I pre-ordered the 63mm conical variant of these from https://gorillagear.coffee/products/gorilla-gear-roblack-burrs-71mm-conical?_pos=1&_sid=de7841d97&_ss=r&variant=40171553259608 which are made to fit the Niche Zero and other grinders that use the Mazzer Kony burrs that the Niche uses. Made by John Gordon in New Zealand and now supplying the likes of high end grinder manufacturer Titus. [URL=https://i.imgur.com/Yzh1dWi.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/Yzh1dWi.jpg[/IMG][/URL] The burrs arrived late last week and I've just had my first three pours after putting a kilo of beans through for seasoning followed by a couple of sinkers while I sorted the grind size out. I'm impressed. From a Kenya AA bean medium/dark I detected more origin flavors than with the original burrs. The difference is more distinct than I dared hope for. The trade off is the very small loss of viscosity. Bear in mind that this is not a side by side comparison because I don't have two Niche grinders. But when my sons Niche arrives in a few weeks I'll ask him to bring it with him and run some side by sides with some Medium and Medium Light beans and will report back. The jury is out until then. Interested to know if anyone else has tried GG burrs.

Looking forward to a side by side comparison from you, I think it will be interesting and I'm sure more people will look at buying the burrs when they are more readily available. But for the price I guess people will have to see how well they work so I'm glad someone can do some testing for us

@"tompoland"#p34172 I'll be interested in the results Tom.

Appreciate its too early to say, Tom , but interested indeed your experience of these in a niche (which i have) vs olympia moca sd (whch i might buy…) Would be a lot cheaper to buy new burrs! Thanks

Very promising! Look forward to hearing about the results, conscious these will be primarily for espresso but any pour over comparisons would also be appreciated as I know people gave the Niche a hard time for the fines it created especially on lighter roasts.

I also ordered the Gorilla burrs. WEEKS ago! After numerous delays and extremely poor communication from Gorilla I'm expecting delivery tomorrow. So a week or so I'll have drawn some conclusions. I'm very interested to know your thoughts, @"tompoland"#121 !

@"tompoland"#121 Thanks for offering to complete the side by side tests, Tom. And looking forward to learning of your impressions, @"Grahamsphillips"#p34213 And anyone else.

@"TomR"#p34196 Tom I have poured a few shots from each grinder over the last two days, simply for when I have an espresso each morning. Bearing in mind that means an hour or two in between each grind so it's not a side by side comparison which I find is the best method for taste comparisons. So take this with a pinch of salt but at this stage it's a surprisingly close call to between them. I don't know what miracles John Gordon has worked with his GG conical burrs, but they are mighty impressive. As you know, I'm still to do side by side comparisons with another Niche so I'll add side by side comparisons with the Moca SD to the queue. Thanks for the idea, not sure why I didn't think of it. In the interests of setting a realistic time frame expectation, the Niche GG burrs to Niche Kony burrs comparison is still a few weeks away because I need to wait for my son's Niche to arrive (ETA two weeks) and then for him to come for a visit. But it will happen. For the Niche GG burrs to Moca SD, I can do that early next week when the beans I have resting are ready to go. I'll post back here.

> @"FadedFrontiers"#p34202 any pour over comparisons would also be appreciated sorry FF but I can't help you with that, I have not the faintest idea how to do a pour over or even what it should taste like. I could do something with the Gevi 4-1 that is collecting dust at the moment but to be quite honest, I'm the last person you should listen to on pour over. re pour over: @"lancehedrick"#742 are you in the building? You gotta gotta gotta try the John Gordon burrs.

Hi @"tompoland"#121 I believe @"lancehedrick"#742 is indeed expecting some of the GG burrs so it’ll be interesting to see his take esp as he’s not a fan of the NICHE with the stock burrs

@"Grahamsphillips"#p34236 good to know thanks GP. From memory (not always a good idea) Lance's main point in his "one year on" review was that the NZ was not the all rounder be-all-and-end-all grinder that some were making it out to be. The Kony burrs in the NZ are certainly proven performers for medium-dark and dark roasts. And when people add milk to those type of beans, they excell even more. But yes, it will be interesting to see his review. I'm loving the GG burrs but their arrival coincided with a new batch of beans so the beans may be a part of the difference I'm tasting. So I'm looking forward to getting a second NZ to run the side by side comparison with the same beans.

Gorilla Gear burrs in a Niche Zero

tompoland

Grahamsphillips it’s a mystery to me why you are getting clogging with the GG. Nothing like that here thankfully. Following with interest though.

Grahamsphillips

tompoland could it be that I like light to medium roast beans and you’re preference is for darker roasts? John Gordon has acknowledged the problem. Someone on Home Barista had a similar experience. In fact I’m finding it almost impossible to dial fine enough for espresso. I’ve recalibrated the NICHE - and even if I go below 0 on the dial I’m still getting a turbo shot on my Londinium

washed

I’ve only had clogging with super light washed roasts. I’m currently grinding a light roasted natural process and haven’t had an issue with it.

ajohn

Grahamsphillips I don’t have a power meter. Not sure it’s worth buying one just for this. I

It might be of interest and they needn’t cost much eg

;) Might encourage you to switch some items off on standby at night.

The anti popcorn disk. No harm in removing it. It’s addition didn’t cause any general comments from users and those were happy before it was introduced. It was a subject bought up by some one on youtube who has a large following. I have toyed with the idea of feeding one bean at a time in with the disk on to see if the grinder setting remains the same but decided to not waste my time - it might need different grinder setting. Either way it doesn’t get round the fact that the Niche is a good grinder as it comes.

