Video Overview | Mazzer Robur S

The Mazzer Robur S is a commercial espresso grinder made for the busy café. It has 71mm conical burrs running at 420RPM that grind an impressive 6 grams of espresso per second, resulting in a remarkably swift 18 gram dose in just under 3.5 seconds. That speed produces heat, which is kept under control with a dual fan cooling system. The upgraded control center allows up to three doses to be programmed by grind time in addition to grind pauses, portafilter grinding, and other goodies to be set. The Robur S comes with three wire dampers, called the grind Flow Control System, which are each calibrated for different roasts and humidities and can be changed out when necessary to accommodate different coffees and weather conditions.

Transcript

Hey, it's Steve here with Prima Coffee. And today we're gonna take a look at the Mazzer Robur S. Like the previous Robur versions from Mazzer, this is going to be your workhorse grinder. It's made of all premium materials, it weighs 65 pounds, so it's going to be a presence on your counter. But what makes this really great for high-volume cafes is that you can grind out your dose in about three seconds. So, with these burrs, 71-millimeter conical steel burrs, it's grinding out about 6 grams per second. So, it's going to give you your espresso dose in about three seconds, which is really fast. You're going to be able to make a lot of drinks. And with that, it actually stays really cool because it has dual fans in here and the burrs are only spinning at 500 rpm, which is really low for how fast this is able to output espresso. So, other things that make this really great for high-volume cafes is the hopper here can fit about three and a half grams of coffee and the grind adjustment here is one-hundredth of a gram. So, that is even smaller increments that you can adjust this in the previous Robur models. As you can see, this one looks more modern than the previous Robur versions, and that has a lot to do with this new LED screen and also with the, sort of, contour of this hopper. But what's important to know is that this model has a lot of new features. So, Mazzer has completely refined the model from the adjustment collar up here and the digital screen all the way down here to the portafilter force. So, on this one, for instance, you can actually fit your portafilter in here and you can hold it and you can let it sit in there when you're grinding, while the previous models, it just had this bottom part. And so, you would have to hold it on there. With this adjustment comes two different adjustments. So, there are two screws here. And that's the main plate. So, that's so that you can move this here. Let me go ahead and do it for you. You can move the fork up and down. And that's basically going to adjust the, sort of, depth. So, how far that coffee is traveling to get into your portafilter here. If you have taller portafilters, obviously, you're going to want to lower this down. We have it all the way as high up as you can go. But it's just as simple as unscrewing these two like that, yeah, and then you can move this up or down to where you need it. And then you can go ahead and screw it back in. For this particular one, like I said, it's a bottomless portafilter and so we are using all the way as high as this can go.

But the other adjustment that you have on here is the holding part of the fork here. So that you can leave that in, these two little clips, or grab the top, the rim of that portafilter, and hold it in place. You can adjust it so that they meet that rim and hold it. And that's just done with a screw here and a screw here. So, you can unscrew those and then you can move those up and down. Mazzer's also included these two additional clips in the packaging. And that does allow you to increase the height of that clip there. So, if you're using a double spatter portafilter, which is to say a portafilter with a lot more depth to it, a lot more, then you're going to want something like this that you can use. Also included in the package is an additional button. So, right now the button that's on there is set all the way, sort of, deeply inside here. So, you're going to want to turn this off when you do this so that you don't accidentally grind. So, that it's activated when you hit the portafilter up against that button. You got to actually press it to give it some pressure and then it'll grind out. And if you had a portafilter maybe that was smaller than this one or if just the way that you wanted the coffee to fall into the portafilter basket, you can turn this off and unscrew that button with just a flathead screwdriver and you can put in the other button. So, you can see the difference between the two here. So, there's a long one, there's a short one. So, again, probably for, if you have smaller portafilters, you can screw that in. The coffee is going to fall into a different, sort of, part of that portafilter. So, turn it back on, and you can see too, I won't press in, that these clips aren't actually grabbing onto the rim there. And that's because this portafilter button is pressed out much more. So, this isn't actually getting all the way in there. But again, if you're using a different portafilter, one where that button works, so, it still works the same. And as you can see there, it's going to grind into a different part of the portafilter given that that button is pressing this out from the bottom. So, there are a couple new features that you can do here on the collar. One of them is that you can calibrate this. So, you can set your zero point without having to adjust any of the grind, without having to adjust the burrs themselves. You can do it all right here. So, you're going to take... You'll do this when there's no coffee in here. You'll take the burrs all the way down to that zero point, so, when they're touching, and then you'll back it off just a little bit from that. And then there are a couple little screws. You'll have to take the hopper off to do this. So, you want to make sure that you have this closed off, the hopper closed off here. And on the back of the hopper, there's just a screw, finger screw that you can loosen. And that allows you to lift the hopper off. Now, the hopper does have...you can see here, it has this little piece that fits into the back. And if that piece isn't into the back, then the grinder turns off because you have access here to the burrs. So, it's just a safety feature. You can hear the fans turned off when I pull that out. Once you've done that, you have two screws on the top, just Phillips head screws, one here and one on the back here. And you move those out and that allows you to actually...to turn the part of the collar that has the numbers on it. And then when you get that to the point where... whatever you found as your zero point, you'd pull zero around to that point here. And then you can go ahead and screw those screws back in. And then you have set your zero point. So, that's a really quick and easy way to set your calibration.

