Most Grinder Settings Are Complete Trash

In this episode, I dive deep into something that's been bothering me about coffee grinders - the fact that many of the grind settings on popular grinders are essentially useless. I share my weekend experiment where I spent hours testing three different grinders: my Fellow Ode Gen 2 with standard burrs, a Virtuoso+, and my 12-year-old Mahlkönig EK43.

I discovered that on the Virtuoso+, roughly 20 of the 40+ grind settings produced completely under-extracted, undrinkable coffee. The Fellow Ode wasn't much better - about 3-4 of its 11 settings were trash. Only my commercial-grade EK43 could actually extract proper coffee at nearly every grind setting. I tested this across light, medium, and dark roasts, different brewing methods, and even adjusted water temperatures from 190°F to 212°F to see if I could salvage those coarse settings.

By listening to this episode, you'll learn why most grinder manufacturers are essentially giving you vanity metrics with their grind settings, and how to identify the actual usable range of your grinder. You'll also discover why going finer than you think and adjusting your brewing temperature can dramatically improve your coffee extraction and flavor.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:30 The Story Begins
• 3:00 Going Down the Rabbit Hole
• 6:00 Virtuoso+ Results
• 10:40 Fellow Ode Gen 2 Results
• 17:00 EK43 Commercial Grinder Results
• 19:30 Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:16] We're live right now. Today is Monday, the 23rd of June, 2025. We're doing pretty good right now. I hope you're doing pretty good right now. I'm going to put up the phone, make sure my alarms don't keep coming on because we're going to be talking about something interesting.

[00:00:45] Your coffee grinder companies may be giving you some bullshit readings. I'll explain. I didn't title that very well. We'll work on titles and optimizations soon. But at the end of the day, let me tell you a story.

[00:01:15] I've been going back and forth with my coffee recipes. On Friday, towards the end of the day, I tried a recipe. Nothing crazy. Just a coffee V60 pour over type of recipe. From time to time, I would get a TDS reading. I like to do a TDS reading and then sip my coffee, imagine what I'm tasting.

[00:01:53] Towards the end, when I'm done with my coffee, I like to see how close I am with the guess. I usually do a one to 15 ratio. I already know a TDS reading of 1.5 is where it should be for 20% extraction. But it wasn't working that way with the grind size that I was using on the Fellow Ode.

[00:02:24] So then I went finer a couple points more, tasting a little bit better, but still under-extracted. Then I sat down on the couch for a little bit and I had time to myself. I wondered why am I not really tasting coffees the way that I usually am.

[00:03:03] What brought this on was not too long ago I did a cold brew video. One of the tips I said was don't use a French press grind setting because it's really not needed. I stopped using a French press grind for a lot of stuff. It doesn't really work very well. I tend to go with a coarser grind like a pour over type of grind.

[00:03:46] So then I started going crazy, getting that tunnel vision. I used a light roast, medium roast, dark roast. I used three grinders. This is why this is very important. I used three grinders.

[00:04:07] My Fellow Ode Gen 2 with standard burrs - that's going to be critical in this conversation. I used the Virtuoso+, the burrs are relatively new. I changed them probably about six months before I stopped using it regularly. Then I have my Mahlkönig EK43.

[00:04:35] It's over 10-12 years old. I've not changed the burrs at all. I should change the burrs. I use it for my cupping of the coffee. It used to be my main grinder on my coffee bar, but I removed it because it was taking up too much room and seemed impractical. A $3,000 machine - it was $2,300 when I bought it but it's gone up in value. I should change the burrs.

[00:05:16] So then I'd do a recipe, taste the coffee, get a TDS reading. I was like, what's going on here? Something about this isn't right. So I kept going down this rabbit hole.

[00:05:31] Once I realized what I was doing, there was no turning back. I was using all the brewers in the world. I was using different paper filters - Hario V60 standard filters, Chemex filters, April filters, Cafec fast filters. I was using different brewers. I was constantly trying different recipes with these different grinders and grind settings.

[00:06:04] It was very eye-opening. It was frustrating at first but then very eye-opening because at the end of the day, we're just trying to get better at our craft. If our tools have some vanity to this whole thing...