DavecUK

ajohn Wow that’s a bargain, they are usually £12 ish, or were the last time I bought one.

Grahamsphillips

ajohn wow that’s cheap. Thanks so much. Ordered. Will report back

ajohn

DavecUK They should be ok for a comparison and look similar to one my son bought a while ago. ;) He worked out what the freezer cost us to run. ;) Can’t turn it off though.

Gagaryn

DavecUK Possibly too cheap, for the same reason that you would be daft to use a £10 multimeter to measure current at mains voltages. I’m not sure I’d want to use something that cheap that is potentially measuring 13 amps of current at 240v. The £12 one I linked to in another thread is actually well put together with proper protection circuitry.

dutchy101

I’ve just purchased one - cheers @ajohn

washed

Grahamsphillips

I’ve had to redefine what “0” means with these burrs. The numbers after all are just serving as reference relative to the calibration point.

I’ve found myself going past 0 enough that I’ve just moved the black ring back 10 so I can give myself more useful reference points. A few cm difference can mean dialing in perfectly and a gusher. There is probably just enough resolution here, but you have to be much more careful.

One needs to throw out where beans are grinding with the GGs relative to the mazzers. You may need to go past zero. After doing calibration I then move the black ring 10 points back (where you could consider “0” as actually being “-10” if that were printed on the niche), just so I’m not having to set the grinder into the white space in front of the zero.

The beans I’m using now are at 5-8, where 5 is fine enough to do a longer profile pull with preinfusion and 8-9 is a turbo shot. These would be off into the white area if I didn’t move the black ring back 10 after doing the normal calibration routine.

And it is here that I kind of miss how much more forgiving the mazzers are in dialing in a bean.

tompoland

Grahamsphillips I think you hit the nail on the head.

As per my plan, this morning I opened a bag of Light roast beans and ground and poured using the Moca SD and the Nurri.

I then went to repeat the same with the Niche/GG and voila … clogged after about the first 3 grams were ground.

These beans were 101 on the Tonino color analyser scale with puts them in the traditional Light category as opposed to the Third Wave or Nordic Light category.

By happy coincidence I roasted several beans to different depths earlier this month with a view to freezing some around about now. So not only do I have Light beans ready but also City beans (95 on the Tonino scale being Medium/Light) as well as Medium beans (86) .

Having clogged the Niche/GG with the Light beans, I next tried the City beans and the Niche/GG also clogged but this time after about 14 grams were ground. It’s worth noting that I didn’t RDT with these beans, just to remove a variable from the conclusion.

Onto the Medium beans.

No clogging. All good. No RDT.

Thought I’d give the Mediums a second go, just in case. This time with RDT and it ground as per normal.

Based on what @Grahamsphillips has experienced combined with the above, I suspect that we are fast reaching the conclusion that GG burrs in the Niche are a worthwhile upgrade for anyone wanting more brightness/flavor in their espresso from Medium to Dark beans.

For my taste buds, the bump in flavor is well worth it but my guess is that the majority of medium/dark and dark roast drinkers will remain quite rightly delighted with their Kony burrs. However the GG burrs will simply clog the grinder for any beans lighter than Medium.

Personally, given that I have the Niche/GG paired with a Leva for which I have a preference for medium beans, I’m OK with that. But I really would have preferred if I could have used the Niche/GG for City roasted beans too.

Based on current information, I’d have to conclude that the GG burrs are therefore not as versatile as the standard Mazzer Kony burrs that are supplied standard with the Niche.

GG burrs with…
Dark beans OK
Full City beans (medium/dark) OK
Medium beans OK
…………………………………………………….
City beans (medum/light) CLOG
Light beans CLOG

Cuprajake

@Grahamsphillips across beans or just one, ive had a bean recently that turbo no matter what an ethiopian

Cuprajake

washed are you linked to the company?

Only you joined no intro and straight into this discussion knowing an awful lot about them.

Not a problem but transparency is always welcome 👍👍👍

washed

I’m just a random bloke that only found out about this forum after Lance’s instagram post on the dfk guy. 😅

Then I saw that a few people were talking about these burrs, so I thought I’d join in with my 2c.

DavecUK

washed only found out about this forum after Lance’s in

Perhaps it did us more good than the harm it was intended to do…..😁

washed

tompoland

They definitely don’t have as wide a range to me in the espresso zone. I expected that I might want to swap them with the mazzers depending on the bean so I have the GGs installed with:

https://cbbplanet.com/products/niche-metal-base

I can get a consistent swap / clean relatively quickly.

ajohn

tompoland However the GG burrs will simply clog the grinder for any beans lighter than Medium.

A question. The grinder chokes. Does this mean that grinds stop coming out or that the motor stalls ie slows down dramatically or stops rotating at all?

Cuprajake

SSP 83mm Hu flat will give a cup leaning to the bright side, but it’s not as balanced as the stock mazzer burrs in 83mm

Grahamsphillips

Thanks everyone for your indulgence ! I have found a way to get the NICHE to cope with the lighter roast beans I prefer. It’s very Heath Robinson and completely spoils the otherwise fantastic Niche workflow. I start the burrs whirring then feed in the beans a few at a time. The result is a great espresso but no way will I do this long term. Lets see what John Gordon comes up with. Sadly I think I’ll end up return the GG burrs and reinstalling the KONY

Grahamsphillips

@tompoland are you happy for me to share this feedback with John Gordon? If you Dm me your email I’ll CC You in? Graham

tompoland

Grahamsphillips done

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