Brief Review of Coffee equipment and Evaluation of the use of Mehdi EKK43T Bean Mill for Coffee making and Communication

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I believe that friends who have been in the beginning for a period of time have heard the old birds say that they must not be reluctant to buy a good bean grinder, which contributes more to the product than the coffee machine. My view is, do not compare who contributed more, are the key factors of a good cup of coffee, today mainly talk about the EK bean grinder.

My bean grinder is a double-headed version of Mahdi EK43. The official model is EKK43T, or double-headed EK, with a standard EK43 cutter head on one side and a T cutter head that supports Turkish grinding (that is, it can be ground as fine as flour). At present, the mainstream bean grinder is divided into three kinds of knife head: cone flat ghost, that is, cone knife, flat knife and ghost tooth, of course, there is also a relatively alternative combination of cone knife and flat knife, these basic concepts are clearly written on this site, and you can flip it over. I'm not going to repeat it here. Cone knife is often used in hand grinding and low-end electric grinding, of course, there are top electric grinding cone knives, such as Mazzar's Robur, cone knife grinding personally think that there is a relatively unified style, I can drink blind test. Ghost teeth are mainly crushed grinding, and the coffee powder is very angular and beautiful, which can restrain the high extraction rate to a certain extent, so it is suitable for deep-roasted beans (look at Japanese small Fuji, big Fuji, Starbucks grinding masters and other ghost teeth grinding, combined with the baking degree of their commonly used coffee beans). Flat knife grinding is mainly based on cutting, showing a clear flavor, less modification, and it is easier to form a high extraction rate. EK is such a flat knife grinder with large knife head.

I. the advantages of EK

The advantages of EK are obvious:

First, grinding is extremely fast. EK43 uses the 98mm parallel cutter head, the rotational speed reaches 1480rpm, and the linear speed at the outermost end of the cutter head reaches about 7 meters per second, which makes it impossible to grind 10-20 grams of beans for 2 seconds. Basically, the powder is put in and out. Because of the fast grinding, the knife head is too late to heat, which is very beneficial to retain the flavor of coffee.

Second, it can be ground continuously. EK was originally designed for grinding grain in industry, but in 2013, it was discovered by Matt Perger and brought to the coffee contest, and it gradually became the standard in boutique cafes. Now, when you go to the Mahdi website, you can still buy EK43 with a special knife head for grinding grains and spices. Its huge motor and excellent heat dissipation enable this machine to work continuously for a long time, when you actually operate EK for the first time. May be surprised by its momentum, this machine will start with a gust of wind blowing in your face, you can see that it was not originally designed to grind a few grams of coffee beans.

Third, the grinding directivity is good. Note that I do not use the term uniform grinding here. In fact, EK43 should not be the most uniform grinding machine, and the grinding effect of ordinary cutterhead and T cutter head is also different. In fact, the grinding of EK shows a typical bimodal distribution, that is, at the same scale, some coarse powder will be concentrated and some fine powder will be distributed at the same time, and the biggest influence on the extraction is not the towering coarse powder, but the fine powder. In my understanding, due to the large knife head and high speed of EK, it cuts a coffee bean significantly more times than other grinding machines, in the fine powder of that peak range, grinding is very uniform, so EK grinding directivity is very good, can support high extraction rate, reflected in the product is low fault tolerance, less modification, can faithfully reflect the original taste of coffee, good craftsmanship is good, poor craftsmanship can not drink at all. So I once told my family that despite the fact that EK is expensive, I don't want it for nothing.