Another feature is you can pull off this entire outer burr assembly and that allows you access into the center burr. It allows you to clean in there, something that you're going to probably want to do every day, without changing the grind adjustment. So, how they've done that is the grind adjustment is here on this collar. And so, you'll move this lever back and forward. So, it's a little counterintuitive. You're going to go clockwise here to go coarser and you're going to go counterclockwise to go finer. And that's all done here. However, on the outside of this, there are four Allen screws. And if you take those out, you can pull this entire outer burr out and you have access in there. And then it goes back in only one way. It'll go back in only one way. This will stay where it is. So, your adjustment doesn't change if you want to get into those burrs. You're going to need a little tool because there are little plastic covers on those Allen screws. You can take those off and then you'll take a five-millimeter Allen screw here and you'll go ahead and just unscrew these. You can actually leave them in there instead of taking them out. Leave them in their place but unscrew them. And then you can just go ahead and pull this whole piece out right there. So, you can see this here, you have the screws in there. That is your outer burr right there. And the adjustment's not going to change because it only fits back in one way. And this will allow you to get in here. Even if the grinder is on at this point, when you have the hopper off, it is not going to be running. You can take a vacuum and you can clean this up here at the end of the day. You can brush out anything down to the chute. Then you can go ahead and take this and it fits right back in position. And you can see the adjustment here on the grind stayed where it was. So, we'll get the hopper back on, screw it in the back here, and the grinder, you can see, has turned back on. So, another new feature of the Robur is what they're calling the grind flow control. And they send you, in the package, three different... well, two are here in the package and one is installed on the grinder, three different wires. And these basically are anti-clumping or anti-static wires that fit there between those burrs in the chute on the way down here to your portafilter. And so, each one of these has a purpose. It comes installed with what's called the hybrid, so, that's both anti-clumping and anti-static. It's supposed to do both pretty well. But, if you find that your coffee is clumping too much, well, then, you can take the wire that's in there and you can install the anti-clumping. And then, if you find that there's too much static, then you can install this anti-dust here, which is in the middle. And again, the factory-fitted one is what's called the hybrid and that's supposed to do everything pretty well. And you should probably keep that one in there unless you see that those things are happening and then you can go ahead and install that. It's really simple. Once you have the top off here, there's a pin on the front. And once you remove that, you'll basically be able to pull the assembly out that has the grind flow control wire.

