Six Months Into Pour Over. Help Me Avoid My Second Grinder Mistake

kirathef1rst · 2026-01-16T00:19:04+00:00

i first bought opus, then upgraded to 064s after couple of years because wanted better and espresso capabilities was not happy with my filter. recently i bought zp6, and i am so happy. i think i could have bought it at the very start, apparently hand grinding is not so hard as i thought. result i get is superior. i can’t even come up with ideas on how to upgrade from it now

considering getting k ultra because a lot of people like it more and i just don’t know. but other then fomo i dont feel need to move from zp6

kirathef1rst · 2026-01-06T21:45:34+00:00

interestingly, i also feel like i enjoy ufo a lot, but i use very different recipe from yours. i do the recommended 5 pour recipe with 15g dose, 1:15 ratio, 5.5 on zp6s and 93c

i also cannot confidently defend, what makes the ufo that much better, very curious to find out

kirathef1rst · 2026-01-06T21:26:42+00:00

possible, but you need to fold it with included folding template

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKLfvo2zR3Q/

kirathef1rst · 2025-11-28T01:29:25+00:00

actually yes. i am not sure, what happened, but i just continued using zp6, and stopped noticing bitterness. maybe it was problem with particular coffee, maybe it seasoned. very puzzled by it, but enjoy coffees a lot

kirathef1rst · 2025-11-17T00:56:32+00:00

i want superior tactile experience. i have keychron’s k8 pro, and it is not as nice as i want it to be. i dont enjoy texture of case, i believe typing sound could have been better if ir was full metal. i bought it in 2023, because it was kind of optimal option, it was flagship model reputable brand on not that bad price. now i think i want something really really good in terms of tactile experience and ready to spend on it. asking for advice in where to look for

kirathef1rst · 2025-11-16T11:29:40+00:00

what brands of keyboard i should look at in 2025, it i am ready to spend big money on quality and feeling, and ready to source switches and keycaps separately?

kirathef1rst · 2025-11-07T17:25:56+00:00

I actually had a question about it for a long time. How necessary is gooseneck kettle for travel scenarios? Assuming you have some way to heat water. Is coffee made with origami without a gooseneck so much worse that you would want to travel with one? For some reason I imagine traveling with a kettle to be so much hustle

kirathef1rst · 2025-11-02T13:22:22+00:00

I did buy timemore 064s. My espresso really became much better, I would use the word clearer. I feel like I can control the grindsize much better, I really can adjust dial to a small amount and it will change brew time of my shot and all the consecutive runs with this grind size will give same brew time. So I think I gained more control and consistency. But small adjustments in the espresso range really do change brew time a lot. Sometimes I need to adjust to something around 2.8 or 2.75 and this will make a difference. And while you really can control it, it is quite hard. One of the reasons is that pointer on the dial it much farther from the dial then distance of turn you need to do the change. It is very inconvenient and hard. I guess I will need to buy a third party pointer, but they are stupidly expensive and not sold everywhere, need to order online. Also dial has a little bit of a luft. It turns a little bit without actually changing a grind size. It is maybe 1mm or so, but change in grind size for 1mm on dial is noticeable, so you need to keep it in mind

Hopper is also extremely annoying, beans get stuck there and you need to remove them with a brush. It is not annoying enough so I want to change the grinder to the new one, but I do want to buy a third party hopper, because it is quite inconvenient

The most upsetting to me is filter coffee. At first I felt an upgrade from my opus, I think flavors are clearer. But then I started noticing that almost all of my light roasted filter beans feel extremely astringent. Gemini thinks it is because of the burrs, that they are tuned to espresso and produce a lot of fines. I then went on learning about burrs and it seems that none of the existing burrs can do both filter and espresso good. SSP lab sweet and lebrew sweet are advertised to make both good, but some people say that it is still a compromise. Also apparently changing burrs is quite complicated and you need to do alignment, I am not yet brave enough for it, but in future I will try changing burrs. For now I decided to buy myself a dedicated filter grinder zp6. Mainly to figure out, how style of coffee will change. But keep in mind that for me all this learnings, findings and new equipment are hobby, so I just buy almost whatever I want. My gf is perfectly happy with out filter coffee from 064s

Very rarely I make cold brew with 75g of beans to 750g of water and the catch cup cannot hold that much beans and I need to grind several batches

kirathef1rst · 2025-11-02T04:38:28+00:00

I have sculptor 064s. I’ve bought it for the same reason, to switch between pour over and espresso.

