Lehnartz Turkish Mill - A Lido Like Antique

[EricBNC]

I picked this Lehnartz Turkish mill up on eBay since I like the mills from the Carl Lehnartz company. They are well built with exceptional burrs if you find one in good condition.





The speed on this thing is shocking. I turned 16g of beans for fine drip/pour over Hario V60 style in 40 of the quickest turns i can remember - easily 3 turns per second without trying too hard either.  The beans were medium roasted, and I am not the smallest guy in the world, but the burr design and condition deserves the lion's share of the credit.





I wonder if the OE Lido can grind this fast? The Baratza Preciso almost can...

[EricBNC]

Here is a video showing the process - grinding on the counter slows down the process (16 seconds in the video) - it's faster using two hands in a bicycle type motion.

Lehnartz Turkish Mill Brass Coffee Grinder.avi

The grounds - very nice quality:

[Tex]

My Greek brass coffee grinder is now a very good pepper mill. I bought it in the 70's to use with my LP Europiccola, but it never did a good job for espresso.

[EricBNC]

My Greek brass coffee grinder is now a very good pepper mill. I bought it in the 70's to use with my LP Europiccola, but it never did a good job for espresso.

I think the burr design on the Turkish mills available is unusual - not something I have seen in other applications. These older German ones (this one and my KyM at least) share similar burrs to their wood box counter parts. Probably makes a world of difference - to be honest, the taste i get from my  KyM Turkish mill reminds me more of what I get from my Pharos than any other grinding device I own...

[EricBNC]

I was curious how coarse this mill can go - Doug at OE concedes that most older hand powered coffee mills that are in decent condition can grind fine enough for espresso - grinding coarse is the tough part for a conical burr grinder. This mill creates grounds as coarse as those in my photo - consistency is poor but the amount of fines (the real culprit that compromises cup quality) seem to be a very low percentage...

Here is what 11 seconds of your time and muscle can do to 16g of beans: