1. I find they often leave ground coffee up in the works of the grinder, waiting to go stale and be included in your next grind. When I take it apart to clean (or even just give it a good thump) I find a worrying amount of grinds drops out.

2. Given I’m tending to do single cups at a time, and only two or three a day, I don’t want my beans sitting in a hopper going stale. I keep them in air-tight containers and measure out the dose as needed. Some grinders rely on the weight of the beans in the hopper pushing down to produce a better grind.

I’ve ended up just using a Hario Skerton hand grinder.

Thanks.

E.

Besides the talk of manufacturing, I am still curious to see what Baratza has to say about these findings. Will the Maestro/Maestro + make better grinders for drip filter than the Virtuoso despite their less burrs? Does the Virtuoso only excel in the espresso category and lesser in the coarser grinds? I’d have to ask the sales to see how they respond.

I never got to try out the Maestro or Virtuoso, unfortunately, but I am currently experimenting with a couple of conical hand grinders for the v60. It may be that I just have less experience with them, but I feel the results so far are inferior to my Rocky (Flat burrs) in the same range. I’ve gotten some pretty sour and muddy extractions so far with the skerton and Peugeot I have, but both have a fair amount of burr wobble. The differences have been really interesting, but I still have lots of experimentation to do and more grinders to test. However, I’m starting to think the Rocky is better for mid-range grinding than I ever realized before.

I used to have a KitchenAid ProLine (a cheaper model broke, and they upgraded me at no cost), which was a fine grinder, but wasn’t performing to my liking.

So I bought a Virtuoso, since I work at Intelli, have been using them in store at Intelli, and got a discount on what I thought was a fantastic grinder. But after I brought it home, I’ve been having a pretty hard time getting a nice setting for my V60 dripper. Anything much coarser than what I’m doing now, and the water flows right through the coffee without taking enough time to extract.

Either way, I appreciate your post and the scientific tools you have to confirm my tastebuds’ suspicions.

And then I saw this. So I did some test grinds with the two side by side, and it looked like there were significantly more fines in the Virtuoso than the Hario, but also a more uniform grind. What that translated to, however, was a more muddled cup, but still pretty nice.

I’m finding that a coarser grind for my Chemex/Cafe Solo is outperforming the KitchenAid hands down, but it’s the finer grind for the V60 that’s giving me trouble.

http://www.home-barista.com/advice/which-baratza-grinder-for-drip-press-t13408.html

I also linked this post in that thread. There’s even someone from Baratza with some data showing that the Virtuoso is bimodal at fine settings, but unimodal at coarse settings and supposedly superior to the Maestros in every way. I don’t really know what to make of it, but I ordered a Maestro Plus earlier today, so we’ll see what my results are.

thanks for the review, I have a couple of questions:
did you find the Virtuoso to be messy? did it have the portafilter option, and if so did you find it useful?

Thanks, Marc