Above is the grinding particle distribution of several high-end bean grinders analyzed by Matt Perger. It can be seen that the coffee powder ground by EK accounts for 19% of the volume ratio of fine powder, which is the most among several bean grinders compared, but the distribution of these fine powders is very concentrated, and it is these uniform and large surface area fine powders that contribute accurate flavor performance to EK. )

The fourth is to adjust the degree of grinding without poles. I didn't think this was an advantage worth mentioning in EK, because among the bean grinders I used, only the small Fuji R220 was not polished without polish. It was not until later that I realized the importance of infinitely adjusting the grinding degree to espresso coffee grinding (it was good for opponents to make single items and could compromise). The difficulty of stepless adjustment lies in how to lock the distance between cutterheads while acting on the cutter head at high speed, so as to ensure that there is no running scale in the grinding process. EK is realized by powerful springs and enough tight adjusting devices. Similarly, in the middle and low-end electric mills I used, the MMG was stepless, which made me take a lot of detours when I was learning espresso grinding (a term meaning to get the best espresso taste by adjusting grinding, packing, and extraction). EKK43T is a double-ended bean grinder, and on the left is an ordinary EK cutter head, which is mainly used to produce coarse powder and can also be used to grind fine powder unexpectedly, but the range of adjustment is very narrow; on the right is T cutter head, which can produce finer powder and has a wide range of adjustment. In the current barista competition, more and more people use EK, and both ordinary cutters and T cutters are used in practice, mainly depending on what beans and baristas want to show.

Fifth, it has a large quantity. With the development of boutique coffee in recent years, more and more comrades use EK, so if you buy an EK, you can easily find people to discuss it, and the circle basically understands the machine. Didn't I say that you should be cautious about buying original machines, so it's important to have a large quantity.

Second, the shortcomings of EK

Although EK is expensive, it also has many disadvantages.

First, it is large. In today's big cities, the EK is too big and heavy, and there is no room for it. In addition, the height of the EK is also very high, and some women who are not tall are inconvenient to use, so some people unload the bean barn and use it.

Second, it is noisy. EK is a monster-class machine, the use of noise is relatively loud, especially EK also has a common problem, that is, the outer cutterhead pin will cause resonance, sometimes the sound will be particularly loud when the boot idling, beans will be fine after entering the cutterhead.

Third, the center of gravity is high. Because EK is designed for industrial grinding, the powder outlet leaves a high distance in the end, and the heaviest place of this mill is the motor, and the high foot support is not metal (it may also be metal, but the magnet cannot be absorbed), so it gives a top-heavy feeling, and every time the machine is turned on, it feels like the machine will jump, which makes people very impractical.

Fourth, the workmanship is ordinary. I have not carefully examined the EK machine, but it is said that in the 1970s and 1980s, there were many plastic parts on the machine that still wore out for a long time. EK paint is not very strong, if you don't pay attention to it, there will be scratches, which is very distressing. Unlike the single-ended EK, the EKK43 switch is a plastic knob that can be turned left and right. It doesn't feel very strong. I always feel that it will break sooner or later.

Fifth, it needs to be adjusted. The EK mill is a parallel cutterhead with large diameter and high rotational speed. The parallelism and coaxiality of the cutter head affect the grinding quality, so the master will make fine grinding disc calibration before the competition. Matt Perger has a detailed video tutorial, which can be seen on the tubing. Calibration requires the use of calipers and other tools. I have taken apart one end and tried to calibrate it myself. It is almost fatal to disassemble and assemble it, so if you are not very experienced in daily use, you should be careful not to move the grinding plate easily. because the grinding plate was calibrated before it left the factory, but we just wanted to be more accurate. It is said that Matt Perger will produce a special EK calibration tool, so you can buy it and then grind it yourself.

Sixth, there is fine static electricity. Many bean grinders have static electricity, EK speed is fast, it is normal to have static electricity when grinding fine powder. EK powder outlet itself has an antistatic rod, but grinding Italian can still see some ball phenomenon, but through proper treatment does not affect the extraction, at most a little uncomfortable, so this is a disadvantage, but I put it at the end.

Summary and other words you want to say

As in the previous article, in this section, I will first summarize my views on EKK43T and how I use it, and then I would like to talk about the coffee bean grinder. My view is mainly aimed at home, because friends who want to open a coffee shop should know enough about the equipment, so I don't have to play tricks here.

