*caution: has not yet been annointed by a celebrity coffee personality
why is it so good?
well the engineering is far superior for starters, with an active cooling system designed into it from the ground up
the build quality has to be experienced to be believed
the R120 and R140 have a stainless steel wire which is belt driven off the motor and orbits the inside of the exit chute to sweep the grinds out – it really is quite incredible and as a result it has incredibly low dynamic retention, i.e. around +/-0.2g, yes you read that correctly
by dynamic retention i mean the variation between the weight of beans in and the weight of the ground coffee out over a run of say 30 iterations/grind cycles. Â i.e. not retention measured as when you take a grinder completely apart and vacuum and brush every grain of coffee out and then the difference on the very first shot put through between weight of beans in and grounds out – this i refer to a ‘static’ retention, although perhaps a poor choice as it could be misconstrued as referring to electro-static charge, which it is not
obviously when you get to burrs with a diameter of 120mm the time it takes to grind becomes something of a distant memory
but the purple card that trumps all of the above aspects is quite simply what i call the fidelity
the high definition with which it presents the many tastes locked deep within a bean to your senses has to be expereinced to be believed
the R120 does not do the super sweet magic trick that the EK43 seems to do on just about any roast you put through it, but the taste fidelity of the R120 leaves the EK43 for dead
i was told that the R140 is only available in three phase, which is just too limiting if i want to take it on the road and show it to prospective customers, but if that isnt an issue for you then get the R140 – i expect it will take the high fidelity reproduction of taste to an even higher level, difficult as that may seem
i am still breaking my R120 in as i expect it needs at least 50Kg of beans hurled down the throat for it to bed in nicely and i simply dont have 50Kg of coffee that i can afford to offer as a sacrifice to the R120, so we’ll just take our time and enjoy it as it improves a little each week with the extraction percentage creeping up little by little – there’s no rush with slow food!