(upbeat music)
- Welcome to episode five of the Ultimate Grinder Showdown.
We've been taking these five grinders through their paces,
one review every day and it will culminate
in a big head-to-head showdown
covering lots of stuff around espresso, filter coffee,
taste, all of that good stuff.
And today, we're gonna be looking at this.
It's the Monolith MAX, the best named grinder so far.
And you look at it,
you can see why it's called the Monolith.
Now, this grinder, I paid full price for,
like all the other grinders here, and it's $3,250
which makes it one of the most expensive grinders here.
As disclosure, though, these operate on a pre-order only.
So they open up pre-orders very briefly,
everyone scrambles to try and get an order in
and then they close them.
I was not able to get a MAX on pre-order,
I was able to get something else,
but they upgraded my order to a MAX for this review.
Let me give you a little background on KafaTek,
the company behind the Monolith.
The company, I think, dates back to 2012,
but this grinder as a project dates back to 2014
and it's been through several iterations along the way.
Now, inside of this grinder,
I will say that there are the latest set
of custom-made burrs designed by Denis,
the founder of KafaTek, they're called Shuriken,
the sort of burr sets that he creates.
And these are called the Shuriken Sweet,
which is very interesting.
But before we get into pulling a shot,
let's just have a quick walkthrough of
what's going on with this grinder here.
Starting over on this side here,
you'll see there's a little controller.
That is an RPM controller because once again,
we've got a variable RPM grinder.
This runs up to a max RPM of 500, which is much, much,
much lower than most of the other grinders here
that can run at higher RPMs.
It'll go all the way down to five, but again,
that's not really a viable RPM to be using day-to-day.
I've been running at 350 as was recommended to me.
This control box is doing all of that motor control,
but your motor is here angled sideways,
which is kind of nice, the angling here,
running up to the burr set here, coffee in, coffee out.
Now, the design feels not quite utilitarian,
but it feels more like function-first.
And that appeals to a lot of people.
I quite like how this looks as a whole.
The quality of build feels very solid.
It's not too heavy to be annoying, but it's solid.
It's not really going anywhere on your countertop.
It feels very tightly sort of machined.
All the tolerances are very, very nice.
It's been enjoyable to use.
Now, as is custom, let's quickly talk through
some of the accessories that come with these grinders.
We'll start with a disappointing thing.
This is the dosing cup for you would weigh
your coffee beans into and it's a little bit cheap
in comparison to some of the other pieces here.
And it doesn't really fit
with the wider aesthetic of the grinder.
This custom-made dosing funnel that you would put
on top of your portafilter does feel quite nice.
It does have a small flaw to me in that the way it sits
is with this piece inside the basket.
And it's really designed for 58mm baskets.
When you pull it out, it does feel like it leaves
a little gap around the edge,
and that's easily gotten rid of,
but it's not something that I particularly love about this.
But otherwise, it's a very nice little funnel.
It comes with a spray bottle.
And I think the Monolith was one of the first grinders
to start shipping with a spray bottle.
It also comes with a distribution tool,
and this one, it's okay.
It does the job of breaking up clumps.
It's not a particularly fine needle point here,
but it still works quite well.
It's not my favorite, but it's a nice little tool.
And then it does come with a set of bellows.
And these would go on top here,
once you've sort of started grinding,
and you would use it like that to blow through a little air
to help clear any ground coffee
from inside the burr chamber.
So it's not bad, it works quite well.
It is a material, it's a rubber that does pick up dirt
relatively easily, but overall,
a nice little collection of accessories.
Now, this is an espresso-first kind of grinder.
And you can tell that, one,
because it's back to portafilter forks.
These are pretty easy to adjust.
There's two screws here that would change the width of them
to accommodate whatever portafilter you have
and make sure it holds them quite tight.
I would make sure you have a pretty snug fit.
Otherwise you can have a little vibration
causing the portafilter to fall out.
And you can adjust the height here and here
to have it be lower or higher as you desire.
The grind runs from zero round to 10,
though espresso, generally speaking,
is in this sort of section of the grinder over here.
You can go past 10, you can go coarser that way.
And if you're brewing filter coffee,
you would certainly want to do that.
But from a design perspective,
from a use perspective, it is espresso first.
Let's make some coffee.
(coffee beans grinding)
The idea that I might take off this piece here
to brush it out to make sure I've got every scrap of coffee
out of this grinder is new to me,
but after a little while,
I kind of enjoyed that slightly slower process
around prepping espresso.
And this exit chute attached by a magnet,
innovation, I think was first seen on a Monolith.
(whirring)
I've had a lot of very nice espresso from this grinder.
