The DF64: Niche Killer? - James Hoffman

 

Transcript

00:00
- Hi there.
00:00
Today, we're gonna look at this little grinder right here.
00:03
It is the DF64, or the G-iota, or the Solo, or the Turin.
00:09
It has a lot of names, it's the same grinder.
00:12
It's really, really popular right now.
00:14
A lot of interest,
00:15
probably the most requested review on this channel.
00:18
I've had this for a couple of months,
00:19
I'm gonna share some thoughts.
00:21
Now, to give you a brief overview of the specs
00:23
of this grinder, it is a single dose grinder.
00:26
Obviously it has no hopper,
00:27
it's got a little kind of bellows set up here.
00:28
But you put in what you wanna grind, it'll grind it through
00:31
into this little plastic dosing cup.
00:32
It has 64 millimeter burrs, hence the name DF64.
00:36
Those burrs spin at 1400 RPM,
00:38
and those burrs are made by Italmill.
00:40
However, these burrs can be switched out
00:43
for something like the SSP burrs,
00:44
the high-uniformity or the unimodal.
00:46
Now price wise, this is what has made this so interesting.
00:49
Prices vary depending on where you are.
00:52
In the UK, it's about 400 and something pounds.
00:54
I've seen it for about 400 euros,
00:55
I've seen it for five to 600 US dollars.
00:58
You can buy from local distributors
01:00
and generally I would advise that.
01:02
I bought mine in the UK, where it's branded Solo.
01:04
You can buy it more directly on alibaba.com.
01:07
I think it's about $450 there.
01:09
But that's before shipping, before any kind of import
01:11
or duties that you might pay there.
01:13
And that'll obviously vary.
01:14
Obviously buying in-country,
01:16
you'll pay what you're gonna pay up front
01:17
and it's simple and it's easy.
01:19
At that price point, it is considered to be
01:22
the very strongest competitor to something like the Niche.
01:25
Right, the Niche Zero has had an incredible couple of years.
01:28
It has been hugely popular.
01:30
I have one, I talked about it on the channel before,
01:33
I really like the grinder.
01:35
We'll talk about why again, coming up,
01:37
because I think it's really important
01:38
to talk about why I liked that grinder
01:39
and how I feel about this grinder,
01:41
because it's positioned as the Niche killer.
01:43
Now, the Niche is a little bit more expensive
01:45
at about 500 pounds,
01:46
and they are a little bit more supply constrained.
01:49
However, the Niche remains in very strong demand
01:51
and they tend to run pre-sales that sell out,
01:53
and people are looking for an alternative.
01:55
And on paper, this is very interesting.
01:58
It's cheaper, it's a flat burr grinder,
02:00
which some people really like,
02:01
as opposed to a conical burr grinder with the Niche.
02:03
And you can use different burr sets with it.
02:05
It seems like an obvious alternative,
02:08
a better choice potentially, but is that the case?
02:11
So today we'll talk through a few things.
02:13
We'll start with kind of making coffee with it.
02:16
What's the coffee it produces like?
02:17
Does it make a great tasting espresso, great tasting filter?
02:20
And then we'll talk more about
02:21
the experiential aspect of it.
02:23
Flaws or bugs or quirks or things that I like
02:26
or things that I don't.
02:27
To start with though,
02:28
we should use it for its intended purposes,
02:30
and pull a shot of espresso. So grinding with it.
02:32
It's not particularly fast and it's not particularly slow
02:35
for these kinds of grinders that sits
02:37
somewhere in the middle I guess.
02:39
It does grind into this, which makes some people angry.
02:41
It's a little plastic dosing cup.
02:43
It's actually for me, preferable to grinding directly
02:46
into a portafilter, for a couple of reasons we'll get into.
02:49
But some people don't like the plastic.
02:51
To be honest, I quite like grinding into something clear,
02:53
it lets me see how it's going
02:54
when I distribute it into the portafilter.
02:55
And this does fit inside a 58 mm portafilter, which is good.
02:58
So let's throw this in.
03:00
So you can see that you're reasonably well distributed
03:02
before you might then go on and finish distribution
03:04
with say a puck rake or something like that
03:07
or another distribution tool,
03:09
but you're starting from a reasonably good place.
