I've had my Mazzer Mini for a couple of weeks and to my frustration, I am still trying to get things dialed in. I can't seem to get the same cup from the Mazzer that I was getting from my Capresso grinder. Every adjustment on the the Mazzer seems to effect the flavor in the cup. I have not purchased an espresso machine yet so right now I am mainly using the MM for pour over (probably 80% of the time) but also for press pot, vac pot, and Areopress. Before I boxed up my Capresso and sent it to it's new owner, I performed a grind at my normal setting for pour over. I then used the Capresso grind to do test grinds from the Mazzer until both grinds looked the same to my untrained eye.
BTW, when I refer to a "tick mark", I am talking about one peak in the notches on the adjustment ring. There are 10 tick marks between each of the numbers stamped on the adjustment dial:
I've made micro adjustments to the dial as well as adjusting with larger jumps and I just can't seem to get the grind to produce the cup that my palate is searching for. It's not that the grinds that I am getting are leading to horrible cups of coffee. True, some are better than others, but overall they are pretty darn good. This weekend I was getting ready to brew with my Chemex. Before grinding I adjusted the grinder several tick marks coarser. When I started grinding the Pamama Geisha I was immediately hit with a really intense spice smell from the dry grounds that I had never encountered before. I thought I had hit a sweet spot but the resulting cup was so-so. The brew time in the Chemex was pushing 6 minutes which told me that the grind was still a bit to fine, despite the intense aromatics.
My major hurdle is that no 2 Mazzers are the same when it comes to referring to the numbers on the adjustment ring; a setting of 5 on one MM will not give you the same grind as using another MM set on five. What I am hoping it that I can use the MM's "set point", the sticker that is placed on the MM's adjustment dial from the factory, to use a reference or starting point to get the grinder dialed in. On my grinder the "set point" is located at about 7 on the adjustment dial:
I am hoping that MM owners will be able to give me a general idea of their pour over setting (and/or press pot, vac pot, Aeropress) by counting the number of tick marks from the "set point" sticker. I hope that this will give me a more specific area and I can fine tune from there.
Thanks in advance.