say hello to my newest toy

I mentioned recently that I was saying goodbye to my Rancilio Rocky grinder after much faithful service. The reason was that I have lost the will to ignore the siren song of the gorgeous gear produced by Fellow Products, and have bought an Opus grinder. You may recall a recent post about the Opus and a new Moccamaster home grinder.

If I’m looking for justifications beyond the fact it looks so damned good, I was interested in the Opus because of its smaller footprint and quieter grinding. I was also attracted by the Opus coming with a simple grind guide on the inside of the hopper lid, which will make our lives easier when we’re grinding beans for my wife to use in her French Press.

photo: Evan Malachosky/Gear Patrol

I haven’t used the Opus enough yet for a full review, but so far I like it. These are my initial impressions:

PROS
☑ much quieter than the Rocky
☑ hands-free operation once you’ve pressed the button to start grinding
☑ magnetized catch cup works perfectly with the portafilter, an easy flip to load that is closer to an even distribution than grinding directly into the portafilter basket
☑ Fellow’s customer service – I ordered just after a discount code I had expired. I wrote Fellow to ask if they had any other discount codes available, which they weren’t didn’t, so I paid full price. A couple days later I received a text with another discount code, which wasn’t supposed to apply retroactively to items already ordered. Around this time Fellow sent me a customer survey, and I mentioned that I was a little disappointed by this. The next day Fellow retroactively applied the new discount to my order (which they didn’t have to do) and refunded me the difference

CONS
☒ using the outer sizing ring to adjust grind size, the top end of the suggested espresso range ground far too finely, resulting in barely a dribble coming out of the espresso machine as its pressure gage shot through the roof
☒ the Opus is designed for single-dose grinding, and despite its antistatic tech does retain varying amounts of grinds in the machine. This means you can carefully weigh the beans before grinding, but the resulting grounds will not be a consistent weight each time

Looking forward to playing with it some more this weekend, but for now very happy to welcome Opus to the coffee command center.

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