Video Overview | Helor 101 Hand Grinder
The Helor 101 hand grinder combines superior grind quality with modern aesthetics, to satisfy even the pickiest of coffee enthusiasts. Built to replicate the output of commercial grinders, the 101 includes both conventional and contemporary burr sets, plus stepless grind adjustment, so you can easily dial in for espresso or dial up to a drip grind. In this video, discover everything you need to know about the Helor 101, as Steve highlights the features that make it one of the smartest hand grinders on the market.
Transcript
Hey there. It's Steve with Prima Coffee here. Today, we're taking a look at the Helor 101 hand grinder. This is probably one of the best hand grinders we've ever encountered at Prima. This is an all-aluminum body, it's a unibody design, so it's all milled from one piece of aluminum. It's got a great set of burrs inside. And in fact, you get two sets of burrs with this grinder. There is so much that goes into this and makes it such a great hand grinder, so let's jump right in. Up top, we have a stainless steel lid and handle with this nice wooden knob. We've got a super-smooth grinding action. In fact, there's two ceramic bearings in here that give this really, really smooth action and it's super-stable, really great for your grind consistency as well as just giving it, again, that really smooth grinding action. So it's a little bit easier on your wrist and your arm as you're grinding. Inside, we have about a 30 to 40-gram bean hopper that depends on the size of your beans as well as their overall density. But we find that about 30 to 40 grams fits in here pretty much up to the top. So, good for single cups or a couple of cups to share, but not necessarily really large pour-over brews or something like that.
Helor 101 Hand Grinder
Twin 38 mm burr sets to suit your needs: one for finer espresso/Turkish grinds, one for drip and press
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In here, as I said, we have a unibody design, so you can see that this is all one piece of aluminum, it's just milled out into that center chamber there. We have a stainless steel drive shaft. This is actually a locking ring up top that you can tighten or loosen to just to fix it down. So if you're seeing that you have maybe a little bit of wobble, you can tighten this, and it is reverse-threaded, so lefty, tighty, righty, loosey. So you can tighten that down or you can take it off to remove the whole shaft and take things apart to clean, or perhaps put on a new set of burrs. Down below, we have a step-less adjustment with this little adjustment ring here, and you can just give it a twist left or right to loosen or tighten and change your grind size. Really, really easy to do, and in fact, it's self-locking. There's a spring behind the burr that puts some pressure against this. And then just between the pressure and the friction of the adjustment mechanism on the bottom of the burr, it locks itself in place and we don't really see any problems with slipping grind settings at all. The grind catch itself is also milled aluminum with a little O-ring, so it stays firmly in place while you're grinding. And of course, we have this beautiful sort of blasted finish that's very reminiscent of certain technology, laptop products and things. So really just an overall super-attractive design as well as great performance and functionality.
And I mentioned you get two burr sets. This one right here is an Italian-made alloy steel burr. This is what they call the conventional burr, which is better suited for Espresso. So basically the whole idea here is that these primary cutting surfaces are a little bit more aggressive just to kind of break things up more quickly and get them down to the secondary cutting faces where they will get more sort of fine finishing. So they're not necessarily super good at coarse grinds. We do recommend them for Espresso, where we think they excel pretty well. In fact, this is the same burr set, however, uncoated as the Feldgrind hand grinder. So we see pretty similar performance to the Feldgrind and we like both for Espresso grinding for sure. The one inside here, a little bit harder to see, but that's the contemporary burr. It's a steel burr. It has a slightly different cutting pattern and we find it works a little bit better for those coarse grinds. So it's certainly not shabby at Espresso, but it does do a better job with the coarse grind. So if you are planning on doing drip grinds or French press or something like that, we recommend switching to that burr set. And we do give you both with our healers here at Prima. There's a couple of other accessories that come with it as well. You have a little wrap that you put on the side for grip. That's just silicone rubber. Spare O-ring for the grinds catch, should you need it. As well as a couple of wrenches.
So this is a little U-pin that you use to adjust this nut at the top and then an allen wrench to remove the lock-in ring to switch out your burr set. So switching up burrs is really easy. You just need to remove the lock nut... Oh, I'm sorry, the adjustment nut, remove the screws from the lock-in ring, and then you can pull both burrs right out. There are two little what are called keys. They basically hold everything in place. You can see how there's a notch on this burr, so you put a key in next to that, and then lock a key in right here, net notch. You just want to make sure that those are all lined up when you insert your burrs. We also want to make sure that the fine cutting surface faces out. So obviously, the cone burr, you want the flat side to be on the bottom, and then for the ring burr, you want these bigger teeth to be facing toward the top of the grinder itself. So apart from some alignment things, really very easy to do, very easy to swap out your burrs, and switch up your grind however you need to. So I'm going to get this set up real quick for grinding some coffee and just show you how quick and easy it is to do.
I've got about 18 grams of coffee, and I'm going to pretend I'm grinding for something like at least 60. Pop my lid off, pour my beans in. Just give it a little shake to settle, and then put the handle on. We're getting very, very smooth, very quick and easy action. This handle is great because it gives you some room around the knob for your fingers to go. So as you're traveling around, you're not really bumping into that at all. You have plenty of room for a nice, comfortable grip. Plenty of leverage for grinding your coffee, and then, of course, taking a look at the grind quality here. You have a pretty decent drip grind, not too many boulders to speak of, and certainly not very many finds. And in the cup, we found a drip quality for our brewed coffee is really, really fine. And we really like it for Espresso as well. So if you need something, you know, that has really good performance for your home espresso set up, and maybe you don't want to spend $500 a grinder, you could grab the Helor and do a pretty good job at home as long as you don't mind grinding by hand. So that is the Helor 101 hand grinder. Thanks for watching.
