• Grinders

  • Mazzer Omega - man logic in action..

Hi,

Thought I would start a thread here as I recently purchased the Omega as my first hand grinder. As it’s not a cheap purchase and not the easiest item to purchase here in the UK, I will post here in case anyone has questions etc.

I ended up buying it direct from Mazzer in Italy - so shipped it so fast to the UK - and then I got stuck in UPS hell waiting for them to actually deliver it :).

My thought process on this purchase is below - stolen from another forum where I posted it originally.

I picked up the larger Alessi 9090 10 cup for the weekends - its a lovely design - though so far controlling the brew so it does not push the coffee through at lightning speed is taking some work.

Then I needed to try real beans (though I like the passalacqua I have been using… as its very convenient) so some beans have been ordered from rave with a couple of airscape containers.

Lastly I needed a grinder - now tbh for the amount I drink (which is not much) a hand grinder seemed like a sensible idea….and the usual man logic kicked in (a bit like when choosing watches). A lot of YouTube / forum posts later - I got carried away and have ordered a Mazzer omega…

Just as a FYI I ordered the grinder yesterday morning at 10am from the Mazzer website.. to my surprise UPS are delivering it today and the customs invoice has already arrived.. so that was a bit of a surprise (though a good one).

So why this one - well the usual suspects were all possibilities - C40 / Kino and 1zspresso (prob the K Max or K Plus). Other than the C40 the others only seemed to be available from one or two places in the UK.

C40 - plenty of places - found it (as I missed the couple of Black Friday deals - as I was not looking then) for £220/£235 depending on the colour/wood finish. This was the one I kept going back to.. nicely put together - not a fan of the plastic top on the handle. Good path to upgrade if I went the espresso route with the red clix
Only thing I dont get is the huge box they ship it in ?

Kino - loved the all metal sturdiness of the classic, though I would have probably gone for the simplicity, this would have been between £250/330 for a kino - the classic is very heavy - but seems to be one of those buy once never again solutions. Found one classic on ebay and that disappeared before I made a decision.
Not 100% sure on the plastic catcher on the mid/low models but at least a storage case was included by default unlike the C40 (though you are paying more).

1zpresso have way too many options… these were the cheapest of the options - the Kmax with its case was £195 - or £215 for the Kplus. There was also the J series one of which had the super small grind options.

For my current brewing (moka) any of the grinders would be great - the kits you get from 1zspresso give you all you need - I like the magnetic features and the easy external setting.

Lastly is the Omega… there is not much about this on the web - a few YouTube videos and you could say its a odd one.

It’s expensive
It’s up there with the C40 in terms of grind size
No UK resellers that I could find
Its expensive..

But this is where heart overruled head. It’s a beautiful device - I like the fact it take up little space - that the handle and bar neatly latch onto the main body.
It’s well designed - with excellent materials. I love the fact you do not lose the settings when you dismantle it. So you do not have the fiddle about resetting it to zero like some of the 1zspresso models.
It’s easy to take apart - and once striped it’s very straight forward to clean out. Did I mention its very nice to look at :)
I am no expert when it comes to burr and burr design but in this case I did decide on the “slow” burr rather than the “fast” though not entirely sure how much difference in the real world it would make.

I also went for the slight add on in cost to get the case with bean funnel and cleaning brush as well.

If anyone is interested it ended up costing about £360 all in (so shipping and customs fees) - only about 30 quid more than the kino classic.

Could this be the start of a slippery slope…… oh and whilst browsing too many websites - I did read that Mazzer maybe about to launch a single dose electric grinder which sounds like a direct competitor for the Niche - but this was only in one comments section of a Omega review….

The upside to this coffee lark is that it’s cheaper (so far) than watches !

Cheers

Matt

So after a few trial grind I am still dialling in… I attempted the lowest setting (from the manual) for espresso (4) - that was probably a bit too fine - a very solid block in the mokapot -I will try working my way back up to find a sweet spot for flow.

A couple of pics - the case / brush / funnel is nice but not 100% needed - oddly if you have the grinder in the case there’s not a space for the funnel… unless its empty !.

I was able to put about 30 grams of beans in the grinder before it was full… there is a bit of static in the cup after grinding - not tried the spraying the beans yet… though a few taps and nearly all comes out of the cup - a light dusting left.


Cheers

Matt

Hope you continue enjoying it. It’s a nice grinder to use - my only wish (that I think Mazzer is already working on for “v 2”) is that it had a finer grinding adjustment than the current 30 um/click.

Luckily I have not reached that level of detail yet in terms of grinds ! I think If I got very serious then a electric grinder would be on the cards… but very early days !

cheers

Matt

a month later

The grinder has been performing great and it’s getting used 2 / 3 times a day though not for espresso grinds.

I had noticed today a slight rattle when cleaning the grinder.. it may have been there since day one but I digress.

Initially thinking that it was the small metal piece which aligns the burrs I stripped the omega down for a clean.

Once dismantled the rattle was still there… clearly something internal - maybe something metal on metal making a noise. However I did discover how to dismantle it a bit further. There was a squeaky bum moment putting it back together in case I had messed up the alignment.

If you keep adjusting down past 0 when the burrs and axle are removed the internal cup will raise up.. once high enough it will lift out and you can see the internal thread and post on which the cup sits. It’s all very nicely machined - and makes it easy to cleaning the internal cup where the removable bearing sits.

Now I am happy with the process not messing up the alignment.. I will put a couple of pics tomorrow so you can see the construction.. and no I did not find the source of the rattle :)

A pic - oh and you can reassemble incorrectly as I just found out 😂

I try a remember to snap a few photos when talking something apart, but it’s easy to think that I don’t need to but quite often I do !!

3 months later

Well I came across this video - I had not considered the lower burr could be easily removed for a good deep clean !