so you put a felt tip on the bottom, it can kind of lessen the efficacy, but it does, it does still help. I don't have those taken out, but thankfully I scrambled and found other magnets. I have the ones that come with the Zerno. I wish they gave you magnets since they're necessary to take the burrs out. It's kind of crazy. But anyway, I've got these two, I'm gonna put them on one side and then actually this, this that came with the flare actually has a decently strong magnet. So I'm gonna go three here and we're gonna just kind of try to wobble it out. **[13:17] Speaker A:** Come on. Almost there. There we go. We got the other burr out. Okay, there's a little bit of residual coffee, but again, that's impressively low amount. **[13:25] Speaker A:** Not worried about that. Alright. Now what you'll see inside is they have their PCs system, their pre crushing system. I'm still not very convinced on the full efficacy of it, at least what the claims are. And this is something I've discussed with Sam, but it does help with the feed rate and if it is doing a little bit of crushing, that's great. **[13:44] Speaker A:** Just not convinced it's doing too, too much, but better than nothing. When we're on more of a horizontal style grinder. This is what the inside looks like. It's a very tight chamber and it's built really well. They don't have a safety on there, which I'm fine with because I like to mess with things as they're open. **[14:01] Speaker A:** But you know, a lot of times grinders will have a little button whenever a screw or something goes in. Or you have a little peg on the bottom of your burr carry and it goes in and clicks a button to allow it to run. This though, I mean, I can touch it, cut my finger off. Yikes. And actually, while this is off, we'll go ahead and do a quick burr chat. **[14:20] Speaker A:** So the 80 millimeter burr platform, it's becoming increasingly popular due to the options on the market. Right. Which is very understandable when it first started, you really were kind of limited to. Oh, I say limited. This is a lot. But you had the ditting burrs, which they had for like didding lab sweet and the different ones like the machined, the Tanzania, all these other ones. Obviously the lab sweet's got a reputation for giving you good mouthfeel with a high sweetness. There's some pseudoscience from Mahkunig themselves that was talking about the cast. The way the surface area was, it allowed for more spherical, rounded, balled up grounds that allowed for more sweetness. There was no proof behind those claims, but that's what people were trying to. **[14:58] Speaker A:** They were giving reasons for why the coffee was tasting sweeter. They do taste pretty sweet. But the issue is with dating lab sweets, when you get the original versions, they were in a cast process and you can have warped burrs. My friend Jonathan Gagne, Dr. Gagne, got a pair of ones that were so badly warped when he measured them that he wasn't able to grind nearly fine enough for espresso, even past Birch Herb. And so that's one of the issues you have with some of these cast systems. And then of course you had the weber burst. Weber's EG1 came out I think in 2016, 10 years ago. And they had their base burrs, which I don't think they sell anymore. They have their core burrs and the DB2, otherwise known as ultra or ultra low fines burrs. Now the base burrs are actually some of the most interesting burrs to me. **[15:40] Speaker A:** I've talked about them in previous videos. It's not necessarily that I love them, it doesn't really give me the profile I personally look for in coffee. But if you are a traditional espresso enthusiast, I think those are very difficult to beat. In fact, I can't name any off the top of my head that are flat and that beat the bass burrs. I'm not referring to flat with a cone like SDRM or something like that. I'm saying just straight up flat burrs. When it comes to traditional espresso, I don't think that they're really beat. And in fact I've never had a cone burr that beats them as far as really thick texture that's velvety smooth without the roughness I usually get on a lot of these cone burrs, like with the 63 Maser coneys, people praise that for traditional espresso always get a rough texture in addition to a thick texture. **[16:21] Speaker A:** It is very rough. To me. **[16:23] Speaker A:** Cones drastically change their particle size distributions from really slow rpm to faster rpm. With flat burs there are random differences, but you rarely get drastic differences. You normally get a shift of the particle peak and maybe a slight shift in the production of fines and boulders at their relative sizes. But with the base burs similar to cones, you get a massively, drastically different particle size distribution where you'll get a much bigger fraction of fines and a much wider burner peak particle when you go with faster RPMs and it tightens up a bit as you go slower. Now, it's not getting down to the unimodality of something like ULF burrs, but it does give you something really unique. **[17:02] Speaker A:** Then their core burrs, I've very notoriously said would be my like burr on an island. I would probably change that today because at this point I do mostly drink a very