And stylistically, it is more of a unimodal-style espresso,
where you're having plenty of extraction, clarity,
sweetness, all of that stuff, not a ton of texture.
I sometimes wonder whether calling the burrs Sweet
has put an idea in my head,
but shots have been sweet, tasty, enjoyable, but again,
I am working with relatively light espresso roast,
sort of light to medium espresso roast anyway,
but the shots, very delicious.
When it comes to filter coffee though,
I do have a couple of little frustrations beyond the fact
that there isn't an obvious sort of solution
for dosing into something for filter coffee.
This feels very espresso forward,
and the grind sort of range is
an additional frustration for me there
because by the time I'm brewing for filter,
I've moved my little marker past the 10 point.
Now, I know what some people have done is
put an additional sticker on the adjuster
so that as they move it past that point,
that comes into range here.
And so their filter sticker,
they might know that goes to two for a V60
or four for a two-cup or something like that.
But then they know the other one when they come back
that they're around three for espresso.
That's a nice little hack, it's neat, it's very effective.
I just wish it wasn't necessary on a grinder
that's this expensive that is capable
of brewing great filter coffee.
And my other complaints about it,
and I get to complain about everything
'cause that's just who I am, are relatively minimal.
It is slow, and sometimes frustratingly slow.
And you could argue if that's gonna yield me
better-tasting espresso, that's probably okay.
And I'll, to some extent, accept that.
I know we need to do more work on RPM in a future video
and how that impacts flavor and other stuff.
This piece here, it's actually a separate piece.
It's a little funnel that prevents anything popcorning
and bouncing back out again.
I just wish this funnel piece here was a little bit steeper.
I've found that occasionally,
especially when you've sprayed the beans,
you can get a little bit of stickage here
where beans just don't wanna fall in
and you've gotta just poke them in like that.
So I would just change this little angle here on this funnel
if it were me, otherwise, it's a very nice piece.
Now, if you wanna access those large burrs,
it's a little bit of work.
You can see you're gonna need tools to get in here.
So it's not gonna be something you're gonna do every day.
You can get a bit of access by sort of taking this piece off
and going in through the funnel here
and giving it like a bit of a brush out if you want to,
but it's not meaningful in terms
of actually getting into the burr chamber.
Now, this isn't something I would necessarily change.
I just generally prefer grinders
where it's easier to access the burr set here.
This piece is a little spout, is a little access spout,
is very neat, very simple, and I like that a lot.
But in terms of componentry,
the actual box that controls your RPM
doesn't feel in keeping with the rest of the unit.
The unit is very heavy, very solidly made.
This is, I suspect, a third-party component,
something brought in and placed inside,
but it just doesn't feel as nice.
It's pretty easy to use.
You just use your dial to choose your desired RPM,
and you push the button in to save that RPM.
From a usability perspective, it's great.
I just wish it felt just a little bit nicer
like everything else on here does.
And again, this box is a big box
and I like having it under the machine.
I like this integration of everything here,
but it does give you a certain kind of boxy aesthetic
and a kind of funny proportion sometimes.
But I understand that this is constrained
by the size of the components inside.
It can be a little bit messy.
The bellows here often blow a little bit of coffee around
onto the forks here and onto the base unit here.
It's easy and exposed and simple to clean,
but it is a touch messy compared
to some of the other grinders.
But I don't think the worst, necessarily, but worth noting.
Overall, I like this grinder a lot.
I like the results from it a lot.
I like using it a lot.
The workflow works pretty well for me.
Yes, there's some nicer accessories with other grinders,
but from a shot perspective,
from a brewed coffee perspective,
I think it does very well.
And it'll be interesting to see how it stacks up
against the other four grinders
in the big head-to-head coming tomorrow.
I'm very excited to get into the tasting
and really compare and contrast side-by-side.
Now, I don't get to keep this unit.
This goes to one of my Patreon supporters
because Patreon gives me a budget every month
to buy these things, like a normal person,
not get freebies or loaners or discounts from manufacturers.
And then I can give you honest, unbiased opinions.
I'll miss it and I'll miss all of them.
But if you wanna know which one I would keep
given the chance, well,
you'll just have to watch the video coming very soon.
The culmination of Grinder Week,
a giant head-to-head showdown.
But now, I'd like to hear from you
down in the comments below.
Do you have one of these?
Do you have one of the latest ones?
Do you have an earlier one?
How has your experience been?
How are your shots, which burr set do you have?
Have you tried the new Shuriken Sweet too?
Are you gonna upgrade or change?
I'd love to hear from you down in the comments below.
But for now, I say thank you so much for watching
and I hope you have a great day.