It's a grinder that has confounded my expectations in a good way.

So let me tell you about where this came from.

This I first saw on Indiegogo and for that reason ignored because it was from an unknown manufacturer.

It was crowdfunding, and it made some big promises about fixing problems with coffee and those three things together.

Aah!

Giant red flag on.

I will broadly ignore anything that has those three things on Crowdfunding anywhere else because most of the time it's just not gonna happen.

There's been a lot of companies turned up new to manufacturing gonna do something big and bold, and I'm gonna kick start it or put it on Indiegogo and you get nothing.

You get burned usually.

So I ignored it.

To my detriment, to be honest, because for every rule that I have this probably an exception and this might just be one.

So I wasn't gonna look at it.

I wasn't gonna review it.

But then they got in touch and said, Did I want to unit to try And I said, no, I have a patriot, which is amazing.

So thank you to Patriot supporters, which means that I can buy the equipment that I review.

So it's an independent review.

Then explain this to them and we agree that I would buy a unit and they gave me a small discount for which I'm very grateful.

But I still bought this and this will be given away.

Sort off to a picture on Backer.

So this thing is £500 in the UK on ships, I think all over the world they do a 1 10 and 2 20 volt model.

And for the money, I have to say, compared to other grounds at the same price point, it's pretty small.

It's pretty light.

It's about five kilos, but it feels very well built, Feels very nicely put together.

Feels really solid.

It sounds solid when it grinds.

It just feels good now.

Design wise, I can't tell you how to feel about how something looks.

It looks like a kitchen appliance.

It has a little bit of coffee grinder in there.

A little bit of juicer in there, too.

It comes, I think, in just two colors of white on a black, but I like how it looks, the detail around the wood is nice.

It's built by someone who's built things before, and this, I think, is really key.

It might be a new company, but Martina go behind.

It has spent a long time designing and building products, and I think that really, really shows.

So it's called the Niche zero because it's big promise is zero attention which will get into also in a little bit now.

The design, I think, is interesting because design is about picking problems and finding solutions for those problems.

There's a whole suite of problems you can look at, where the coffee grinder on.

I think this selection that their chosen to fix or attempt to fix here is a very smart selection.

For example, this is not a grinder trying to fix dozing for you.

You're gonna wear your coffee beans, put the men, grind them right.

The grinder is gonna do no work to help you dose your coffee whatsoever.

That's not a problem.

It's interested in solving here.

What they're really trying to do is get out everything that you put him.

The whole point of zero attention is that there's nothing left inside which is mostly true.

It's not entirely true.

There's always gonna be a little bit of retention.

And even if you put 18.5 in and get 18.5 out, that doesn't mean zero retention.

They probably want some coffee, retained and exchanged and replaced the old replaced by the new, and it retains a consistent amount.

But that amount isn't very much, so.

It is definitely an espresso focused grinder.

And so the workflow with this is very, very simple.

You got on off switch on the side, you got a lead under the lead, you have your being funneled, we're gonna load your coffee.

And once you've waited, conical Burr set in here for matter.

Cockney Birds in here.

The funnel is also your grind adjuster, which is nice.

It's a step, this adjustment with a little indicator on here as well to see where you've been, where you're going and coffee and close the lead is a little micro switch here and turn it on.

It really is very, very simple, and I think that's a really good thing, not only for longevity but in terms of component tree that's going to this this is well built, a good motor, and here there's a good set of birds in here, if you like conical burgers, and that's very nearly it.

With the exception of one thing, which is this little thing here, which is You're dozing cup, which I think is beautifully made because this is just under 58 mills, which means if you want a dose from here into your porter filter, just put your put a filter on top upside down and flip everything over.

Zero.

Messer A fuss.

It's a beautiful little thing that kind should be available with all coffee grinders.

Theodorus of tipping ground coffee into a port filter.

The spill, the mess, the needing, an additional funnel, all of that noise.

I'm not interested in it.

I like this kind of Zen approach of what's the least I have to do to get great results?

That's really a thing I like a lot.

So let's talk about performance.

How is it to use to make coffee with?

Well, as I said, it is a conical burr set.

Now it's the same birth says you might find in a matter Cockney on.

I am not a huge fan of conical Burr set compared to flat burst, that's my preference has always been for flat burger sets.

I pulled a bunch of shots with this, and I had some very, very tasty espresso with it.

I did pushups with this against the mythos ones, that kind of benchmarking tool, and I really like the shots that I got off this.

I slightly preferred the shots of the methods for having a little bit more clarity to them, which isn't hugely surprising.

It's a good flapper grinder, really like the shots from it.

And the espresso blend I was using was benchmarked against it, so the odds were stacked in the mythos once favor.

But I really did enjoy the coffee I got from this thing.

Some really nice shots didn't speed up too much in the second half, didn't show too much in the way of signs of channeling.

I was pretty happy with the shows that I go from this thing.

I think there's a couple of really neat, clever little things here.

Adjusting the grind is very easy, very intuitive.

The spacing between sort of dots and sought guidance is good.

You need to make a decent enough movement toe have a substantial change in grinds.

You feel it.

You can tweak quite easily, which is kind of nice on this.

There is a calibration function for the little dog under here.

If you take it all the way, fine.

You can then adjust this bottom ring so that it lines up with calibrate and you should be pretty calibrated grinder to grander to grinder.

Now, this wasn't perfect for me, but it was a pretty good starting place and a pretty good idea.

I think.

Certainly you have way Maur calibration that you would do with most typical grinders that just have a selection of random numbers from 0 to 9 that you're somewhere on at some point, so overall pretty happy.

And I spent most of the time pulling shots in the middle of the espresso region in terms of things that I didn't like his much.

I wish this held a little bit more coffee because sometimes I wanted to make a large batch of coffee with this so often make a liter of coffee and I wanted to use it for filter coffee and it performs pretty well.

Filter coffee again.

My preference might be four flat burr grinders, but I really enjoyed the coffee I got from this, but you can just sort of get about 50 55 grams in here.

I kind of wish it was just a nice even 60.

That's just me.

Now, if you do wanna grind for sort of a medium sized batch of filter from 1/2 lead up to a liter, you're gonna be too coarse for the dial, which is a bit of a shame.

I know some people have started putting dots on the other side of their dials to sort of track where they're going with coarser grind settings, and I think that might be an interesting improvement for the future.

And I suppose one of the bigger complaints that I have with this is that it does suffer popcorn ing a little bit towards the end of grinding a shot.

So those last few beans as they grow, they tend to bounce around quite a lot, can take a little while to serve, sucked them through.

You're looking at at least a 22nd grind time for 18 to 20 grams of coffee.

So it's It's relatively slow, but not so slow that that's a problem for me if I was pulling shots at home or anywhere else.

But it does popcorn a little bit on.

That means those those beans do grind in a way a little bit coarser than the other beans, which isn't ideal.

It's not a big problem.

Like I said, it doesn't really damage the shots generally.

But if you if you compared, let's say, 18 grams of coffee that had not popcorn a tall by, let's say, grinding 25 grams and stopping early to 18 grams that did have some popcorn ing in it.

Then I would see year four, maybe five second variance and shot time as a result.

So having maybe a better organ system sort of feed beans in.

I don't really know what the answer is, but I do know that popcorn ing does change your grind a little bit.

And so the more popcorn in there is, the more variants you'll have.

As a result.

That may be why some of the shots don't have the same kind of clarity is a mythos with a hopper full of coffee, you know, grinding through like this in any grinder that you're grand through will produce a small variance in grand setting as a result of his last beans, having no force behind them, kind of driving them into the burgers.

No weight of coffee behind them.

That's true on E K.

That's true if you single dosed of menthols.

That's true.

If you single dose, just sort of anything, really like a brat, said Grand or something like that.

Those last few beans on any grander will popcorn, In some cases they popcorn more than others, that's all.

So that's something I'd like to see addressed in the future.

And also, I'd be interested to see if they ever do build a flat bird version of this grinder.

That would get me very excited indeed.

But I should give you a summary right like I should give you a summary of how I feel And, to be honest, charmed.

I feel charmed by this grand.

I just really like it.

I like the way it's built.

I like the design thinking behind it.

I think it's really enjoyable to use if you said, How does it stack up against a marker neg e.

K.

43?

Well, I would say That's a very dangerous question to ask, because the Ikea is a nice set of birds accidentally designed by Marc Cohn igot some point attached to not a particularly compelling grinder.

The Ikea is not beautiful.

It's heavy.

It's expensive.

It's not particularly pleasurable to use it as a nice set of birth.

This is a pleasure to use.

This sort of highlights a lot of the flaws of a grander, like E K.

Because of its ease and pleasure of use, I'll give you an example of just what feels nice and simple.

I got a bag of coffee from a friend, just a small bag, and I wanted to dollar in.

And so here I would doze 18.5 grams grind 18.5 grams, pull a shot on, make an adjustment that's necessary.

And, yeah, their attention isn't completely zero.

There's a little bit exchange happening there, but it's so little that you don't need to purge Between groaned adjustments right?

I would adjust the grind and just grind a fresh dough straight afterwards, and I had no issues with that.

It meant that very quickly, very easily I could dial in to exactly where I needed to be, with almost no excessive waste, right?

I got a lot of shots out of a bag of coffee, and I don't think I'm alone in people using this grinder.

So from a waste perspective, it's pretty great.

The retention is certainly low enough for me to be very, very happy with it.

Other things, any issues with its retention, it's just it's just a pleasure to use.

And so, yeah, the way that this works is that Petrie on that fund each month lets me go and buy equipment to review independently.

But I want to keep this.

I'm not gonna give it away.

So I'm gonna buy a brand new one to give away to patron backers and this one I'm gonna keep.

I kind of just wanted around.

There's a lot of uses for a grand like this for me, and it's rare that I want to add to my collection of stuff.

It's rare that I want one more piece of kit in my life.

I have enough stuff.

The whole point of Patron is to give it away.

I don't want to accumulate endless stuff.

The good news is they build these in 1 10 and 2 20 volt.

Which means that I can sort of open up to Patriot Back is all over the world.

It doesn't matter.

I'll ship it to wherever it needs to go.

And I kind of like that.

I get to give away a brand new one that it could be white or black and they can choose.

I'm gonna keep this one their overall.

I'm impressed.

As a sort of first time product of first time manufacturer, I think they've knocked out of the park.

That's not to say it's flawless, but is great.

It's very good.

I I've just been enthusiastic about it to other people, which has got to be a pretty good sign.

So there you go.

That is my review of the niche.

Zero.

Do you have a niche?

Do you have one of these?

How is your experience so far?

Are you seeing less coffee wasted?

You Are you happy with the shot that you're getting just the popcorn and drive you crazy, or does it not bother you at all?