The price of these grinders is such that a lot of people are going to think they don’t have much to lose.
I want to try a range of 64mm burrs but I opted to pre order the new DF64v instead of the Timemore 064s, despite the price being twice as much.
The reasons included:
I could not find reviews of the 064s “in the cup” experience.
Looking at Timemore’s video on how to clean the 064s, it seemed like a bit of a mission. Not a deal breaker on it’s own.
On FB, someone from Timemore posted that the burrs should not be swapped out due to potential misalignment issues. I have no idea if that is an over-reaction but if the burr geometry is unknown and it’s not recommended to swap them out then I’m not a fan of backing it since I was really chasing a grinder where the burr was designed with burr swapping in mind. Adding to this, no one seems to know if the burr carriers in the 064s have even been designed to take say SSP burrs. Who knows? Maybe, maybe not.
Of lesser importance was that I don’t have any idea of when the 064s will be delivered whereas the DF64v are due to ship during the last week in May.
If the 064s or 078s proven to be winners, they won’t be much more expensive post-Kickstarter.
As for the 078s, I assume it will have the same burrs as the 064s and so there is nothing to be gained for my purposes in buying it over the 064s because it will produce the same in-cup result, only a little faster. And there are no other 78mm burrs on the market so if you don’t like them, sorry but that’s it.
That said, the launch has been an outrageous success from a sales point of view. Eleven hours after the launch the campaign is closing in on 3,700 backers and AU 2.4m (US 1.6 and GBP1.3m).
Every outragously positive result like this one will attract a small army people suffering from tall poppy syndrome and I don’t want to be one of them but the lack of in-cup reviews was the biggest reason why I didn’t back it.
Good luck to Timemore and all the backers. I hope it works out well for all.
