Video Overview | Kinu M47 Traveler Manual Coffee and Espresso Grinder
With the M47 Traveler, Kinu has delivered a trimmed-down, lightened-up, travel-friendly manual coffee and espresso grinder with all the quality you'd expect from a Kinu. It features the same 47 mm conical steel burrs as the original M47, with a hopper capacity of about 25-30 grams of whole beans. Learn more about this packable manual grinder as Steve shares a complete overview of the Kinu M47 Traveler.
Transcript
Hey, folks. It's Steve with Prima Coffee here. Today, we're taking a look at the Kinu M47 Traveler. It's a hand grinder designed to pack the performance and quality of the M47, its bigger brother, into a more travel-friendly package. So, what we've got with the traveler is essentially like what I just said. It's the performance and quality of the M47 made smaller and more compact. Instead of being an all stainless steel grinder, we now have an aluminum outer shell, we have more plastic parts, it is lighter, it is smaller, and again, it's basically designed to be a little bit more travel-friendly. Inside, we have the same exact 47-millimeter conical steel burrs coated in a, like, hardening coating that's proprietary to Kinu. Same exact burr set.
Kinu M47 Traveler Manual Coffee and Espresso Grinder
Compact and lightweight with sturdy steel where it counts
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We also still have stainless steel parts on the inside. We have a steel shaft, steel bearings, steel shaft mounts and braces. Pretty much the entire grind mechanism is made of stainless steel for sturdiness, for overall quality, more or less to give you the same grind results that you would expect out of the bigger M47. We also do still have micrometrically-stepped grind adjustment. There are 50 clicks per turn of this grind wheel. Very, very easy to adjust, just open up the top screw a little bit, just so you can kind of wiggle the handle, and then we are able to turn the grind adjustment. And you get a good discrete click every time you turn it one step. Fifty steps per rotation, and each step corresponds to one-one hundredth of a millimeter. Which is great because you very rarely see discrete settings like that and know just how much you are moving the burs with every click or part of a rotation.
Overall, the capacity is obviously smaller, as we are smaller than the original M47, I can show you here just for comparison. The M47 weighs about almost two-and-a-half pounds. The Traveler weighs a little under one-and-a-half pounds. So, we've got a pretty significant reduction in overall weight. Obviously, there's a difference in size here. And as I said, we have a material difference as well. So, the M47, the original is all stainless steel construction with some ABS plastic parts, accents mostly. Whereas the Traveler has an aluminum body, just the outer casing, the interior, again, is steel. The grinds catch is entirely ABS plastic, with a little O-ring gasket rather than the set of magnets that you see on the larger M47. So, overall, I mean, a difference in build material, not necessarily build quality. It still feels quite sturdy to use. There's perhaps a little bit of wiggle, but what we've noticed is the wiggle seems to be a little bit more centered on the handle rather than the burrs themselves.
If you feel a little bit of movement, you don't necessarily see it when looking at the cone burr and the ring burr down below. Capacity is reduced. We have about 20 to 30 grams fitting in the hopper, depending on the size and density of your beans. The grinds catch actually still holds around 30 to 40 grams of ground coffee, depending on how fine you're grinding it. So, again this is designed to be a more travel-friendly grinder. It is fairly compact, it is quite lightweight compared to its big brother. It still moves and feels quite similar. The handle is a little bit shorter, so it's a little tiny bit harder to grind. If you've got denser coffees, you'll definitely notice that, just because you don't have the extra leverage of a longer handle. But overall, it's very similar in quality.
If you've used the M47, you'll feel very familiar grinding with the M47 Traveler. One bigger difference to note is that the thumb rest is much larger. On the M47 itself, it's a fairly small kind of bump on the diameter of the grinder, and in fact, in our M47 video, I tell you that I prefer to tuck it right here on my pointer finger. I just find that more comfortable for grinding. With the thumb-rest, you're more or less forced to stick it into your thumb or just stick your hand below, if you prefer not to use it. It doesn't really have a downside to grinding with it and bracing with your thumb. Some people may not find that as comfortable as others. I actually don't mind using it, as I did on the M47, the original. But, you may have a difference of opinion and it's totally fine to just kind of firmly grasp the grinder below it, if needed.
So, let's grind some coffee and I'll show you what it looks like. I have it set right now in sort of a finer drip range. Grind quality-wise, we've noticed, like the M47, really where it excels is that fine drip and espresso range. That's where the best flavor clarity happens. Once you go a little bit coarser, you start to see a little bit more fines in the brew, which could lead to a little bit of muddy-ness or just a little less flavor clarity. Our preference is certainly as an espresso grinder or as maybe, like, single cup brews in a Kalita Wave or a V60 or an AeroPress. Unfortunately, it's not small enough to pack into an AeroPress, but it is still fairly small and compact. So, grind quality-wise, again, this is on the finer end. We've got pretty good grind consistency. We don't see too many fines, again, in this fine range. This would be an appropriate grind for an AeroPress brew or even a small single-cup V60.
I do have...you can probably tell from the color, a lighter roasted coffee here, so I would grind it a little bit finer than perhaps a darker one or a blend. But anyway, overall, grind quality is quite good. We have noticed a little bit more static and that's potentially because of the plastic grinds catch as opposed to a metal one. But, that could even just be speculation on our part. Overall, quality is still excellent. Kinu definitely knows what they're doing when they're designing a product and manufacturing a product. Again, there's maybe a little bit of slop that you can feel in the handle, but once it comes down to actual grinding and the grind quality that you get out of it, quite excellent. And you are still paying a little bit of a premium for the product. Overall, we do feel it's a pretty good value for what you get though. So, that is the Kinu M47 Traveler. Thanks for watching.