[00:06:27] I tried the EK43 and here's the experiment. It wasn't easy - it just took a lot of time. I wanted to see what the coffee could do on the coarsest setting as a pour over because to me, and probably to you too, you can go a lot finer when you're doing immersion brew like AeroPress. With French press, I believe it's best to go finer anyway - you're going to taste more of the coffee, it comes more alive.

[00:07:12] So my logic is like, a lot of those grind settings are bullshit. They're just vanity. They're just there on the scale to make it look like you are actually going to be using those settings. People are drinking under-extracted coffee and not realizing it. You don't need all those grind settings.

[00:07:41] So on the Virtuoso+, it goes from 40 to 1, something like that. So let's say 40 - more than 40 clicks but 40 stages of grinding. So I did 40 on a pour over. That's the way I called it - trash equals under-extracted. That's how I know if a recipe works or if it doesn't.

[00:08:33] I did 40 grind size with a pour over. I did my typical Hario V60 recipe. I did it on a Hario V60 with the slowest basic filters possible in order to bring up the extraction. I did about five or six pulses because more than two will give you more extraction out of coffee because you have more contact time with the coffee.

[00:09:09] So 40 - trash. Complete trash. 30 - complete trash. I tried 30 with light, medium, dark, tried to go as slow as I can to bring up the extraction. 20 - complete trash. I said, forget this, on the Virtuoso+ I'm going to 10.

[00:09:34] And 10 produced a 1.67, 1.7. So anywhere between 10 and about 18 on the Virtuoso+ - that's where you can really brew. You'll probably be perfectly fine if you did a French press at about 25 or even 30, but for the most part, those 15 stages of grinding on the Virtuoso+ are completely trash.

[00:10:38] Nobody uses those coarse settings unless you want under-extracted coffee. If it can't actually extract the coffee at that level, then the grind setting doesn't matter. Those coarse settings don't matter. It's complete trash.

[00:11:00] The other thing I realized - my go-to temperature is 190 degrees. I love 190 degrees. I think it allows some sweetness into the coffee, gives it character. I think 190 degrees is perfect based on my palate and the way I actually drink coffee, which you should too.

[00:11:20] So all of them were at 190. Let me change it back up. I'm not actually drinking these coffees - this is for science. So I bumped it up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. After I bumped it up to 200 degrees, it started to get a little bit better for the extraction of flavors. But still, 40, 30, 20 on the Virtuoso+ - complete trash.

[00:11:42] About 20 clicks, for the most part, if you want to do French press at 20, you're good. But that grinder was complete crap. It didn't come alive until 20 clicks. It can probably get away with 25 if you brew your coffee at about 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:12:32] That's how you can get more extraction out of a coarser grind. But it's still not going to be as significant. You don't want to do 212 all the time. You want to do 200, 190 - that's probably my extreme. At 205 you can probably bump up your extraction and use a coarser grind. But again, 40, 30, 20 - 20 clicks are complete trash with the Virtuoso+.

[00:13:03] All right, let's go to the Fellow Ode Gen 2. I was kind of surprised with this one. This one goes from 1 to 11. It's just a pour over type of drip type of brewer. So it doesn't go down to espresso.

[00:13:32] So I did 11 - trash. That makes sense, it's the coarsest on the spectrum. 10 - trash. 9 - trash. 8 - trash. And I was freaking out. I was absolutely freaking out. Then I did 7, and I was like, okay, we're about 18% extraction, we're doing pretty good here.

[00:14:05] But I was wondering what was going on. 190 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Towards the end of the day, I went ahead and did boiling coffee. I think I did the boiling the next day because I was so blurred. I did about 15-20 cups of coffee. I'm serious. It was back to back trying to understand what was going on.

[00:14:33] So Fellow Ode dripper, standard burrs. So 1, 2, 3, 4... I'll say 3 just for science's sake and for understanding. 3 of those settings are complete trash. The least that you want to start with the Fellow Ode with standard burrs is at 8. You're probably going to have to brew at a higher temperature just to get the extraction of that coffee.