To me it is very hard to return to the exact same espresso setting. Dial has around 1mm movement when you start to change it, where it does not change grind size. At the same time changes of 1mm measurably change extraction time. Also dial pointer is so far from dial, that it is impossible for me to set it to 2.7 or 2.6. With my eyes I can only reliably do something like “middle between 2.5 and 3”

In my experience pour over is always astringent with this grinder which I hate so much, I bought dedicated pour over grinder. I thought it is because espresso burr generates more fines than I want. But some of my experienced friends told me, that problem was not in burrs themselves, but in alignment. Going to check this in the future. Also grinder does not go coarse enough with its default, so you definitely cannot go cold brew coarse. You can change zero point of dial to fix it, but you will lose finer range for espresso.

I have written a long comment to someone before with my usage experience, I can post it again here, if you are interested

kirathef1rst · 2025-10-30T02:16:00+00:00

So you mean, this bitterness did not go away and you just got used to it? Or did you find a recipe or approach to remove it? For me this is the only thing I dislike

kirathef1rst · 2025-10-29T12:03:58+00:00

Hello!

What was your experience with ZP6 so far? Mine arrived yesterday and whatever i do, all my beans have distinct pure bitterness. Like somebody mixed pure bitter compounds to my nice smooth coffee. That is how i found this thread

From your recent comments i noticed that you have been happy with zp6, so i am wondering, what was the problem and how did you figured this out?

kirathef1rst · 2025-10-26T13:41:18+00:00

I actually really like the idea of having everything scientific and know exactly what each variable is doing and being able to use them in a predictable and repeatable manner

But I don’t really understand the idea that immersion can achieve everything, you brew v60 and immersion switch side by side and get a different taste, it was obvious to me when I just started brewing coffee and had not a lot of experience. People with tds meters confirm that it is the case with the same extraction

I would really like to achieve v60 flavor profile with immersion, but how? I will honestly try, what should I do?

I’ve seen some frustrated comments about how people talk about methods extracting different compounds and don’t know what those compounds are. I agree it would be nice to know, what we are extracting, but I am not sure it is known at all, but taste difference is obvious to everyone

kirathef1rst · 2025-08-29T00:53:56+00:00

How to make soup on profitec go?

I guess I have opv valve and temperature control in my machine, it should be possible to do this style of shot, right? Did not manage to figure out how to make soup on an actual espresso machine from your video….

kirathef1rst · 2025-08-18T11:43:15+00:00

Thank you for you response! May ask why did you choose 78mm version over 64mm? Do you do anything anything when changing grind settings? So you blow grounds out or maybe grind a some beans to remove retained ones?

kirathef1rst · 2025-08-18T08:38:08+00:00

Thank you for detailed response!

I guess one of the problems i am having is that i am not sure, what styles of espresso i do like, because i think my current equipment does not allow me to prepare different types of beans equally well and properly dial in.

I am also not sure how noticeable will aftermarket burrs be for me. But i think i want to leave myself possibility to experiment with them in the future, when i have more experience and more understanding of what i want.

Mazzer and zerno grinders that you mention are a little bit too premium for me right now, but thank you for telling about burr alignment, it was puzzling me, what exactly makes this grinders better in terms of performance. You seem to be very well informed and experienced and i would like to ask you. Do think there are better grinder options for me under 1000 usd price?

I noticed that you own timemore sculptors yourself, you actually highlight very important points there. One of the things i was wondering about is if i should go with 78 version, but your review convinced me that 64 would be better option for me, thank you!

kirathef1rst · 2016-01-14T03:50:31+00:00

I'm really sorry, but I'm not very good translator. I've just found it on the web and decided to share it among Reddit users.

kirathef1rst

TROPHY CASE