Video Overview | Option-O Lagom Mini Coffee Grinder

Transcript

I'm Ryan from Prima, and this is the Option-O Lagom Mini. To call this grinder miniaturized might be an understatement. The Lagom Mini stands only 9.4 inches tall and 2.6 inches wide, making it quite possibly the smallest electronic burr grinder on the market. But don't let the size fool you. The Lagom Mini is constructed of the highest quality materials and a premium conical burr set for exceptional grind quality.

So first, let's talk a little bit about the fit and finish. The Lagom Mini is available in black and silver anodized aluminum and is constructed specifically of 6061 T6 aluminum, which is going to be familiar to any of you who own an Apple product. Up top is a magnetic lid, which provides access to a 30 gram capacity hopper. And then below the spout here is a 40 gram grounds catch, and this is actually milled out of a single block of metal as well, which is interesting. The Lagom Mini features a very smooth external step less adjustment, capable of a full range from espresso, french press, cold brew, whatever you need, and it's able to make infinite very small changes to grind size for any brew method.

Inside of the Lagom Mini is a very sturdy axle supported by dual P5 grade angular contact bearings, which basically just means that the cone burr is extremely stable and without play, ensuring a really consistent grind every time. You'll have the choice of two 48 millimeter burr sets when purchasing a Lagom Mini. The first set Option-O calls obsidian, which aren't actually made from obsidian, but they do have a similar color. They're sort of black. They're actually coded in titanium nitride, which gives the burrs an advantage for espresso grinding. These burrs create a cup profile with higher body and medium clarity, which is advantageous for espresso or other fine grinds. And for those of you who just prefer denser body in their pour over brews like me. The second available burr set is called moonshine, named after the kind of reflective nature of those burrs. It's a non coated burr set, which produces juicier coffee and higher clarity and medium body. So if you primarily brew filter coffee, you'll most likely prefer those. But just keep in mind that either of these burr sets can be used for any application and you'll get some different flavors. So this little DC motor is rated for 600 hours of operation, which is around 36,000 shots of espresso, or 60,000 single cup pour overs, which is equivalent to like one brew a day for 164 years, which isn't half bad. Let's talk about some other important considerations. Before buying a Lagom Mini, I think the most important thing you should know is that this is not a fast grinder. It's not built for speed. Grinding 18 grams for espresso will take about 60 seconds or so and 20 grams at a medium fine grind, say for a V 60, will take about 15 to 30 seconds. This is really a single cup grinder at heart and shouldn't be used to grind anything more than about 30 grams at a time. Second, although the motor is pretty durable for its size, this grinder should be used on a one to one duty cycle, meaning if you grind for like 60 seconds, you need to wait for 60 seconds to let the motor rest before grinding again, just to prolong the life of that motor. You should also never grind more than four shots of espresso over 10 minutes. Lastly, the Lagom Mini has no real safety mechanisms in place to prevent someone from accidentally injuring their fingers. So inside the hopper is a removable 3D printed finger guard that doesn't really accomplish anything meaningful in terms of safety. So because of the toy like size of this grinder, and because there is quick access to spinning burrs, this might not be a grinder to have around if you have small children. A grinder like the Baratza Virtuoso plus, the Vario plus may be a better fit in that case, since they feature a permanent finger guard and a micro switch that prevents those burrs from spending any time the hopper is removed.

