Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My thanks to other reviewers -- whose comments regarding the wide selection of coffee mills enabled me to make the fortunate selection of the Capresso 560 Infinity Conical Burr Grinder, Brushed Silver, 8.5-Ounce. Having used it almost every day for several weeks, I find hardly anything negative to say about this unit (but see below), but the scope of this review does not extend to making espresso or other brews requiring special types of beans or especially fine grounds. Other reviewers have noted the major positives of theCapresso 560. For example, the motor speed is geared-down, thus slowing the speed of the rotating (lower) burr, which in turn reduces noise, reduces heating of the beans during milling, and reduces shattering of the beans and thereby gives more uniformity of the size of the grounds. As others have noted, the coarseness/fineness of the grind is easily adjusted over a very wide range, with a very high degree of control. This mill is obviously well built. It will not be the cause if you don't get an unbeatable cup of coffee. If, as formerly I did, you use one of the blade-type coffee grinders, you may have noticed that it results in a grind with a lot of very fine particles due to bean shattering by the violent impact of the blades, and as a consequence you may have experienced, as I did, a tendency of the brewing filter on your coffee maker to become unduly clogged and even to overflow for that reason. With the Capresso burr grinder, this problem is much reduced if not eliminated (although I have yet to use the mill's finest settings for the grind). Now some further points. Though some of what follows might be interpreted as negative, such an interpretation really would be unjustified, since, as I try to indicate, all of the issues raised are easily nullified. First, a basic point is just this: a little time spent in gaining familiarity with the unit's construction and operational behavior pays off (there IS a learning curve with this unit). Just bite the bullet and spend the time required to understand the user instructions. Second, a potential problem arises with this unit if you put the upper burr into place upside down (proper cleaning of the mill requires removal of the upper burr). Through inattention I somehow made this mistake (once) and had to resort to Capresso customer service (which had the answer with no hesitation, suggesting that it may be a more common mistake than one might have thought) to find out how to get it back out (tip: looking down on the top of the mill, notice the large, black outer ring that surrounds the burrs and use a butter knife in the obvious slot to turn the ring in a counter-clockwise direction to release the upside-down upper burr). Perhaps most people would never fall into this avoidable trap, but I mention it just in case it saved anybody from having this happen. As to cleaning the unit after milling, I have found this to be straightforward and reasonably easy. Third, this unit has a problem with static electricity. But this is evidently the case with just about all noncommercial coffee mills -- as one discovers in reading the reviews of a number of the grinders/mills offered on the Amazon site. In the case of the Capresso 560.04, and probably in the case of most any other mill, there are easy solutions to this problem, and I will now describe mine at some length. The behavior of static electricity, even for those of us with a background in physics, can seem quite bizarre. For one thing, as one learns in studying the laws and principles of electricity in science classes, static electric charges generated internally necessarily appear instantly (and I mean VERY quickly) on the "outside" surface of an object whenever the object is completely surrounded by a nonconducting medium (note the key word "surface") -- and an equal and opposite charge will be simultaneously created on the facing surface of the external objects in the vicinity. But the outside surface of the coffee mill is altered and becomes rather complex when you move the grounds receptacle (hereafter "the cup") from its position on the "inside" of the mill body to the "outside" or even partially to the "outside". Moreover, when you touch the mill, you and the mill together become, as far as the static electricity is concerned, one continuous object with the total charge (which is completely harmless) distributed over your body and the mill together -- excluding only the place(s) of contact between the two. Note: this short, perhaps overly simplified explanation of static electricity in the context of the mill is not intended to be beyond the possibility of any critique or amplification by professional physicists, but should suffice for the purpose at hand. The problem of the static charge on the mill can be solved by waiting long enough for the charge to dissipate into the environment, but this can take an inconveniently long time, especially in dry air. A better solution to the problem is to carry the charge away to the general environment or directly to an earth ground via a conductor. I implemented the latter remedy, and it works very well. One version of this remedy, easily implemented, is to use a length of wire (insulated or not) to conduct the charge to ground: with my fingers, I just hold one bare end of the grounded wire against the outside of the unit and, as I pull the cup out, I continue holding the end of the wire and bring it into contact with the "inside" surface of the cup AND the "inside" surface of the opening in the mill body itself (i.e., the opening, or docking port, where the cup fits). This discharges the whole unit (including my body), so that now the coffee grounds (i.e., those on the surface layer in the cup), which also would have become charged, are not forced (by the mutual repulsion of the charges they would have accumulated) to fly to, and distribute themselves annoyingly over, nearby surfaces. It's best not to get hung up on what is "inside" and what is "outside", because the charges just follow the laws of electricity and move around extremely rapidly due to mutual repulsion/attraction to wherever these laws dictate: the instantaneous distribution and