• Grinders

  • How (and how) Often Do You Maintain Your NZ?

How often do you clean the burrs?

How? Do you just brush everything out, or do you use some type of cleaner as well? If so, what do or would you use? I am guessing that coffee oils and other compounds do build up.

I used to use Cafaza grinder cleaner pellets in my Eureka Mignon, which I followed by some throw away beans, but @DavecUK advises against that. He’s ofcourse right, but I am curious about the reasons why not.

Wondering what happens to all that coffee that just sits and sits in the cracks? What does it evolve into? Does it ever affect the nature or flavor of the coffee that gets ground?

Anything else? @DavecUK video said to lubricate the gears from time to time. How often? (I will need to rewatch his video).

Anything else, to keep the NZ in top form?

Open, remove burrs, brush out chamber, dry toothbrush the burrs…refit. Done. Perhaps clean and lube the threads every 3 to 6 months.

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It’s so easy to take apart and clean I don’t see why you’d do it any other way. Like Dave said, just brush everything out, and I also give it all a little polish with a tea towel.

    Just cleaned my Niche as I’ve been playing with a few different beans and grind settings, and some of the beans were a bit on the oily side. From start to finish, using the steps Dave said above, plus a wipe of the base of the lower burrs to clean off the oily bean residue, it took less than 3 minutes. The threads were clean and when I screwed the ring back onto the body, the calibration dot ended up bang on the body mark. I think I’ve put about 3kg of beans through since I last cleaned it. It’s just so easy to look after.

    Lelit Elizabeth, Niche Zero

    V60 with Drip Assist, Clever Dripper, Knock Feld47

    Aeropress, Knock Aergrind

    I try to clean the one I added to the work kitchen every week. I’m not sure how many coffees are made each week but a fair amount of fine dust gets collects under the burr assembly. Also one or 2 folks drink very dark roast and I want those as far from me as I can!! I use the method Dave explained above, I’m rather fast at it by now.

    I’m a terrible person so I have only just done a proper clean of my NZ and I bought it on one of the early campaigns. Having put it off for so long I’ve now discovered it is so incredibly simple. I was a little anal about cleaning it once I had it apart but even after all this time of it being left it was still under 10 minutes to clean. I stripped and cleaned my mahlkonig vario after I did the niche and that took a good 90 minutes to strip and clean all the grinds from everywhere in the body… not to mention the mildly bruised finger from trying to get the burr carrier to release!