I came into this event with no research, no preconceived ideas and hopefully no bias.
Unfortunately, there was also no instruction manual, so attacking the Pharos was a bit of a monkeys-pounding-on-obelisk scenario. Eventually, we were able to dial in a solid espresso grind. In retrospect, I should have done SOME research to learn how to operate this beast.
The good:
- Grind Quality: In our shortened round of testing, we were able to get very similar tasting shots out of Peter's S1. To go much further, I suspect that we would need two groups and a blind cupping setup, but that seems to be out of the scope of this thread, so we can leave it alone for now.
- Build Quality: parroting what others have said, this thing is built like a tank.
The bad:
- Grind adjustment: I'm not sure where to lay fault, and will certainly accept my fair share for not reading up, but this thing is definitely not the most intuitive to calibrate, nor is it easy to adjust unless you have the appropriate tools (e.g. pliers)
- Exit Path: I don't know if this was OEM, but someone drilled a hole and added a plug. We ended up tapping it with a plastic headed mallet to try and coax out the grounds, and it took longer than was comfortable (upwards of a minute).
I'll have to wait until B|Creminiac ships it down and I can spend some time with it going head to head against my K10.
Thanks to BoldJava, Peter and Jeffo for not running me out of town on a rail. Next time, come south to Civilization and we'll do it up.