specific style of brew, but the Korbers I still think are absolutely fantastic for a wide variety of brews. It is one of those where if I understand someone wanting to buy an expensive grinder, even if they're doing medium dark roast because it does something special to the coffee, that I don't think you're really getting with to the extent that it does with lesser quality grinders. Don't sit there thinking you're missing out because you have a wonderful DF64 DFA3 or something like that. It's not like some world you're missing out on. You're going to experience a world of grandeur if you were to shell out the thousands of dollars for it. But I do think the core burrs are very great. **[17:50] Speaker A:** I think they perform similarly to a well aligned EK 43 with their base cast burrs in it, their standard filter cast burrs, but maybe a bit more refined and elegant. I think they give good sweetness, they give good body, they give decent clarity, they give good acidity, articulation. But you can do dark roasts in there and medium roast and get lovely body. You can get something similar to the ditty lab sweets. As far as the sweetness presentation, I think overall the core burrs are a really fun burr set for people who like more on the traditional style, but they can dabble with light roast, medium roast, etc. Now the DB2 or Ultras, the ULFs, I love those burrs. I would say nowadays there's a larger and a growing divide of people who find them to be too hollow, people who and despise them, or people who love them. **[18:38] Speaker A:** I still absolutely love them. **[18:39] Speaker A:** I think they, they can be seen as a bit hollow and a reason for that is to this day, I've never measured a burr set that produces less fines than the DB2. I find that it gives me a nice tea like brew that I enjoy, but you can also push it to get a bit more sweetness. That said, it does have less sweetness compared to comparatively to other burrs. You have to really know what you're getting into with it gives you very specific style of brew and they're not as, I guess you could say playful as some other more forgiving burr sets out there. The fraction of fines at 10 is over 300 microns when dialing into 900 or so. A thousand or so microns. I've never seen anything with that high of a micron count on fines. The higher the number, the less the fines, essentially. **[19:20] Speaker A:** Now, when you throw in the brew burrs, for instance, which we're about to get to the Redspeed brubers, into the EG one, it goes down to like 260 microns. Then when you throw the brubers into the P80, it goes down even further. **[19:34] Speaker A:** Now we have one of the more famous burrs that have come out in recent years, which is the 80 millimeter brew burrs by SSP. Now I have here the Redspeed Blind burrs. I also have the Silver Knight with screw holes in it and I also have the Silver Knight blind burrs. They're housed in my EG1, which is at my new studio right now. But anyway, so this is what the Silver Knight looks like. This has screw holes. If you do have a grinder with screw holes, you can still get these and use them. Now these are fantastic burrs as well. They are not to the same level of ULF as far as intense clarity. In my opinion, they do produce a decent amount more fines, but I do think they give you a bit more of a juicy profile. **[20:14] Speaker A:** I think they give you really nice clarity while still maintaining a really juicy presentation, while giving you a really clear snapshot of what that coffee should look like. So I would say the clarity, if we were to put Ulf's clarity at like a 10, then I would put this clarity at like an 8, which is still above all the other burrs out there, essentially, but it's not quite to where the ULF is. That said, this does give you a bit more of a juicy kind of profile to it and gives you a bit more flexibility. I don't think these are nearly as dangerous as the ULF as far as dialing something in and getting a bad cup. So these I think are a bit more forgiving as well. **[20:49] Speaker A:** That said, they are still for a very specific style of brewer, someone that is filter focused or does really, really modern styles of espresso where you're not passing one or two bar of pressure. This is not something that you are like, oh, juicy. I want that. If you're not drinking really lightly roasted coffees and you don't like intense presentations of coffees with lower body presentation. As far as when I say body, I'm not talking about tactile as a whole, I'm talking about literal thickness, then these may not be for you, but I do think they're fantastic. Now there's also debate on Silver Knight versus Red speed. I've always been a proponent of Silver Knight. I think there's less coating induced effects on the grounds themselves. I think it's a bit more clear. I think they do a better job overall in my opinion, but I think it is a very small difference. **[21:36] Speaker A:** I do think some people perceive it maybe differently and that's completely fine. But I don't think if you picked up red speed that you should have FOMO on silver and eye or vice versa. Hansung believes Red speed's better for espresso forward and Silver Night's better for filter forward. I would say that's pretty reasonable with the way that I kind of perceive them. I don't know if I can say they have fully replaced my ultras, my ULFs, but I would say right now I am slightly more fascinated with these. **[22:01] Speaker A:** Is it the shiny Toy syndrome or whatever it is, the shiny New Object syndrome, potentially, but it could be that they just fully replace it. My good friend and one of the best engineers in my opinion in coffee, Nick from Fellow by the way, I think he's one of the greatest engineers in coffee. Not because he's brilliant, which he is, but because he also drinks actually really good coffee and has a great palate as a Q grader. He did that just for his own edification and most every other engineer I've met, they don't taste as well. And so he's someone else that absolutely adores these burrs, which is fun to be seeing other people enjoying it. And then of course a friend of mine goes by pouringhub on Instagram and impossiblecow on Reddit, has posted at length about these and his preference rating for them. **[22:43] Speaker A:** And he enjoys the silver night, he enjoys the red speed, and he's someone that does not really like the ulf. So there you go. There are people with different preferences across the board, so it really depends on what you're wanting in your cup and how you perceive flavor in general. Because we all have different palates. If you do end up using brew burrs, one thing that I have noticed and many others have noticed is ground sometimes gets stuck in these cuts. It's really weird. I don't know if it's the sharpness of it or something about the angle, but you'll get. Oh, actually we have one right here. This is perfect. **[23:11] Speaker A:** I just pulled this out and there is a big old particle stuck right there which can give you false chirps and that can be kind of confusing. So please be aware if you're using brew burrs, you can get this sometimes. And it's kind of weird. I just took it out. Now there is one other bur set that should that warrants talking and that's the LU Burs and it's a burr set I think people sleep on. I think it gives you a nice syrupy body. I think it gives you a nice, a nice bit of clarity. I think gives you really, really nice articulated acidity presentation that you don't really get as much of on burr sets. I think when you're going clarity focus, you think in terms of brewburs, you think in terms of ulf, but I think that LU is largely slept on burr set. **[23:46] Speaker A:** I won't go too much into it because I still don't rock it as my daily. I still choose Brewburs and ULF over it. But I do know people that have the LU as their favorite and it's something that should be considered if you are someone that likes to collect them all. Collect all the burrs like Pokemon. I put it ULF and Brewburs. It's hard for me to choose. But then I put Luke right after that personally before going into stuff like lab suites and the core burrs, et cetera, et cetera. Then of course we have the Meissen burs. Interestingly these are similar to like in the Vario VS6 their I think it's their iridescent flat bur set. These actually give you a pretty unimodal peak particle overall. Like actually shockingly unimodal. And so with old school knowledge on particle size distribution, when we were weighing too much of the flavor profile to the charts, to the graphs, this would on paper give you the most clarity because it has an insanely unimodal peak relative to burrs at this size and low fines production and a pretty tight boulder distribution. **[24:48] Speaker A:** But in reality that's not necessarily the case. And it's because when we look at particle size distributions, it's not taking everything to account. It's not taking the particle shape into account, which is a huge thing. It's not actually taking where those bins are within the unimodal peak. It's not taking into account where the actual amounts of fines are as far as their sizes is in the boulders. And it's not taking into account the heat generation that it goes on and how the bean is undergoing its cutting and crushing during the actual contact with the burr face. And if that sounds a little too over the top for you, just think about the massive change of taste you get when you slow feed at one bean a second versus five beans a second versus a full dump. The interaction between the bean and the burr face and the speed at which it goes through its throughput all will affect greatly the flavor of the coffee. **[25:37] Speaker A:** So with these, I do think you get good brews. I think they are very forgiving. I just don't think they give you as exciting of brews. For me, it doesn't make sense to spend close to $2,000 and get a cut profile that the Mizen gives you. In my opinion. I think that yes, if you're wanting to spend $2000 for the build quality, if you want to spend $2000 for the look or for whatever and you're fine with this, then cool, that makes sense. **[26:00] Speaker A:** Sense. We all spend money differently. But if you're looking for something unique and different, these are not giving you that. In my opinion, when you're doing these in game style grinders, you're not going for a slightly more polished representation of what you're already getting. You want something