03:14
Espresso from this grinder has generally been good,
03:16
enjoyable, tasty, well extracted.
03:18
It's a good set of flat burrs from Italmill.
03:20
I do have some SSP burrs that fit this.
03:22
I'm not running those in there,
03:23
'cause I wanted to review this as stock.
03:25
Because this sort of, the price of this was the appeal.
03:28
So starting with a sort of more expensive setup
03:30
didn't really make sense.
03:31
The espresso from this grinder, it is good.
03:34
It's not incredible, but it's good.
03:36
Sweetness is there, has okay to pretty good clarity,
03:40
the texture is pretty nice.
03:41
I've never really had issues with it,
03:42
it's not a flawed espresso in any particular way.
03:45
Yes, there might be a little bit more available
03:47
with better grinders or better burr sets,
03:48
but I'm not in this particular moment having a bad time.
03:52
It's a really nice espresso
03:53
that I'm getting out of this thing.
03:54
Now, in terms of negatives of the espresso experience,
03:57
there are a few.
03:58
Firstly, I'm down getting towards
04:00
the zero point pretty quickly here.
04:02
I'm grinding at sort of five on the dial,
04:05
and it's not recommended really to take it much past zero.
04:08
You could, but you know,
04:10
you're getting close to the sort of touch point there.
04:13
Which is kind of interesting that it's got a small range.
04:14
And I've not been going super far around,
04:16
maybe 50 or 55 on the dial here for like a V60 grind.
04:21
So I know I like to grind finer than V60,
04:23
but ultimately it's not a huge range on this
04:26
if that makes sense, of kind of a usable espresso range.
04:29
Secondly, there are some issues with this.
04:32
Firstly, mine does not stay in very well.
04:34
And it will wiggle its way out as this thing grinds,
04:37
which is just plain irritating.
04:39
This is kind of designed as if it might be
04:41
a portafilter fork, and portafilters do fit in there.
04:44
You might be tempted to do this.
04:45
Don't, just don't.
04:46
It certainly, with no portafilter I've found,
04:48
does it sit well and not wobble out
04:50
and cause a terrible mess and much frustration and swearing.
04:53
So into the dosing cup.
04:54
The other reason that I would recommend dosing
04:56
into a dosing cup first with a lot of grinders,
04:58
is that that act of sort of shaking it around
05:00
and mixing it up before transferring it over, helps
05:03
with kind of grind distribution and kind of uniformity.
05:05
What you'll have noticed is that when you do press
05:07
the bellows, quite a good bit of coffee comes out.
05:09
And that coffee is held behind
05:12
a kind of silicon declumping sort of screen.
05:16
It's quite a rudimentary thing,
05:18
it's not particularly well set up.
05:19
And it is to me a bit of a problem.
05:21
That coffee being stuck there can cause some regrinding,
05:24
and you might notice that the very last coffee that you
05:26
push out is a little bit finer than the rest of the coffee,
05:30
which I think adds to a little muddiness in the cup,
05:33
a little bit of harshness
05:34
and is a flaw for me in the grinder.
05:37
It would mean if I was putting very nice burrs inside
05:40
this thing, I wouldn't be getting the best out of them.
05:42
Now I've already seen people, I'll link to it down below,
05:46
have come up with alternatives to this.
05:47
They are using clump crushers from the Mythos grinders.
05:50
Someone's 3D printed a new housing to go inside this.
05:53
They've been having good results it seems, but as stock,
05:57
the declumping situation here is not very good.
06:00
I don't think it's a particularly elegant
06:01
or even particularly good solution here.
06:04
And I think it has been a pain point
06:05
for a number of people online
06:06
who've bought this grinder and used it.
06:08
It's not a deal breaker, but it is a frustration.
06:12
Should we brew some filter coffee?
06:13
The grinder adjuster is stepless, it's quite nice to use.
06:16
We're gonna move to about there.
06:17
Now this is what happens if you don't use
06:20
a little spritz of water on your beans first.
06:22
For a coarser grind of light roasted coffee,
06:24
things tend to get messy.
06:27
That's err... not ideal.