To sum up, the EKK43T is a great device, but its good is based on how to use it. First of all, the EK grinding beans must first turn up and then lower the beans, otherwise because its motor uses a two-stage inductor, the torque at low speed is different from that at high speed. If you stop the beans and let the knife head contact with the coffee beans and then turn on electricity, it may get stuck, which is different from Xiao Fuji and Mazzar. The second is to use EK extraction to be more careful, because the fault tolerance rate is low, the requirements of beans are also relatively high, if you are afraid of instability, the safer way is Italian coffee as far as possible with auxiliary tools for cloth powder pressing powder, atmospheric pressure extraction of single coffee as far as possible using immersion extraction, such as Philadelphia pressure, smart cup, the use of normal filter cup hands do not drink well do not be discouraged, excluding beans, EK is to practice technology. In addition, any cutter head has an optimal grinding interval. As mentioned just now, EK will cause more uniform fine powder, so it can be predicted that fine grinding is better at it, so in cooking, if you can use a finer grinding degree without excessive extraction, you will give better play to the ability of EK. For example, when I use it, in the case of ensuring that the zero point is not toothed, the hand punch coarse powder end often uses the scale of 5.5 to 6, while the fine powder T cutter head is often ground with less powder, and the scale is between 2 and 3 (EK scale is about small, ordinary knife head Italian grinding is usually between 1 and 2, T cutter head Italian grinding is usually between 1 and 4, 1 is the minimum scale).

In addition, with regard to the household coffee grinder, I think the most important thing is to support Single Dose, that is, you can put in only one portion of weighed coffee beans at a time for grinding. For coffee to be good, gouache ratio is very important, which requires us to know exactly how many grams of coffee powder we use to extract and how many grams of coffee liquid. If you often go to coffee shops or coffee equipment stores, you will find that a bean grinder has an electronically controlled straight out function (forget the powder storage bin, don't buy it now), that is, you can set the grinding time to control the amount of grinding powder. There is no problem for the commercial use of this kind of bean grinder, which can significantly improve the efficiency and stability of the product in the store, but it is not suitable for household use. The main reason is that the bean grinder is ground quantitatively through timing. Whether the amount of beans grinded each time is accurate or not and the grinding quality has a lot to do with the amount of beans put into the warehouse. Of course, you can also invest less beans. Put some heavy objects (such as whole bags of coffee beans) on the beans to increase the pressure in the warehouse, but the amount of household cups or two cups, or dozens of grams of beans, can still cause waste. Another reason is that even today's bean grinders have baffles for changing beans (you can seal the downward passage of the warehouse, grind the remaining beans, and then replace them with new ones). It is also troublesome to change beans from the warehouse, pour them out and put them back into the bag, change a bag of beans, wash and grind, then drink a cup or two, and collect the beans in the warehouse before collecting the machine (the warehouse is an open environment. It is not good for the preservation of beans. Unlike the stable use of beans in stores, changing beans often is one of the joys, and there will be a lot of trouble if you can't change beans. And the operation of Single Dose is: for example, this time I want to use 18.5g coffee powder, then I will call 18.5g coffee beans, afraid that the bean grinder has residual powder willing to weigh more, here is just a reference, and then the powder will be ground directly into the powder bowl, the rest is cloth powder, pressing powder and extraction, if you want to change a bean to drink, then call a different bean on the line, obviously more suitable for household use, drinking a single product is also the same.

In addition, with regard to household bean grinders, unlike commercial ones, it is not necessary to consider the efficiency of products, so we can find various ways to optimize the quality of existing products, such as sieving powder, adjusting cooking, adjusting the use of water, freezing coffee beans, and so on. But this is what will be mentioned in the following article.

The above content is a personal opinion, if there is something inappropriate, please correct the axe, and I am willing to study and make progress with you. Follow up Xiaowen, please stay tuned.

P.S. If you say that EK43 is a monster, the owner of the Spanish artifact Compak R120 should not like it. After all, the parallel cutter head of 120mm, the height of 74cm, and the weight of nearly 43 kilograms are the real monsters.