that is unique and the brew burrs do that, the ULFs do that, even the Bass burrs do that, in my opinion, which sadly again, I don't think they're actually being sold anymore. You'd probably have to buy them used. But then you may ask, well, what about the Korb burrs? The Korbers I think actually give you a much more interesting profile than the Mizens do. I think they do allow you to get a bit more zingy acidity if you want them. I think they're more similar to the Bentwood V63. **[26:37] Speaker A:** The cores are just even more elevated. These, I don't think they do filter as well. I don't think the espresso is as textured and vibrant as they are with the core. So it's a bit more difficult with these burrs. That said, there are people who put the Kor burrs from Weber into this and have a really great time option. O is not building these specifically to handle all the burrs. They're building it for the Mizens. I've seen reports of people having to do specific things in order to get their ultras to fit. It fits on some, maybe doesn't fit on others. Maybe they have to do something kind of special to get the. The ultras to fit. And then also the torque is a bit different. So specifically with my brew Burrs is when I will see more stalling than with the Mizens. The Mizens, I'm not getting as much stalling, and I should have said that earlier in the review when I talked about stalling. **[27:27] Speaker A:** The stalling mostly happens when I'm using ultras in this or when I'm using the brew burrs or something with a different aggressive style cut. **[27:34] Speaker A:** These have really intense pre breakers which allow for less torque to kind of crush through it. These, you're feeding a bigger bean into a different aperture, which causes for more an aggressive feed, which requires more torque, and so you can cause a bit of stalling there. So the. The machine is definitely built around their own burr set, which makes sense. That's what you kind of do when you make your grinder. You build it to your burrs. C' est la vie. **[27:58] Speaker A:** Let's put the Mizens in. We're gonna pull espresso and then we'll throw the brew burrs back in and we'll do quick pour over. Now, earlier in the video, I talked about the thread pitch being 1 millimeter and how that's a bit problematic. And the reason for that is if you are someone that enjoys more traditional stylist espressos, you're gonna have a tiny little range. In fact, I saw one person who had had two P80s return both and got something else because it was too small of a thread pitch. I think they moved to an 01 and are much happier with that. But essentially, for a lot of people, they have four or five ticks to play with, and it's actually quite difficult to get back to where you want to go. Although it is stepless. **[28:36] Speaker A:** Whenever you go from one side to another, there's a little bit of. A little bit of give. So you're not gonna be able to get exactly back to where you want it to be. Now, there are people who have printed vernier scales for like the P100 and for some other things, you could do something like that here. But even still, it can be a Bit difficult getting back exactly to where you were and making small adjustments. I saw one person posting about how, and this is reflective of mine, but just to showcase, someone was posting about how they were on two different ticks or not even two different ticks, but moved it by like half a millimeter or something and they had a 35 second shot, go to a 21 second shot. Obviously with more modern styles it opens up a bit more but that is something to be aware of with such a small kind of dial window. **[29:18] Speaker A:** I think they recommend somewhere between like 0.9 and 1.5 but a lot of people have noticed it's closer to like you know, 0.7 and 1.1 or just. It just depends on where your 0 point is, what Burr set you have. There's a lot of factors that go into this. How fresh your coffee is, dark, light, variety, etc. **[29:41] Speaker A:** Now something I wanted to do right before we do espresso actually is to just show the alignment. So one way to check alignment, this is not perfect, a perfect way, but this is a way we throw it to 300rpm and then we find where chirp is. So it seems just shy of minus 0.1 is where we have our chirp. That's a more intense one, but there's a little one. Okay, now what you do is you're going to shut it off and then you're just going to find where bur lock is. So we do this. You don't want to over tighten it. So just a little throw. Okay. And this is at 0.6, just shy of 0.6. So we have about five ticks. So five times about 50 microns from Burlock to burr chirp. So that's actually not super tight. A lot of grinders now, especially the in game regime kind of hit that 10 micron to 30 micron area. **[30:27] Speaker A:** So this one's a little bit bigger. I will say I did have one before this and it was, I think it was at 80 microns or something. So I actually got it replaced. But that is something to kind of keep in mind that. But even still, to be honest with you, this is solid alignment. Of course you're not getting like linglong precision alignment like on the SG98 or or even on like a kaffitec which mine typically sit around 10 microns but it is