Video Overview | Victoria Arduino Mythos 2 Espresso Grinder
Victoria Arduino's Mythos 2 series of espresso grinders give you all the technology you need to unlock more from your coffee. Variable grind speed, Clima Pro 2.0, and gravimetric dosing are now possible with the capabilities available in the Mythos 2 series. Packing high tech features in with high performance parts and design, the Mythos 2 produces excellent results in the cup and wows users while doing it. Learn more in this video, as Steve shares on Victoria Arduino's Mythos 2 grinders.
Transcript
Hey guys, it's Steve, with Prima Coffee. Today, we're taking a look at the Mythos 2, it's Victoria Arduino's newest series of high-end, high-tech commercial espresso grinders, which finally brings real grind my way to market. So Victoria Arduino actually has three models of Mythos 2 available today. There is the pure, the base model, the premium, middle model, and this one actually is the gravimetric. So each one has a little bit...kind of an incremental feature set. The pure model has just the base of everything. It is a time-based grinder, it has 85-millimeter flat burrs. It also has the Clima Pro 2.0 tech that is incorporated now in the Mythos 2 which allows you to set a grind chamber temperature between about 30 and 50C, Celsius. And the grinder basically attempts to hold it there by either heating or cooling the grind chamber as you go. Stepping up the premium also has variable RPM, like grind speed. You can set it from 700 to 1,200 RPM, still grinding by time.
Victoria Arduino Mythos 2 Espresso Grinder
Available in Pure, Premium, and Gravimetric models
Featured Product
And this model, the gravimetric, adds on to that whole feature set the ability to grind by weight as well instead of time. So again, the model that I have here, the gravimetric, allows you to grind by weight, it has the variable RPM, it has the Clima Pro 2.0. Basically, all of the whole features that you would find available in the Mythos 2 series. So if you're familiar with the Mythos 1, it kind of was brought to the market as this sort of high-end espresso grinder that had what they call Clima Pro built in. Which was basically technology that heated the grind chamber, as well as cool it a little bit in order to try and keep the grind temperature consistent all day long. Because in a normal espresso grinder, commercial or otherwise, the more you use it, the more heat builds up and can actually change, not only the burrs will expand, you know, as metal absorbs heat, it will expand, but also will just change the grind profile of your coffee. So the thought was, let's keep it consistent all day long, and basically have more reliable consistent results all day long.
Clima Pro 2, takes that same approach, but also now gives you the ability to change the temperature. So let's say you think you have better results at 30C versus 50, you can at least change that now in 5 degree increments. So among that, we also now have variable RPM, which is probably primarily a speed of service feature. The effect of RPM on grind consistency is there. It's a little bit kind of vague and nebulous at this point, like not a lot of people really know what the difference between 900 RPM and 1,200 RPM is in the cup. There's a difference, it seems to have an effect on grind consistency, but it's not as clear as like bumping up the temperature of your extraction. So some people might fiddle with that, we imagine seeing this as more of like, well, I have a denser coffee, and it takes longer to grind, so I'm probably going to use a higher RPM just in order to keep my production speed up. Versus a less dense, you know, maybe your house espresso blend, it has a really easy time grinding and you're getting a dose out in five seconds already, you can use a lower RPM.
That's kind of where we see that feature coming into play most. Now, the Mythos 2, again, I said has 85-millimeter flat steel burrs that are mounted at a 30 degree angle. And the shoot actually is basically, butted right up against the side of those burrs. So there's not a lot of retention here, there is a clump crusher that does retain a little bit. But we're talking about maybe one to two grams, which is great for a commercial espresso grinder. We have a two kilogram hopper up top, it's got a nice convenient, you know, plastic lid that can slide back and forth or just pick up easily. So you have really good easy access to filling that. Down below, we have adjustable portafilter mounts and on the gravimetric version, basically any weight difference sensed on these portafilter mounts will initiate a grind cycle. So you can basically just slide your portafilter right in, prep a shot or, you know, do some other chore real quick.
Leave it there and basically the grinder is just going to go, it's going to grind out your dose, it's going to measure the weight, and after you've done the initial setup of like going through the menu and figuring out the calibration and that sort of thing, it's pretty darn reliable in our experience so far. You tell it 18 grams, it's going to give you 18 grams. Again, as long as you've gone through the calibration process of figuring out not only like how fast is this coffee grind, and how much do I have to sort of offset that, but also the sort of actual zeroing out of the portafilter. You can go into the menu settings and figure this stuff out. So once it's actually set in, it's pretty darn robust. And we found it's pretty spot on even switching coffees and that sort of thing. There are six programmable profiles, and we have a touchscreen display that we can go in to kind of look at that. So there are six My coffee profiles, you can just kind of tap through them. For each one, you can can set three different doses. So like we'll take a look at My coffee 1, I can set all three of these doses just with a few taps. So if you're doing different style shots, you can set up those doses as needed.