the complex movement of the charges is way beyond direct detection by human senses -- although the hair on your arm may produce a sensation due to the forces arising from the attraction between the static charges on the hair and the opposite charges on external surfaces nearby. (Note that the static charge that will build up on the mill during grinding is completely harmless to a human, if it is noticeable at all.) Still another version of the remedy, which will be described next, offers more operational convenience but involves applying some aluminum duct-sealing tape to a few places in/on the unit. The aluminum tape I refer to is adhesive-backed and is available at heating/plumbing supply stores, or at other stores like Home Depot, Lowe's, or Ace Hardware. Just be sure you get the type of tape whose metal surface is bare and not coated with a nonconducting film. You can verify that the surface is bare metal by using a cheap ohmmeter or continuity tester. This alternative remedy is simple and easy to implement, is very effective, does not much affect the appearance of the unit, and, as I see it, presents no undesirable results of any kind. To implement this remedy, I applied three narrow strips of the conducting tape (a quarter inch wide, say; width is not important, except for ease of handling) as shown in the two photos that I uploaded to the product page. [For completeness, or to supplement the photos, the present paragraph describes how to apply the strips of conducting tape. Skip this paragraph if the photos are adequately informative. In what follows I will be referring to (a) the walls of the cup and (b) the walls of the docking port (i.e., the chamber in the mill body where the cup fits). First I describe the two strips of tape to be applied to the cup. One of the two strips of tape is affixed, by its own adhesive backing, to the cup so as to make a conducting path from a point at the top left of the inside of its back wall (call this point A) up and over the lip of the cup straight down to a point B at the bottom left part of its outside rear wall. The second strip starts at point B (make sure it overlaps the first strip) and runs horizontally from there along the outside wall of the cup to a point C at the bottom front corner of the left side of the cup. So much for the cup. Now I describe the third strip of tape, which will be applied to the inside of the docking port. This third strip is applied for a half inch or so along the bottom left rear wall of the docking port, and runs horizontally from there towards the front of the mill body, and finally wraps around the front corner to the outside of the mill body, leaving about a half inch of the tape exposed on the outside of the mill body. This strip is positioned in such a way that it makes contact with the other strip (the second strip as described above) -- which was applied along the bottom outside of the left wall of the cup. Make sure all three strips are completely affixed with their adhesive backing along their entire length. This completes the written description of the conducting tape application, but it's easier to understand all this by simply looking at the photos. Please note that there is a reason why I specified that the second and third strips of tape should run along the bottom of the cup and the docking port, respectively, in such a way that they can be in contact with each other continually as the cup is being pulled out of the docking port: this configuration allows no static charges to build up or persist anywhere in/on the unit while the cup is being removed.] Having described how to apply the strips of conducting tape, I now describe how they work. I still have a grounded wire that I can momentarily touch to the small segment of tape that I left exposed on the front bottom left side of the mill's body, as described above. This exposed segment is barely visible in one of the photos. The momentary, simultaneous contact between your fingers and the tape and the grounded wire instantly carries away all of the static charge in/on the unit, and completely eliminates the static electricity problem. But note that any subsequent rubbing of the mill's body or the cup can build up another charge, just as rubbing a cat with a silk cloth will build up a charge. In that event, just touch the ground wire to the exposed segment of tape and your fingers simultaneously while the cup is in place in the mill body. But wait: with the strips of conducting tape in place as described, the grounded wire may not even be necessary! Apparently, the above-described conducting path alone is sufficient to eliminate the problem of static charging of the whole device (or at least the unbalanced charge between you and the mill), although local conditions may bear on this conclusion (for example, whenever the air is very dry and the user is wearing insulated shoes and the counter/table top is highly nonconducting; under these conditions the grounded wire probably would need to be used, with the user merely needing to touch the mill and the wire simultaneously). Your own experience will lead you to your own conclusion as to whether/when you need to use the grounded wire. My experience is that merely touching the exposed segment of tape on the body of the mill (assuming all strips of tape are affixed as described above) while removing the cup completely eliminates the static charge mismatch, and thus completely solves this unit's problem with static electricity. Other folks may well come up with other ways (and there are many equivalent variants) to handle the static charges. Finally, to recap, this coffee mill is terrific. I liked it so much I bought another one as a gift for my son. The only definite suggestion I could offer to Capresso to make this product all but perfect would be to design it somehow to eliminate the (unbalanced) buildup of static electricity in the first place. For the record, I have no conflict of interest in contributing this review. I hope readers find it worthwhile, and comments would be welcome. [Note (13 February 2013): thanks to a reader who kindly provided me a tip on uploading the two photos I mentioned in the review. These photos can be accessed from the product page.]