So, to do that, there's a guard here, which is another safety feature, to make sure that you're not reaching your hand there into the chute or up there close to where those burrs are. It's just two Phillips head screws on either side of the guard. Take those out, take that guard out, and then you can go ahead and just pull that assembly straight out. This is what your assembly looks like. I'll show you, coffee caught up in the wire there. You can see with this and with, sort of, the way that they've engineered this, you're going to find about a 50% or they say 52% less retention from the old Robur to this one. And as you can see, that's where that retention is going to be. So, the wire is in there but you still have one more step. There's a little cap on this. You're going to need a small, like a jeweler's Philip head here, to pull these three screws out. And now, we can take that little cap off, and there is the wire. To get that out, you're just going to press it from the other side, and it'll just pop right on out. And that's what that one is. So, the case has a little slot for each of these. So, we'll throw this one into the hybrid there and we'll put in the anti-clumping. To install it, on the side here, it says 1, 2, and 3. And it shows you that there are three slots. They're really, really tiny little holes here. The wire number 1 fits into the first hole, 2 fits in the second, and 3 fits into that last one. And you'll be able to see that on there. And the numbers are actually in here, inside this little case. It shows you this is 1, this is 2, and this is 3. So, anti-clumping is number 1. So, put that one into the first slot. Take the end that is bent, the other side goes through, and then you can press it into place. It's best to hold one finger on the other side and that allows you to just go ahead and pop that in. Then take the cap right down, make sure that's in there, then you could just reinstall the cap here, and you're good to go. So, this is a good opportunity for you to clean out that chute. So, this fits flush in there. So, if you have a vacuum cleaner or you can use your brush here, you'll see a lot of debris come through down there. Make sure that's all clear. Once you got that, just slide this back in. Take your pin, put that back in. Cool. And now that's there. Go ahead and put the outer burr assembly back on, you can put your guard back on. You can reinstall these four covers onto those Allen screws, put this hopper back on. When it goes into the slot here, you'll see the grinder will turn back on. One last note here about this grind adjustment collar. They have over here a set screw, you can take that out, that fits through any one of these holes. So, when you get it into position, you can put this down and it actually screws into a nut that is riding on a rail here, as you can see, and it'll move about four to five inches. And if this is screwed in, it'll make sure that you do not adjust it, sort of, wildly in either direction. So, if you put this down in, you can screw it into that nut. And that just means that you can adjust it but you can't adjust it too far. So, that might be a good feature if you have a really busy cafe and you're trying to, sort of, tell your baristas the range that it's going to fit into. But four inches is pretty far. So, you might not even have to take this screw out to make any of the adjustments that you're going to need for any particular coffee.

Like other Mazzers, you can unscrew this lever here that gives you leverage when you are adjusting the grind and you can put it into any other slot. So, if you are adjusting it pretty far, then you're going to want to move this out and into a different position, you can totally do that. So, there are two ways to grind here. You can either grind with your portafilter so that when you press this button with the portafilter, it'll dose out however many seconds you set this up to dose out. The other way that you can do it, and you need to go into the menu to do it, is to grind here with any one of these three buttons here. So, to do that, you're going to go into the menu. And the first submenu here is grind settings. You'll click on that. And it says dosing time, grinding pause, or working mode. And then you go down to working mode, enter, and then it says keyboard or port-a-filter and that allows you to either change... use this down here or the keyboard to actually start and stop the grind. So, go ahead and hit the keyboard. Do you confirm? Yes. So, now our grinding is happening up here on the keyboard and we have grinding time 1, grinding time 2, and grinding time 3, and you can program all of those quite easily here from the home screen by holding the menu button and the number. So, the menu and 1 will bring up how many seconds 1 is set for. And again, you can adjust this in hundredths of a second. So, 2.9, 2.91, and then you can hit okay. And then it will save that in there for you. So, now, instead of using this button, so the button won't work, when you get this into position, you'll hit whatever button number you want. You can see it grinds up quite a bit there. So, we're going to want to either adjust this to make it finer or we're going to change the time on that. The other option you have up here is just to go ahead and grind by hand, which is to say manually. And that's the first button. So, there are four, sort of, buttons across the bottom. Three of them have numbers and that fourth one is just a hand with a finger and you hit that. You can start and stop it as you please. Another thing you can do, if you're going to grind with a portafilter, is you can set up a pause. So, when you hit this button, it'll dose out half or whatever percentage you set, between 30 and 90, of the grind. And then when you hit the button again with the portafilter, it'll grind out the rest. So, that'll be nice if you want to settle the grinds in between, if you want to do something and then put it back in, that gives you that option. You don't have to turn it on, but you can. And to do that, you'll go into the menu, back into your grind settings, and the second menu option here is going to be your grinding pause. And you can set either one, 1, 2, or 3, any one of those numbers on there. We'll go ahead and set the number 1 and either... first button here is your percentage, so from 30 to 90, and we have it on 50 now. Hit okay. And then it also has an activate pause. So, again, you can turn it off or you can turn it on. We'll go ahead and enable the pause, and then we'll go back out to the menu. So, now we have it set up here to grind out half when you hit the button. So, again, this will allow you to do whatever you're going to do, settle the grinds so that it's consistent. And then when you hit that button again, it'll grind out the rest. So, a cool thing about that is you'll see a little timer pop up once it's paused, and it'll give you 30 seconds to hit that button again, which you're probably not going to need. But after 30 seconds, it will forget it and it'll go back to 0 again. You can get out of that 30 seconds by hitting the back button here on the menu. And that'll allow you to go ahead and bypass and start the next one, if you wanted to. Another reason you might want to use that pause function is if you're set up for a bar that has both single dosings or portafilters with one spout and double shots as well. So, you might have it set so that the double shots are the ones where you hit the second time and the singles, you just take half of that dose. But really, we probably see this being stopping in the middle, settling your grounds, and then going again.