You also have a...if you have the RPM, the variable RPM, you can set that between 700 and 1,200. So right now, we're set at 900, which seems to be doing pretty good for this coffee, and all models with the Clima Pro 2.0, you can set it between 30 and 50C, to hold that grind chamber, again, in that temperature range that you desire for your coffee. One other thing that you can do on the gravimetric. Again, as part of that dialing in processes, you can long press the RPM and set an offset. This is basically telling the grinder to stop a little bit ahead of your target weight. Just because the load cell takes just a little bit longer to figure out what the actual mass in the basket is. So this is really helpful for making sure that you're not overshooting. Generally, what you would do is you would kind of work with your coffee, figure out what your dose is, start grinding. If you have a scale handy, weigh out what you're getting in the basket versus what the actual display says. And then figure out the difference, which you can program in here. So we found that 0.8 grams is suitable for the coffee that we're using today. Once you're done, you can just tap back and you're ready to go.
So let's take a look at what it actually looks like to grind with the gravimetric version of the Mythos 2. I already have the fork set up for this portafilter, all I need do is slide it in, you'll see it takes a moment to think about it. The tear time right now is about five to six seconds, but obviously, after it tears, it will grind relatively quickly through your dose. You probably heard that ramp down in speed, that's actually a programmable setting on the grinder itself. So for each dose, you can tell the grinder, and I'll show you here, you can tell the grinder how much ramp down you would like or at what point you would like it to ramp down. So we have it doing it about 3.5 grams ahead of the final target dose. And that's just a setting that we found after dialing in, it seems to give the grinder a little bit of an easier time in terms of hitting that dose, but also slowing down the grind speed, you might have seen that it was mounted a little bit towards the left side of the basket. That actually helps that mount kind of collapse a little bit back into the center of the basket without too much overflow.
So you can set that as needed. It makes it easier for the grinder to hit the target dose. But overall, it's not necessarily a necessary setting to use. You can probably gather, basically with all the features that are built into this display, especially with the gravimetric version. You do want to read the manual when you're setting up this grinder. It's very, very helpful in terms of walking through the process and making sure that you're getting accurate doses out. In terms of flavor, I'm just going to pull this shot. The previous Mythos, the Mythos 1, had 75-millimeter flat steel burrs coated with titanium. We have upgraded the burrs on the Mythos 2 to 85 millimeters, so larger burrs. The cutting pattern, I mean, it's a little bit difficult to say based on what the burrs look like, how it will like actually affect the coffee in question. But the shots have a lot of the clarity that we really liked out of the Mythos 1.
We've been working with a lot of single-origin lighter coffees, with almost like no trouble dialing in. Like we're getting really good flavors, really good sweetness, they're big flat burrs, you know, we're getting a very similar flavor that we would get out of like Mahlkonig Peak, another big flat burr espresso grinder. So we're very, very happy with the results in the cup so far. And overall, it seems to be a very robust, very useful grinder to have in a high-end specialty coffee shop. A couple of things that might affect your workflow, especially with the gravimetric version, obviously, that tear time is a little bit long. It's five to six seconds of just waiting before grinding, that's going to add a little bit of time to your production. The grinder itself, because it's using a load cell, is sensitive to vibrations. At least in our experience, it's not as if you can't knock out a puck while the grinder is running or tearing. But Victoria Arduino in the manual does actually mention that you should probably be a little bit cautious about vibrations. We wouldn't recommend trying to open up and fill the hopper while the grinder is tearing and grinding because that will probably throw off your actual dose.
But general, the kind of bar work around it doesn't seem to affect it too much in our experience, but that actual increase in time it might make you want to go for the time version instead. Like if you get the premium model instead of the gravimetric, you'll probably end up shaving a second or two off of each shot. And that can add up over the day, especially if you're a really high-volume cafe. You'll probably still see a little bit of variation in terms of actual mass in the basket, but in terms of production, you know, you might have a higher priority on output, you know, actually serving the drinks that are ordered rather than like high-end dose precision. So there's some trade offs here and there, you know, it's a very high-end product, it's new technology. It's very exciting to see grind- by-weight actually making it to market, but there might still be some kinks to work out or just it isn't necessarily going to be the best fit for everybody. So overall, very nice technology, really superb grind quality and flavor in the cup. A lot of really interesting features that are going to make a lot of cafes pretty happy in terms of putting one of these on their bar and serving really high-quality espresso. So that is the Victoria Arduino Mythos 2. Thanks for watching.