06:30
Now the upside you can argue
06:31
is if you don't like chaff in your coffee, great.
06:33
'Cause there's almost no chaff in the coffee,
06:36
it's entirely on the grinder.
06:37
Now you might argue I'm being unfair,
06:38
I did say it needs a spritz of water.
06:40
It does need a spritz of water.
06:41
This is what happens if you don't.
06:42
Let me clean this up and show you how it is
06:44
with a little spray of water first.
06:45
So that's much better.
06:46
That's much better.
06:48
Yeah, there's a little bit of mess still,
06:49
but it's kind of, it's workable, but you know,
06:51
make sure you give it a spray of water.
06:53
Now, the grounds bin with 30 grams of coffee in it,
06:55
it doesn't look that full.
06:56
But any fuller than this, when you use the bellows,
06:59
you'll start to get kind of blowback where coffee is blown
07:02
out of this thing again by the bellows and makes more mess.
07:05
So you know, that's a frustration for me.
07:08
I might want a deeper one of these
07:09
if I was grinding more coffee than 30 grams,
07:12
from a mess perspective anyway.
07:14
Or I'd be sort of taking this out, putting in my V60
07:17
and then trying to bellow out the last bit.
07:18
Is that the phrase, "To bellow out?"
07:20
Can you verb, can you verb bellow?
07:22
To press out the last bit into this
07:23
and then throw that on top again,
07:25
the last little bit will be a little bit finer
07:27
'cause there's some regrinding,
07:28
'cause it's stuck behind that declumping screen.
07:31
But it's not massively finer,
07:32
it's just a little bit finer generally speaking.
07:36
Let's brew it up.
07:37
So now it seems like a good time to talk about retention.
07:39
You know, it's one of the key aspects
07:40
of single dose grinding, you want a low retention.
07:42
And certainly with the bellows,
07:44
this is a relatively low retention grinder.
07:46
It does retain a little bit inside the body,
07:48
but it's not really a deal breaker for me,
07:49
it's not a huge issue.
07:50
I think for the money, it's a good single dose grinder
07:53
from a retention perspective.
07:55
Now in terms of filter brewing,
07:56
I've had no issues with stuff like stalling draw downs,
07:59
indicating a high percentage of fines.
08:01
Generally brews have brewed as I would have wanted.
08:04
You know, the beds aren't particularly muddy at the end.
08:06
It looks like it's producing a pretty good grind profile
08:09
for filter coffee.
08:10
And the filter coffee it has historically produced,
08:12
has been very nice.
08:13
With a kind of flawed, cheaper grinder,
08:16
when you drink a cup of coffee,
08:17
you can obviously detect some flaws in that brew.
08:20
It might have that combination of under and over,
08:22
that kind of harsh and bitter
08:23
but also sour and unpleasant at the same time.
08:25
When I drink this,
08:27
it tastes like a good cup of coffee, right.
08:29
It tastes like a well extracted sweet, nice clarity,
08:31
all of those things.
08:32
Now, if I compared it to grinders
08:34
at two or three or four times the price, yes,
08:38
it may be outperformed by those in a comparative test.
08:42
But without the comparison, I don't think you feel
08:45
like you're missing out on much necessarily.
08:47
If you were using this just as a filter coffee grinder,
08:49
your comparison point wouldn't really be the Niche,
08:51
it would be something like
08:52
the Wilfa Uniform or the Fellow Ode,
08:54
which are both a little cheaper than this one here.
08:57
Now this, I think does outperform both of them.
09:00
From the perspective of,
09:02
the retention is not really a problem.
09:03
If you are spraying your coffee beforehand,
09:05
it's probably neater and less messy than both of them.
09:08
The bellows do a better job
09:09
with retention than the other two grinders do
09:11
with say, a thwacker or anything else like that.
09:13
So it does perform better as a filter-only grinder
09:16
and that's kind of with stock burrs or with SSP burrs.
09:19
So I would say for the money, you are getting an upgrade
09:22
to spend another hundred pounds more
09:23
on this than you would do on say, the Fellow Ode.
09:26
Does it look as nice?
09:28
Maybe not.
09:29
Does it sort of fit into a kitchen as well?