So, before we talk about the menu, so we'll go into the menu and show you those, I will say that on the display, you will see a WiFi icon. And so, yes, this is a WiFi-compatible grinder. But what we found is that sometimes, it'll drop off, sometimes, it's difficult to connect. In our experience, we haven't really been using that. So, let's get into the menu here. So, there are two buttons here for the menu and then there's an up and a down key over here. So, those are, sort of, what you're doing to navigate through the menu. But the main menu key is the three lines and that gets you into the menu. And the second one here is the back key. So that's if you want to go back to the previous screen. The first one here is grind settings. And when you're in here, you get dosing time, grinding pause, or working mode. So, we've already done the grinding pause and the working mode. The working mode is just do you want to use, down here, the port-a-filter button or do you want to use the buttons up here on the keypad? The grinding pause is, of course, to set in the middle of the grind, from 30% to 90% of that grind, pause it to allow you to settle the grinds or something else. The first one here is dosing time. by holding on to that menu key and then the number that you want. But you can also do it in here if you'd like. The second one, when you're back out on the main menu, is settings. So, in the settings, you have languages, and this has 19 languages in here that you can set it to. So, it has a lot of options there. Your date, your clock, and then your display. So, your display on here just gives you your brightness. And then if you want to set it to go into standby mode, you can do that as well. Back out on the main one, so it's grind settings, settings. Third one is information. And in there you have your dose counter. So, on the main screen, you will see a number in the center and that's going to be how many doses that you've actually activated on this. So, we're up to 221 on this one. So, you can just read it in here as well. You can't do anything to that. The second one is the doses left. That one is grayed out, which means it's not being used now. That's something that you can set deep into the parameters, deep into the menu when you have the password. Third one here is stats. And so, for button 1, 2, and 3, and then for how many that you've used on the manual, it'll give you a number that you've done. And then you can read your firmware button. So, back out here into the first level, the fourth one is service. So, if you go down to service, this will be basically going into the technical settings. So, once you hit your password then hit okay, it'll take you into burr management, sort of, activate alerts, reset your grind counter. And all of these are basically if you want an alert to pop up. So, when you want to change the burrs, you can set this so after so many doses, it'll alert you to go ahead and change your burrs and then you can reset it back to zero so that it starts that whole thing over again. You can mess with your total counter in here as well. You can see we're up to 290 on the total counter and 220, like I said before, on the other counters. And there are a couple other options in there as well that you can get into but again, that's into the technical settings of it. What you're really going to spend or where you're really going to spend most of your time is in that first level where you have your settings for grinding and then your grind settings as well. Also, in the package, you're going to have your tray here. If you wanted to have this on here to catch the excess grounds, you can do that. Mazzer also sends a tamper and then a portafilter stand. So, if you're using a spouted portafilter, this will fit in there and you can tamp. So, those are a couple of things that come with it. So, that is your Mazzer Robur S Espresso Grinder. It is an update from the old Robur. It is a little bit more modern in its look and it has some really cool features up here on the collar.