First, a set of links to all the parts of this review, if you’d like more detail and coffee-geekery:

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/89106689421/ek43-day-one

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/89342708821/part-two-higher-temperatures-weaker-ratios

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/90181964666/ek43-part-3-temperature-experimentation-aka-how-to

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/90608492911/ek43-part-four-arriving-at-a-recipe-bonus

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/91088434051/ek43-day-five-a-finalized-wave-recipe-and-chemex

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/93826834636/ek43-the-v60

http://no-stream.tumblr.com/post/98520736681/ek43-part-6-espresso

And now, some words…

So the EK is an excellent grinder. You get clean, sweet coffee, and an ability to extract more than from a typical home grinder - any home grinder, really. Whether it’s better than a commercial bulk grinder, I can’t say, but certainly there is no better grinder for drip or press coffee.

Over the course of using the EK, my preference has tended toward lower ratios of coffee:water because of the incredible clarity that the EK delivers. When you use lots of water with the EK, you just get this perfectly transparent cup that shows off the nuances of the coffee. My preference for extraction actually hasn’t really changed. It was 20-23% with my old steel burr Vario and is 21-23% with the EK. You can get 24-26% from the EK, but it’ll have a bit of an astringent cacao-caramel edge that some people aren’t into. You can see, if you wade through the 6000 words of text of the review’s segments how my thoughts have evolved.

As far as espresso, I have found the EK to be a mixed bag. With meticulous technique, you can get something like espresso from the EK’s finest settings (1-1.5). But it’s not that repeatable of a process, requires messing around with things like the “ross droplet technique,” Weiss distribution technique, nutating tamp… you get the idea.

In any case, the shots that you do pull are just so clean and sweet. It’s almost disconcerting to lose that bitter cacao nib edge that I always assumed was just part of espresso coffee. The EK does pull tighter shots with darker roasts (by darker, I mean FC-FC+ Northern Italian roasts), and I found no evidence that it’s somehow awful with these traditional espressos. Perhaps EK Italian espresso won’t blow your mind, but the EK is fine with it. The EK’s obviously great for putting drip coffee through your espresso machine… but it’ll come out at lungo strength, say 33%. So the EK is an excellent choice for lungos and “coffee shots,” but it’s not a replacement for an espresso grinder. My HG One still sees plenty of use.

So the EK is not a miracle, but it is a great grinder. A “Bunnzilla” at ~$600 is a way better deal, as is a used bulk grinder (with sharp burrs - you need to check) at <$1000. But if you have a bit of cash and a bit of space and you’re absolutely insane about coffee… well I don’t regret the purchase. I’ll be using this beautiful machine for many years.