[00:15:10] You're probably just going to get about 18-19% extraction. That's kind of where you want to be. So 3 grind settings are complete trash on the Fellow Ode Gen 2 standard burrs. But this is where it gets interesting - that's probably why people play around with these upgraded burrs.

[00:15:42] If you're starting off with a grinder using sharper, more precision-based burr sets for grinding, you can probably use majority of that whole scale. You can extract coffees even at the coarsest level. That's probably why people do it. But I think people do it mainly because they want to be able to do espresso on their grinder that's mainly made for pour overs.

[00:16:43] I do believe that you can get a lot of sweetness, clarity, and understanding in the coffee with a coarse grind. But in this case, the coarsest grind that you can actually get something of that level is like at an 8. But you have to do like 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius.

[00:17:12] So that was disappointing. But it's okay because I play around in the 8 to 4 range depending on the coffee, depending on the situation. Now that I know that, I can just start there. I can dial it in a lot faster, especially if I'm trying to go as coarse as I want to see if I can get that extraction.

[00:17:44] So now finally, we're at the EK43. EK43, old burrs and everything. I tried the 11 - bang on. 19, 18, even 20 depending on the type of recipe I was doing. Light roast, medium roast, dark roast - it didn't matter what I threw at it. 11 on my particular brew, it worked.

[00:18:14] I think it can work with a two-pour. It worked just fine. If you want to push it, you can go with a 10. A lot of times when I'm using a Mister Coffee, I do about an 8 because you need that finer grind so it won't just flood the bed and go right through it. You need that contact time to bring up that extraction.

[00:18:25] Different brewers call for different grind sizes because there's different techniques and different recipes that that brewer will be optimized for. So the EK43 can work with all grind sizes from the coarsest to the finest. The beauty of that is you don't feel like you're getting cheated. You feel that you can actually use your coffee grinder at any settings you want to produce your coffee.

[00:19:22] That's what I'm really getting at. When I went through this experiment and understanding the situation I'm at right now, you're probably getting cheated. You're probably not realizing that you're getting cheated by your coffee grinder companies. A lot of those grind settings are bullshit. They don't work.

[00:19:42] This is me going off the whole logic and understanding, and hopefully you do too - nobody does a French press grind setting, and I don't advocate for that. It doesn't really do anything for you. Your coffee is still going to be tasting weak. It's not going to be as lively and tasty as it should be because it's not good enough.

[00:20:45] Once you realize that, you're going to get probably really mad about these coffee companies or grinding companies that you're buying your gear from. A lot of that stuff is just vanity metrics. It's like buying a size 45 pants but the label says you're actually a 32-34 waistline, but you know deep down that you are a lot larger than what that pant size says. Same thing here.

[00:21:02] Sometimes we get what we pay for. I'm not saying that you need to be spending $3,000 on a commercially graded coffee machine. No, I'm not saying that. It does help. It's pretty cool that I still have these burrs that I need to change that are still able to extract coffee at even the lowest setting.

[00:21:22] Just think about the grinders and think about the actual range that you'll be playing around with. Realize that you're probably utilizing probably like at best, off a regular grinder, two-thirds of that grinder. If it's like a Virtuoso+ which is about $200, you're probably using in this case 50% if that of the grind settings.

[00:22:22] Which is fine, but it kind of sucks that for the most part you're not really utilizing the grinders the way that it should be. That's just the way they made it. So there is probably value in these expensive grinders because you can probably get to use more on a larger spectrum because of the grind size you can play around with. Feel confident that no matter what you do, whatever recipe you're throwing at it, it's going to actually give you something that you can make magical.

[00:23:22] On that note, I'm about to go make something magical with my Fellow Ode, probably a 7 setting at 200 degrees on this medium roast Peruvian. This is Oki at Everyday Beans signing off. I hope you're doing well. I think this is an interesting topic, something that we don't really talk about that much. We just say get a grinder and move on. But you got to make sure it works for you.

[00:23:24] I'm glad that I'm able to test this stuff out, see what it's all about, and give it back to you so you can make that objective buying decision or just realize that your grinder is mostly trash for about a third at best, but more than likely more than 50% of its grinding settings. This is Oki at Everyday Beans signing off. Let me know what you think about this. Talk to you later. Bye.