****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Bought this a few months ago, because my blade grinder just wasn't getting the job done for espresso.Expected better of Bodum. I grant, my first grinder - a Krups - lasted something like 25 years, and that's an unrealistic expectation these days. Still.Out of the box, it was clear the plastic catcher didn't seat all the way into the opening as it should. I could see this in the photos of the product posted online - mine had about a 1-mm gap at the top, and the base sat out away from the body of the opening by able the same distance. Despite not being fully seated where it should go, the plastic catcher also was nigh impossible to remove. We had to use a thin bladed screwdriver to lever it out from the bottom. Naturally, when grinding, the ground coffee just spews out that top gap, so I took to holding a washcloth over the gap ...... since I had to continually shake the grinder while it was running to get the beans to feed from the hopper into the burrs.The coarseness setting wheel cannot be turned by itself, at least not by me. I had to turn the hopper in order to adjust it, and the raised images for the settings aren't easily seen, let alone understood. I had to use my phone camera and zoom in to see what the images are. Fine is represented by an espresso filter basket with handle. Medium is an image of this grinder. Coarse is the image of a French press. The three main settings are separated by dots, so it's impossible to see which way you're heading until you arrive at the next main setting on the wheel. Numbers would have been more helpful. A wheel an ordinary user of ordinary hand strength could turn would also be more helpful.The hopper. Ah, the hopper. To empty the hopper, you have to upend the entire machine over whatever you're using to catch the contents. I'd suggest a large bowl. It's easy to say "remove beans from hopper". What that doesn't make clear is, the bottom of the hopper is also likely to contain *some* ground coffee. And even inverting the machine over a container and tapping it doesn't clear all that ground coffee until and unless you remove the hopper - whereupon you get a bunch of ground coffee spilling over your counter or work surface. The lid sort of snugs down into place, but don't rely on that being sealed. A bump will dislodge it, and again you end up with grounds and beans all over.Today, the chute from the bottom of the burr mechanism into the plastic catcher completely clogged up with espresso grind coffee. Nothing seemed to be feeding from the hopper like before, so after a minute of grinding and seeing nothing building up in the catcher, I turned it off, unplugged it, and took the grinding mechanism apart. The whole thing, from the bottom of the chute to about half an inch into the hopper, was packed full of ground coffee. Packed. Took minutes to clear out the clogs from above and below, with a *lot* of mess. Fine ground coffee everywhere.The sum total information offered in the User Manual PDF on the Bodum site? "You can use a conical burr grinder for oily or flavoured coffees and it is not likely to clog like other kinds of grinder." This is, shall we say, somewhat less than helpful or instructive. There's no parts diagram, there's no troubleshooting guide that covers my particular issue of a clogged chute. (The coffee beans? San Francisco Bay Coffee Rainforest Blend. Never had an issue with this before).Oh. And there's no support link on their website, either. No troubleshooting instructions.I won't be buying any Bodum products after this, unless I see some positive movement on my help request there. Worst $40 I've spent in a very long time. You've been warned.