09:31
Does it have the kind of, the feel
09:33
and the ergonomics and that kind of stuff?
09:36
We need to talk about that.
09:37
Actually, before we wrap up on the ergonomic stuff,
09:39
let's just talk about getting into the burrs quickly.
09:41
Take the little bellows off,
09:42
and just move it coarse all the away.
09:46
And then this top part comes off, very easy.
09:48
Here's your fixed burr.
09:50
It's just a plate here, sits on threading,
09:53
which is outside of the burr chamber.
09:54
And threading away from ground coffee
09:56
is always a win for me.
09:57
Too many grinders have threading near coffee
10:00
and it drives me, oh, it makes me very cross.
10:02
The top burr sits against three springs
10:04
that hold it against that top plate.
10:06
Obviously, as you screw this in and out,
10:08
this is pressed closer, more allowed to come further away
10:11
from the bottom rotating burr.
10:13
So changing the burrs,
10:14
cleaning the burrs is very simple, very easy.
10:17
I like that part about it.
10:18
The grind chamber, as you can see,
10:19
does retain a little bit of coffee.
10:21
But in terms of access and that kind of stuff, yeah, good.
10:24
Pretty well thought through from that point of view.
10:27
So the user experience, it's okay, generally speaking.
10:32
Like as a kind of overall experience, it's okay.
10:35
It's not horrific, but honestly, it's not superb either.
10:39
I find the placement of the power button
10:41
on this thing bewildering.
10:42
Why would you put the button
10:44
that you need to use all the time there?
10:46
Why not on the side
10:47
like any other normal grinder would put it?
10:49
It's a really weird design decision.
10:52
Speaking of those and yeah, yeah, yeah,
10:54
there's a little bit of snobbery here, but honestly,
10:56
the decision to use this kind of slightly scripty
10:58
late 90s font for the numbers, that don't go with
11:02
the nice sans serif that they use elsewhere.
11:05
Really weird, it's just really ugly for no reason.
11:08
And it's part of the grinder that you look at every day,
11:11
and I find that a really strange decision, you know.
11:14
The fact that your usable range for espresso
11:16
is actually quite small, is a little bit frustrating
11:18
but it's not the end of the world.
11:20
Repeatability has been pretty good.
11:22
And then there's the bellows.
11:23
They are a little bit hacky, right.
11:25
Like it feels like this hasn't been designed
11:28
to clear it's sort of grounds chamber adequately.
11:31
So you need to find another way to do that,
11:33
we'll just use some bellows.
11:34
It doesn't feel particularly premium or fun,
11:37
it's a bit messy.
11:38
It just feels cheap in a funny sort of way, right.
11:42
Like it adds a cheapness to the grinder that its build
11:45
otherwise doesn't really communicate.
11:47
Like it's solid, it's weighty.
11:49
It doesn't feel light or lightweight,
11:51
but the bellows, I just don't like the experience.
11:54
This little lid part, it's awkward,
11:57
it's frustrating, it's not an enjoyable experience.
12:00
It does seem that the grinder can sometimes struggle
12:02
to clear the last few beans.
12:04
It has a little popcorning issue as well.
12:06
And if you don't have the lid on,
12:08
you will see some pretty spectacular popcorning going on.
12:10
But it works and that's the thing, right.
12:12
Like, let's talk about this
12:13
in comparison to the Niche, because that's really
12:16
I think what a lot of people wanna hear.
12:17
So when I reviewed the Niche a couple of years ago now
12:20
I guess, I think the phrase that I used was
12:22
that I was charmed by it, right.
12:23
Like it was a charming little grinder.
12:26
It exceeded my expectations for a number
12:27
of reasons and I just liked using it.
12:30
And it became the kind of default studio grinder until we
12:33
put five of the fanciest grinders in the world on the bench.
12:36
And I got a little taste for the fancy-fancy.
12:38
Now I still like this, I still use this,
12:41
I still think it's a great little grinder.
12:42
I still think it's great value for money
12:44
and it's a great performer for espresso
12:46
and it does well at filter as well.
12:47
If I was thinking about just filter coffee in the cup,
12:50
performance only, then I might have some more complaints.
