- What does this thing even look like?
Something from 2001, A Space Odyssey.
If a brutalist architect designed a coffee grinder,
you just want to, put it in a museum.
If you're into coffee,
you know how important your coffee grinder is.
There's a new coffee grinder on the scene
called the Fellow Ode Grinder.
It's very unique, it looks kind of cool,
different from most of the coffee grinders
you've probably seen before.
It should be noted that all of these grinders,
they cost between 100 and 300 dollars.
You might be asking yourself,
why on earth would you spend so much on
a simple coffee grinder when you get one of those little
crumps ones for like 20 dollars?
The consistency of your coffee grounds contribute
heavily to how good your coffee tastes.
When you use a blade grinder it kind of chops up the beans
in all different sized particles
and when water flows through those particles
it extracts at different rates and gives a lot of bitter,
sometimes harsh or just unwanted flavors to your coffee.
With a high quality burr grinder
you get really consistent grind size
and that's just going to make your coffee taste great,
consistently.
Let's look at how this thing is built.
You have your hopper up here where the beans go in.
One thing to keep in mind
that this is a single dose coffee grinder.
Um, you can't put a whole bag of coffee in this hopper,
it's just too small.
Close it up, adjust your grind with this giant clicky wheel
and if you look closely, it goes to 11.
Like, they did it.
It goes to 11.
- These go to 11.
- Then, under here you have a grounds bin which pops out.
It's got this little magnet on the bottom
so you can kind of,
(popping sound)
pop it in and out and it holds right in place.
What does the Ode Coffee Grinder do?
Well, well, the most important thing it does well
is create really nice consistent coffee grounds.
The Ode really does match or maybe even exceeds
by a little bit the grind quality of these other grinders.
The other things that are really nice about this grinder
are number one, it's very quiet.
Some coffee grinders make like,
just the most horrendous noise
that you don't really want to be hearing
at six in the morning when you're brewing your coffee.
None of them are super quiet but this,
it's a nice kind of soft purr.
The other thing that's great about it is that it's fast.
It has large flat burrs as opposed to
most of these other grinders
which tend to have smaller conical burrs.
So it does grind coffee faster.
So I did test the speed side by side
and grinding 30 grams of coffee
at about the same grind size.
With the Ode it took about eight seconds,
with the Virtuoso Plus, it took about 30 seconds.
Combined with the quiet sound it does have that kind of
nice satisfying feel to use.
Then what are the flaws of the Ode grinder?
Let's start with the grind adjustment.
It has a pretty narrow range of grind settings
compared to the Baratza grinders.
First of all, you cannot do espresso.
It absolutely does not do coffee grinding
fine enough for espresso
where on the very fine end the Baratza's
can get away with that.
I found that the absolute finest grind setting on the Ode
was just fine enough to brew mocha pot coffee
and that should be kind of the texture of granulated sugar.
You really have to be brewing drip coffee, pour-over,
mocha pot, that kind of thing.
If you want something that's super versatile
that can accommodate espresso,
you're not going to want to go with the Ode.
Another flaw of this grinder is that it is a bit messy.
No coffee grinder is completely mess free.
They all are going to give you a little bit of
leavings on your counter after you use them.
The Ode tries to ameliorate this issue by
having a grinds bin that has this lip on it
so that coffee doesn't spray everywhere when you grind,
but the problem is it's kind of fiddly,
you still get grinds around here.
It is made of metal so there is a bit of static
and that makes little tiny poppy particles
stick to the inside.
It's a bit difficult to get out.
They also included these little wings on each side
which is supposed to make the coffee grounds
easier to pour out.
It kind of funnels them into the center,
but what ends up happening eventually is that
coffee gets stuck on the underside of those wings,
you gotta clean that out, and the other thing,
no matter how thoroughly you grind your coffee
as soon as you tap the top of this,
it's gonna leave coffee grounds.
Doesn't matter how many times
you use the little knocker that it comes with,
you're gonna come back to this coffee grinder,
you're gonna give it a little tap
and there are going to be grinds that fall out onto the
grinder surface, onto your counter.
What you're going to find
when you're using this grinder is that
you do a lot of this
(tapping sounds)
and then when you're trying to get the grinds from your bin
you're going to do a lot of this.
So, you know, if you like drumming on your appliances
maybe this is perfect for you but this might get old fast.
Another important factor is reliability.
The fact is that Fellow is a fairly new company
and this is their first time making a coffee grinder.
How reliable is it going to be in the long term?
How high quality is it going to be?
You don't really know.
It's a bit of a gamble,
and if you go with something like the Baratza
you know that they have great customer support,
that they are very repairable.
You can buy spare parts, you can swap them out yourself.
With the Fellow Ode, you really just
don't know what you're getting.
As of February 2021, Fellow does offer
a limited amount of replacement parts on their site
but not nearly as many as Baratza.
The other obvious issue is that the Fellow Ode Grinder
is more expensive than any of the other grinders
we recommend at Wirecutter.
When it comes to Baratza, you have the Virtuoso Plus,
which is around 270, you have the Encore, which is about 150
and the Fellow Ode grinder is 300 bucks.
So what coffee grinder should you go with in the end?
If you want the most versatile and straightforward grinder
that's going to be reliable, give you great quality grounds,
not that much mess at a reasonable price
we still recommend one of the Baratza grinders.
The Virtuoso plus if you want a timer
and a little bit more build quality,
but if you want something on more of a budget the Encore
is going to give you just as good coffee grounds.
The OXO is also a great budget pick
if you're looking to save even more money.
The Ode is a great grinder
but it does come with its drawbacks.
For the best all-around, most versatile coffee grinder picks
we're sticking with what we know.
If you have questions about the Ode or any coffee grinder
just leave them in the comments below and while you're at it
why not subscribe?