CoffeeGeek - Bodum Bistro Grinder - Chris Hutchison's Review

This past year I went through two conical burr grinders. The first was a Hario Mini-Mill. It was okay, but needed modification to produce a consistant grind. Plus, my wife and I brew our coffee strong (two tablespoons per 6 oz of water), so it was a chore grinding all that coffee each day. Next, I bought a Cuisinart CBM-18C (a model down from the "Supreme") off eBay. What a disappointment! We drink dark roast, which means the beans are oily, and the Cuisinart clogged up on any setting finer than coarse. And it's coarse grind was terrible- typical cheap ginder inconsistency. Not to mention that the plastic container that caught the grinds had the typical static problems, leaving a big area to clean up each time we used it. I didn't think I'd find anything better in the price range, so attempted to modify the Cusinart, thinking if I could slow the motor down, the beans wouldn't get so hot and might not clog as bad. Suffice it to say that experiment didn't go so well, putting us back in the market for a new grinder. After a few months of being stuck with flat-tasting French Press coffee, I was ready. I did tons of review reading online, and everything I read told me that if I wanted to get past the two big problems I had with the Cuisinart (clogging with oily beans, and static), I'd need to shell out a fair bit more money than I was prepared for. Then I chanced across the Bodum Bistro. I read some positive reviews, and the one thing that perked my ears was that it's supposed to be good with oily beans. And the price was just about right. It didn't take long to fall in love with this thing. It's relatively quiet, and fast. It does great with oily beans, thanks to a set of plastic spokes mounted beneath the burr that keep the grounds moving into the container below. That container happens to be made of glass, which is static free. If you make a mess with the Bistro, it's because you spilled grounds, not because static was throwing them all around the kitchen. The grounds themselves are really consistent, especially for a grinder in this price range. The only negative is probably unavoidable. The grinder runs on a timer, and I wish that it produced the same amount of grounds each time. It doesn't. There's a variation of a tablespoon or so in the amount of grounds that come out. That's okay, it just means I need to measure it out into the pot instead of dumping the whole container in. Not a big deal.