12:53
Because as a conical burr set,
12:55
I don't truly love that style of filter coffee.
12:57
I think it makes a very enjoyable,
12:58
very tasty filter coffee, but I have typically
13:01
preferred this kinda flat burred profiles.
13:03
And that's just me.
13:04
But the experience of this grinder
13:07
was what made me keep it around.
13:08
I liked using it every day.
13:10
It was nice to use, it felt intuitive to use,
13:13
it was pleasing in the right places,
13:16
and it was as I said, charming.
13:18
If I had this, I don't think I'd have that same experience
13:21
because it isn't charming in the same way.
13:23
It delivers pretty well in the cup,
13:25
and I feel like it has the potential to deliver better
13:27
than it does if they could fix the issue
13:30
around the sort of silicon declumper that's in this,
13:32
that I think is a big flaw in this grinder.
13:34
Now, if you're someone who has the budget
13:36
for this and enjoys 3D printing things or tweaking things
13:39
or hacking things, or kind of squeezing performance
13:42
out of things, this may appeal to you, right.
13:45
Like there's kind of some wins here,
13:47
some mods you can do to get a better result.
13:50
And if that appeals to you, this grinder may appeal to you.
13:52
But if you don't wanna think
13:54
about the act of grinding coffee every morning, right.
13:56
If you just wanna have the process, throw the coffee
13:58
in the grinder, grind the coffee, get on with brewing,
14:00
have the grinder to be a kind of invisible
14:02
reliable part of the process, this doesn't do that.
14:05
This pokes you for attention, it says, you know,
14:08
"Press the bellows a bunch of times,
14:10
work out all of the mess, work out the static thing."
14:12
If I had this, I would be thinking about upgrading.
14:16
I would be keeping an eye out for other alternatives
14:18
that maybe performed a little bit better.
14:20
Maybe try to buy a secondhand Lagom P-64,
14:22
or another one of those style of grinders
14:25
if I could find something, you know, not for crazy money.
14:28
You know, it would do the job,
14:30
I would be happy with it, but I would be aware
14:32
that it was a part of my process that could be optimized.
14:36
And I feel like upgrading grinders
14:37
or upgrading espresso machines should
14:38
be around fixing specific problems that you experience.
14:42
And I feel like workflow is a problem worth fixing, right.
14:46
I want to enjoy making my coffee as much
14:48
as I want to enjoy drinking my coffee.
14:50
And this is where this falls down for me a little bit.
14:53
If you are an in-the-cup purist, if all you care about
14:56
is the quality of coffee in the cup and you're willing
14:59
to compromise other aspects of your experience,
15:01
I think this is a great choice.
15:03
I think it delivers great ground coffee
15:06
at espresso and filter settings.
15:08
And for the money, I can't think of anything that really
15:10
outperforms it as a single dose flat-burred grinder.
15:13
Right, you can functionally go
15:14
from espresso right through to filter.
15:16
It's got the range, it's got enough motor power,
15:19
it'll do the job.
15:20
You know, it outperforms the Ode or the Wilfa,
15:22
I think comfortably in that regards.
15:25
But experientially, it for me, doesn't outperform the Niche.
15:29
But that's me, and that's, what's important to me.
15:32
And as a reviewer,
15:33
you should understand where my priorities sit.
15:35
I really like the coffee out of this,
15:37
I really liked the coffee out of this.
15:39
But given the choice of which I would take home,
15:41
I'd probably still take this.
15:42
Just 'cause I just like using it that little bit more,
15:45
it doesn't frustrate me in quite the same ways.
15:48
Now I don't get to keep this grinder.
15:49
This will be given away to one of my patron supporters.
15:51
They allow me to have a budget to go
15:53
and buy these things, just like a regular consumer,
15:55
review them and give you my honest opinions.
15:58
But now I wanna hear from you.
15:59
Do you have one of these?
16:01
Has your experience matched mine?
16:03
I think a lot of people are curious, and this is
16:04
a great opportunity to share your experience with others.
16:07
Have you found hacks or solutions
16:09
to some of the issues that I've experienced?
16:11
Let me know down in the comments below.
16:14
But for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching.
16:17
I hope you have a great day.