decent. **[30:50] Speaker A:** I think the Zerno 64 I had was even less though at like 30 and when I shimmed a bent wood it got down to really small. But anyway, so decent alignment out of the box. I wouldn't necessarily fool with shim aligning it unless you were really anal about using something like these where you're really trying to lessen fines production, yada yada yada. But this is one of many ways to measure. You can also do a dial indicator on the bottom plate. You can do one to see the run out of the middle of the actual rod inside. But then again, none of that really tells you exactly what happens under load. Which again goes back to a previous point about hyper fixating on tolerances when you need to be considering the system. But anyway, let's get to espresso. Alright, now I'm going to pull a shot or grind some coffee. **[31:34] Speaker A:** This is a relatively dark roast, like medium dark from the Saka, the people at Saka. But this I wanted to show you at 300 rpm even with a relatively darker roast at espresso grind size, watch what happens. Actually we'll cold start it. Well no, we'll give it benefit of the doubt. We'll hot start it. **[31:56] Speaker A:** So what you're noticing is it will stall a little bit and then it pulls more current, then it stalls a little bit, then it pulls more current, then it stalls a little bit, then it pulls more current. And that's with a not very dense bean darker roasted. So you can imagine with really light coffees at 300rpm you are going to have stalls. Now again, this won't happen when you go up even with this coffee. Go up to just 600 and it's largely fits. **[32:18] Speaker A:** But with really light coffees it can be a bit more cumbersome and annoying as you hear the sounds. Not very bad. We can actually turn up the rpm. **[32:33] Speaker A:** Not bad. Now notice here at the end though, watch closely. Purge. Not much comes out when you hit it. Another couple grams came out when you hit it. **[32:44] Speaker A:** And it's because of the exit on the inside. Coffee can get kind of stuck there. It's necessary to give a little thwap to it. **[33:04] Speaker A:** All right, so we've got our pot coffee pulled and this is like, like I said, a more medium roast. **[33:11] Speaker A:** You still get really nice acidity on that. It's actually shocking amount of acidity for how developed it is. But you get a nice acidity on it, you get a really good texture. There's a nice graham sweet cracker sweetness to it. **[33:26] Speaker A:** It's not normally my approach to espresso. I normally stay away from medium but because I think these excel at medium, light, medium and they can do okay at dark But I think mostly you want to live in the medium light medium with these burrs. But of course we got to get Ugo's take on it. We don't do many nine bar shots here. I do enjoy the occasional crema bar though. **[33:46] Speaker B:** It's a solid shot for a boomer like you. **[33:50] Speaker A:** Boomerang me, I'm like 20 years younger than a boomer. **[33:57] Speaker A:** So anyway, we're going to switch out, we're going to put in the brewbirds, we're going to do a quick filter and we'll end with our thoughts there. **[34:19] Speaker A:** There are some grounds stuck in there from when I did just those two shots. So these are a little bit more. Bigger ridges, they can catch more of the grounds and you get a little bit more static with the darker coffees. A little bit more grippy, I guess. Let's do a quick alignment check with these because they're obviously not made for these burrs. **[34:36] Speaker A:** So let's find the tick first. The chirp seems about 2.5 and then lock is seems like 1.6. 1.5, 1.6. So a lot less alignment off the bat with these burrs inside. That's not what their QC protocol is. That's based off the Mizen. So now I like doing around eight or so when it comes to brews, maybe eight and a half. So we'll do that for our filter. **[35:07] Speaker A:** Alright. And again for fun, we're going to put it at 300 and we're going to just go ahead, hot start it and then we're just going to put it in. **[35:27] Speaker A:** All right. It was able to get through. I mean, we're at a really coarse grind setting. I did use ultralight coffee from Goo and Co, but this is proper coarse. If you go any finer, it will stall. Stall. For real? For real. **[35:40] Speaker A:** All right, so as this is drawing down, let's just do a final thoughts on the P80. I feel like I sound like I was negative throughout. It's because I want to be critical of of grinders now. I am. I do think there is a place in the market for this. **[35:53] Speaker A:** It is built well, they have great customer service at option O and it does make good coffee. Now, could the alignment and the build in that way be better? Yes. I think that the EG one does beat this head to head in cup quality with the same burr set. I've done many taste testings and I know a lot of other people have done this as well. **[36:12] Speaker A:** Head up, blind tasting, same burrs, same everything. And across the board the EG one does beat it. Is the EG one $2000 better? Depends on your net worth really, because this is and how discerning you are and if the aesthetics or something that mean that much to you, et