So let's go ahead and see the Lagom Mini in action. I'm going to grind for a 20 gram pour over and then also for espresso. We're going to taste those. We're going to kind of listen to the noise and the speed and evaluate it all. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and brew a pour over. Today I'm using a geisha from Costa Rica, roasted by our friends at Regalia Coffee in New York. It's a naturally processed coffee with notes of strawberry and jasmine according to the bag. We will see for ourselves. So I'm going to go ahead and grind this on a pretty fine setting. I think what we would call medium fine, and I'm using the Espro Bloom today. This is a really quick dripper that allows for very fine grinds and just really easily higher extractions and higher body. So let's give that a try. So you can see, I can have a conversation with you over the sound of this grinder. It sounds a little bit like an RC car on the floor. It's not really loud at all. It's about half as loud I would guess, as something like a Baratza Encore or Virtuoso, which you'd really have to raise your voice over. So this is 20 grams and it's taking some time. This motor's not running far above 200 RPMs. Okay, so that's it. There's no knocker on this grinder, so you just kind of have to deal with whatever might fall out. I put 20.2 grams of coffee in there. Let's see what we got out. 20.0. So that's a variance of about 0.2 grams, and that's really about the best that you can expect from any grinder in terms of retention. The vertically oriented conical burr set is helping with that. This is a very small grinder with pretty minimal surface area for grounds to catch on, and a pretty short spout that's connected right to that burr chamber. This is really about as good as it gets for single cup dosing in terms of retention. You're going to get out pretty much what you put in. I will usually toss in as a general rule, like one extra bean just to account for whatever may be retained in here. All right, so let's start our brew. So I've chosen the obsidian burr set for this demonstration today. The obsidian I mentioned is the set that Option-O recommends for espresso. And also if you like, higher body coffee. I personally just tend to prefer coffee with denser body. That's partly why I prefer grinding super fine for my pour overs. There's just something about it to me that's pretty satisfying. But a lot of folks out there are wanting to pursue clarity, which is also fantastic. And for that, you'd probably want to stick with the moonshine set, which will just create a bit less fines than the titanium set will. The titanium set is going to create more fines, which is going to be advantageous when you're brewing espresso because it'll more easily kind of build that back pressure needed. But as you'll see in a minute, as we taste this, my experience has been that those fines are really not sort of interrupting the clarity that's inherent to both of these burrs. We'll keep in mind that these are both still conical burrs. So they still have a bimodal distribution, which means they kind of have two primary grind sizes instead of just a small bump of fines, like a flat burr set would. They kind of have two modes of particle sizes. And so that's still present in these sets. I'm not trying to compare this to a flat burr set, but compared to many other conical burr sets like in some of the hand grinders we have around here, it produces a pretty darn high clarity cup. All right, that's it. So my brew ended at about three and a half minutes at a medium fine grind. So this will be a relatively high extraction. That's a one, two, eh, about 15 and a half ratio. Let's give it a taste. I never judged coffee on the first sip. Yeah, so just like every other cup I've experienced, there's great clarity here. That acidity comes through from the geisha. I taste the fruit, I taste the jasmine that Regalia has described, but there's just a measure of density to this cup, which is different from the moonshine, which kind of just lets the body of it just linger on your tongue. It's a little more chewy, but not like a metal filter sort of way where you're actually tasting sediment or anything like that. It's just, it's clean coffees. It's just, it lasts longer on your tongue, and that's just something that I prefer. But if you want something cleaner, high clarity, definitely go for that moonshine burr set.

All right, so I've measured out 17 grams. We're going to go ahead and brew an espresso shot. I've adjusted the Lagom Mini, actually about eight steps finer, which is a little finer than I anticipated. Put the grounds catch under and let's go. So anytime you're grinding finer with a grinder, it's going to take longer. And especially with this grinder, because it's only grinding it at a little above 200 RPMs, it's going to take pretty close to a full minute to get through all this coffee. That being the case, it might sound a little bit like this little motor's struggling, but in my experience, this motor has never bound up. It's never stopped. I think Option-O has addressed that really well by putting enough torque in this motor. This is a pretty light roasted coffee. It's a geisha, so it's a little on the less dense side, but still very light roasted. I've never seen an issue with binding at all. Okay. I'm going to grab the porta filter from our Bianca and dose out 17 grams. All right, so that was about 17 in and 40 out. Let's give this a taste. I'm going to drink it right out of the shot glass, same thing. Exceptional clarity for an espresso grinder. All the body that you need for espresso, really focused clean flavors that highlight that natural process coffee. It's fantastic. It's a really true multi-purpose grinder, not just for its retention capabilities, but also because that burr set really does find a balance between accommodating espresso grinds and pour over grinds all the same. So that's the Option-O Lagom Mini. Check it out at primacoffee.com. Thanks for watching.