TDCN

... Or not... I need help with a sanity check.

Tl;dr. Yes it is expensive but is it actually a good grinder?

I'm so ready to pull the trigger for a buy once, cry once, purchase decision for a new grinder and i have been looking for a solidly build, European made, all purpose coffee grinder to replace my ageing Nivona Cafe Grano 130 (aka Capresso Infinity)

I have been looking around a lot and in a previous post where I asked about this Eurika was suggested and it feels like the best option for me among the bunch.

But this is a lot of money so before buying I need to know if what I'm about to do isn't completely stupid.

I want a single dose grinder with low retention since i change beans and brew method frequently. I love to experiment with all roast types so the grinder should be able to have some good all purpose burrs. I don't intent to have multiple burr sets or multiple grinders. I just want one that can do everything to a decent level (no perfectionism needed) and the grinder should last me a lifetime if possible.

I mainly brew with 3 methods. French press, pour over, and moka pot. I occasionally dabble with Turkish coffee but I have always just purchased pre ground for that but a grinder that can go towards that is interesting but not strictly necessary.

I have no need for espresso grind levels at the moment but since this is a by once grinder who's to say I won't own a small espresso machine in 5 years, so not needing to buy a new grinder for that is appealing.

The main reason i want to upgrade is the fact that my current grinder produces very uneven grinds with a lot of fines and some coarse bits at the same time making my French press bitter and my pour over and moka pot clog up easily. Tbh. I find the unevenness on par with a good blade grinder. Lighter roast coffees works the best but the uneven grind makes for what I feel is under extraction since it lacks sweetness even though I grind relatively fine, long brew time and high temps. I would love to get more clarity out of my beans and taste the more fruitier and sweeter notes. Darker roasts just turn bitter and muddy no matter what i do.

With those needs in place I narrowed it down to the Eurika mignon single dose pro or the mignon zero 65 all purpose which quite a lot cheaper.

The Pro is interesting to me because of the new type burrs that should last forever and the exceptionality low retention. It should also have an antistatic system.

Only downside I can find myself is the very small hopper of 45g. For daily use i grind only 30g of coffee for my French press which is fine, but when i have guests i pull out the big boy brewer where i need to grind 60g - 80g. It is rare i need it and tbh. i can easily live with just grinding 2 times.

So please help me out. Should I just go cry and buy the mignon zero pro or is the mignon zero 65 All purpose just as good or, have i missed some other grinder where the value is much better and my money better spent.

Thank you.

Now that windows 10 is end og life soon I want to update my gaming PC to Linux but I am very unsure on how to approach it, even though I'm pretty proficient in Linux. I daily drive Debian 12 on my laptop and have Ubuntu server and truenas on two other devices but those are all for very different use cases than gaming. I'm not afraid of the terminal (I actually often prefer it over GUI) but since this setup is for gaming for both me and my girlfriend I want this experience to be as easy and hands off low maintenance as possible.

My desktop is about 6 years old and consist of an MSI Tomahawk B450 motherboard with an Ryzen 5 2600X and an Asus Nvidia 1660ti and 16GB of RAM. I just recently installed 1TB nvme SSD so I have a decent amount of capacity available, but I'm generally not interested in dual boot since I have bad experience from the past with windows suddenly deciding to take over and ruin it all. For temporary testing it is of course an option but I really don't like it due to the maintenance of it.

Important games for me is Sims 2, 3 and 4 (with almost all expansions packs on Sims 4) and they are currently purchased through the EA game store. I also have a few steam games and Minecraft but I'm fairly sure they all work decently since I've tried on my laptop.

I use steam remote play to stream the desktop to a MacBook on the local network when Sims is played and it works quite well at the moment and it is important that it continues to work or an alternative remote play function to mac is easily available.

Sims is my biggest worry to get working since my girlfriend is playing it a lot and with a lot of custom content (mostly just assets) added along all the expansion packs. Rebying everything through steam is not an option (way too expensive) so I really hope there is a way to get EA GameStore to work without too much effort using wine or some other workaround.

I hope you guys have some ideas on how to approach this and keep the most important functions for me up and running.

A few of you asked for how to do it so here's my guide. This method gives me perfect coffee every time, but your milage may vary so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Grind to filter coffe size or maybe a bit finer. Don’t go to espresso level or it’ll just clog the brewer and burn the coffee. It is generally not super sensitive to grind size so don’t worry too much. If in doubt go corser.

Always, always weigh the coffe! I found that they are actually quite sensitive to the amount of coffe you put in. Ever since a started weighing the beans I’ve never had any issues with it. If you cannot get a nice consistent flow through the entire brew and it begins to sputter too early you most likely filled it too much. So rather than fiddle with the grind size, you should instead fill it a little less next time. This is why you must weigh the beans. I use 12-13g for the 2 cup that you see here, and 28-30g for the 6 cup version. If I go outside that range it won’t brew nicely. It’s that sensitive! Grind size does very little to change this

Finally use hot water. This first of speed up the brew but also makes it easier to control the pressure inside. So pour hot/freshly boiled water in, assemble, and put on a low to medium heat with the lid open so you can see when the coffee comes. When the coffee starts to come through turn it down to low low heat to get a nice, slow and consistent flow. For the 2 cup version it’s about 15-30 seconds and for the big 6 cup version i think it’s about 40-90 seconds. I can’t remember exactly so don’t worry too much as long as it’s consistent and nice and slow.

Pour the coffee immediately. Otherwise it’ll slowly burn and turn bitter in the hot brewer. If you want to share the portion stir it a bit first since its much stronger at the bottom.

With this method i always get amazing coffee out of this little machine and i low it so much.

The milk i just heated with the Bialetti electric milk foamer but a little pot and a whisk would do the same. Don't heat the milk too much. It should only be around 65 degrees or something like that or it changes the taste. For UHT treated milk i guess this doesn't matter.

I hope this was helpful. So enjoy your coffee.

Additional debugging steps:

If you use a blade grinder: This is fine, and I’ve used one for years when I was a student and it worked just fine as well. You can grind pretty fine with that for the mokka pot. It's difficult to go too fine, but again, if on doubt go corser. Much more importantly is to avoid clumps. Blade grinders tends to make clumps so try to stir them out a bit with a needle/scewer or a very thin fork.

Clumps causes channeling and easily makes it sputter and all the water goes through too fast since it cannot build the pressure needed to make a consistent flow.

Clogging causes it to go really slow and sputter almost immediately and it seems like not all the water wants to go through. This is because it builds up too much heat and pressure so when the coffee passed through the coffee it's above 100C° so it instantly boils when it reaches the other side and gives a very harsh amd unpleasant taste.

Oh I forgot to add. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CLEAN YOU MOKKA POT WITH SOAP! Don't be fooled by what others are saying. It's not building up "flavour" it is literally old and rancid coffee "flavours" you are building up. So please please clean you pot with soap and a soft sponge every single time.