cetera, et cetera, I think that this is going to be a better buy for a lot of people because for that $2,000 you save, you can buy some really dank delicious coffees. It holds 80 millimeter blind burrs perfectly. **[36:41] Speaker A:** So you can throw in, you know, these brew burrs, have a good time. You can throw in the core burrs, have a great time. I don't necessarily think there's as much of a difference in taste on the EG want in this with the Corbers because I don't think it's relying as much on the need for that perfectly concentric alignment and all of that good stuff. It doesn't stall badly when you get out of that 300 RPM range. I think if you're doing super ultralight coffees and you're using non stock burrs, that's where it can become maybe a bit of an issue. **[37:06] Speaker A:** But that's only with a tiny percentage of you. Cheers. **[37:15] Speaker A:** It's a good cup of coffee. So although I do think the performance of these burrs is Superior in the EG1, I think that this is a much better option than this P64 was at a very similar, if not same price point because they have better shipping rates. Now I never really reviewed the P64 because I genuinely I thought that was a bad deal for the price point and for what you were getting. I didn't think it was worth it. This though I decided to review it. I bought one because I thought this was a more worthy contender for a place on people's bars at home. Now again, I wanted to be critical because when you're spending this much money, you need to understand the shortcomings and what there could be in this price range. I would probably go. If you're going for goopy shots, I'd go for the CoffeeTec with the 71 millimeter rover burrs in there and you'll have a better time dialing in and you'll have better goop shots than with the Mizen burrs in this. **[38:05] Speaker A:** If you're going for slightly more modern going turbos, going with the low contacts, going with the soup style shots, then this can do a fantastic job. And that 1 millimeter pitch doesn't really matter much. If you're doing mostly filter, the pitch really doesn't matter at all. The tightness of the burrs, very annoying. Having to use all these magnets and like wiggling it to get out can be kind of cumbersome. But I get it when it comes to the tolerances, at least you know it's going to fit. The issue is maybe other burrs may not fit, especially in the future as more burrs get created by people like Le Breu and more iterations from ssp which can be really tight, tightly fitting. Now, spoken about previously, I don't really count the stalling as too much of a downfall. Because when you have this wide of a range of RPM and you're getting the torque and the consistency that you need out of a grinder, I think that's something that is, you know, it is what it is. **[38:52] Speaker A:** You just go a little bit higher on the RPM or slow feed. Yes, the particle distribution is more tight on the EG one than this, but this still makes great coffee. I would say even if this were even less aligned than it is, it would still blow out of the water. 64 millimeter variants in my opinion. I like the 64 millimeter multipurpose. The different variants. I enjoy the U.M.V. one, I enjoy the V2, I enjoy the V3 for different reasons. Even at the 80 millimeters or 80 microns misalignment, this is. I think this blows those cups out of the water. Same with the ULF burrs in here. Same with the core burrs in here, versus the HU at the 64 millimeter platform. **[39:26] Speaker A:** So even though everything isn't perfect, I do think it is still a big step above what you have at the lower sizes. Essentially. The Zerno I think is better looking. The Zerno I think has better form factor and all that good things and is better aligned. I would actually prefer to have this with the 80 millimeter platform, although there are quirks about it that I prefer the Zerno with. **[39:51] Speaker A:** At about 1500 for the Zerno and about 18, 1700 for this, I'm choosing the 80 millimeter. At that point it's more about the burr and what's in the cup than everything else around it. But that's me. And a lot of you care more about aesthetics, you care more about build quality or whatever, which I do think goes to Zerno Z1. But when it comes to the cut profile, I'm wanting brew burrs and ULFs over anything the 64 platform can give me. **[40:14] Speaker A:** That said, Zed2 is coming. I have one on order, so we'll see how that goes. At the 80 millimeter platform. That's an exciting addition to the market as well. **[40:24] Speaker A:** Hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully the little burr chat was helpful and maybe settled some FOMO that people have on the different Bruber variants between the coatings. But in the end it doesn't really matter. All that really matters is that regardless of the grinder you have, regardless of the burrs house inside, regardless of your burr lock to chirp measurement, regardless of vertical or horizontally mounted burrs, regardless of little retention, a lot of retention, or a little bit of ozone, a lot of ozone, no ozone. Regardless of any of that. **[40:52] Speaker A:** The only thing that really matters is that I hope you brew something tasty today and cheers.