If you’ve been interested in specialty coffee for longer than two seconds, you’ve no doubt been told the grinder is the single most important piece of gear for making delicious coffee. You’ve probably also heard that this is because flavor clarity relies on an evenness in grind size; to extract the same flavors from each particle at the same rate—AKA flavor clarity—each tiny little coffee ground has to be uniform, or as close to it as indiscriminate crushing machines can get.
The chase for flavor clarity has led to many solutions: bigger burrs, stronger motors, even adjustable RPM speeds. But utilizing any of these advancements requires buying a whole new rig. What if you just want to make your current grinder a little better? For that there is the all-new Slow Feeder Pro, an attachment compatible with a host of coffee grinders on the market that works to feed coffee into the hopper at a slow, controlled rate.
The Slow Feeder Pro is designed and manufactured in Switzerland by CremaLoop, who uses 3D printing technology to create a range of home barista tools. The Pro series is an update on the original Slow Feeder, which is essentially a hopper attachment with a diagonal cog in the middle that controls the amount of coffee being fed to the burrs. For most grinders, you just load up the hopper and turn it on, letting gravity dictate how much coffee is being crushed up at a given time. Given the varying density of coffees based on variety and roast level as well as the fact that most home grinders have smaller motors (to help keep the price down), this can lead to speed changes mid-grind, and ultimately variances in particle size. The Electric Slow Feeder minimizes this by ensuring a consistent, even amount of coffee is being ground.
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With the new Slow Feeder Pro, users can control the exact amount of coffee thanks to an adjustable rotational speed. Per CremaLoop, the variable speeds can feed “18 grams of coffee within a time range of 30 to 120 seconds.” The Slow Feeder Pro is powered by two AAA batteries and has a capacity of 25 grams, but an add-on to increase the hopper size is currently in the works.
The Slow Feeder Pro is compatible with select grinders from Acaia, DF64, Eureka, Fellow, Kafatek, Mahlkönig, Lagom, Mazzer, Timemore, Titus, Varia, and Zerno. And if your grinder isn’t on the list, CremaLoop can custom make one.
Currently on pre-sale, The Slow Feeder Pro retails for 130 CHF ($158 USD) but can get yours for the discounted price of 110 CHF ($134 USD), with shipments looking to be completed by June. For more information or to pre-order your own Slow Feeder Pro, visit CreamLoop’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
Top image via CremaLoop
