Mahlkönig E64 WS Review

In the past few years Mahlkönig has made some pretty serious innovations when it comes to precision grinding and dosing. The unification of their GbW (Grind by Weight) and now GbS (Grind by Sync) technologies have resulted in a grinding platform that is centered around the recipe and most importantly, the coffee. While Mahlkönig initially debuted these technologies in their robust commercial catalog, this year, those features have hit the home market with the arrival of the E64 WS.

Grinding with the E64 WS

 

Having spent a good deal of time testing the grinder alongside my colleague John, I’ve got a pretty good handle on how the E64 WS works and what I like about it. Given that its primary mode of operation is to grind by weight, simply placing the portafilter into the cradle initiates a grind cycle for your selected recipe. Recipes are selected using the rotating encoder on the right side of the screen and there is a manual grinding mode that can be initiated by pressing and holding the top button on the left side of the screen.

Recipe Customization

You are able to create and customize up to three grinding recipes for easy access within the grinder. The following settings can be adjusted:

• Grinding Mode - Whether you want the recipe to be measured and ground by weight or by time.
• Dose - Your desired dose (in grams) or duration (in seconds) for the shot.
• Shot Type - Single, Double or Custom
• Recipe Icon - Cup or Portafilter
• PF Allocation - If using portafilter detection, which saved portafilter uses this recipe.
• Disc Distance - This is your grind setting. It refers to the distance between the burrs, measured in µm (microns).
• Enable GbS - Toggles the Recipe for Grind by Sync connectivity.
• Brew Time Input - The starting disc distance when you begin inputting the brew time for this recipe in the Sync System.
• Brew Weight - Your target weight for the recipe with the Sync System
• Show Recipe - Toggles whether or not the recipe is visible on the main menu.

Once a recipe has been programmed, if it isn’t using Grind by Sync, you can tap the encoder once to reset the disc distance (burr position) or twice to change the programmed dose. When cycling through recipes with the encoder, if each recipe has a unique disc distance and Grind by Sync is active, the burrs will automatically reposition themselves to your programmed setting.

What is Grind by Sync?

What is Grind by Weight?

Grind by Weight is exactly what it sounds like, it’s where grinding is programmed with weight as the target variable rather than time. It accomplishes a similar goal as single-dosing in ensuring that your coffee dose is accurate each time while still having coffee on hand and on-demand in the grinder when you need it.

Assisted Dial-In

One of the most interesting features on the E64 WS is the Assisted Dial-In function, which allows you to enter your coffee’s roast level, whether it’s a single or double shot, your dose, your desired amount of extracted coffee and your desired brew time.

Based on all of your settings, the grinder chooses an initial setting for your grind and prompts you to pull a shot. Afterwards you can input your extraction time and ultimately whether or not you liked the shot.

This will save as a new recipe in your grinder. In my testing with John, we found that the initial grind setting it offered us for the medium and light roast coffees were actually quite accurate.

For more real world testing, I also used it in our kitchen to dial in some Crema Wave Decaf. One thing I noticed is that the selection of roast level makes a huge difference. Being a decaf, it wasn’t quite a medium or a dark roast, so I settled on medium. That resulted in six shots of me refining and the grinder adjusting before settling on something I liked. Overall it was a very intuitive process that got me coffee I liked in the end, but it does not entirely eliminate the trial and error that is inherent to dialing in coffee.

Portafilter Detection

Like Mahlkonig’s commercial grind-by-weight grinders, the E64 WS also features the ability to store portafilter data in order to select grinding recipes based on the portafilter being used.

At the bottom of the Edit Recipes menu, you can enable or disable “Portafilter Detection Mode” and add portafilters to the grinder via “Portafilter Management.” Basically, you select the “+ Add Portafilter” option, put the portafilter in the cradle and the E64 WS will calculate its weight and allow you to set a tolerance between 0.5 and 10g. Once one or more portafilters have been added, two more things need to happen:

• First - you need to allocate a portafilter to an existing recipe. You cannot add a portafilter to more than one recipe.
• Second - on the main menu, you need to rotate the encoder past your recipes to the “Portafilter Detection” option.

Once you’ve done this, when you insert a portafilter, the grinder will grind its corresponding recipe. If you are using Grind by Sync and the disc distance for a portafilter’s corresponding recipe is different from the current disc distance, the E64 WS will adjust automatically before grinding.

Grinding Manually

From the main menu, pressing and holding the top left button will trigger manual grinding and display the time elapsed on the screen in seconds. While grinding manually, turning the encoder will adjust the disc distance to move the burrs closer together or further apart manually. This is especially useful when making a finer grind adjustment since you’ll want to make sure the burrs are actively turning when moving closer together.

Hands Free Grinding and the Chute

With a height-adjustable portafilter cradle, the E64 WS is capable of hands-free grinding, in fact it’s more or less necessary when grinding by weight. A simple philips head screw holds the bottom platform of the cradle in place while a small hook on the top secures the portafilter so it won’t fall out.

The Grinds Chute

Above the cradle, the grinds chute is adjustable and can be pushed forward or backward to change the angle that the grinds fall into the portafilter. This is helpful to prevent coffee from piling up in the front of the portafilter. The chute is illuminated with a color LED that can be adjusted via the settings menu with variable brightness and a full range of colors.

The Flapper

Depending on when you purchased your E64 WS, it may or may not come with a metal flapper installed at the mouth of the chute inside the grinds chamber. The flapper prevents coffee from becoming excessively fluffy and piling up / spilling out of the portafilter.

Test Results

Particle Distribution

With a median particle size of 250 micron +/- 10, we performed an analysis of three coffees, Crema Wave, our Ethiopia Single-Origin, and Crema Wave Decaf, the results of which we charted for you below. What you can see is that the results consistently had the highest average particle size of 200 or fewer microns with a linear decline in the distribution of larger particles for all three styles of coffee.

It’s interesting to note that our lightest and densest coffee had the highest percentage of particles at or below 200 at 36% while the medium roast had nearly equal amounts of particles in the 200 and 300 micron ranges.

Dosing Consistency

We also tested dosing consistency across the three coffees as well. I’m happy to report that the results weren’t exciting at all. By that I mean to say that all of the results for our 18g doses were within 0.1g of our target which is very good. You can see the full results in the chart below.

Grinding Speed

For a home grinder, the E64 WS clocked some pretty impressive grinding speeds. Between the three coffees we tested, speeds on average ranged between 7 - 8.5 seconds for an 18g double shot. Unless you’ve got a line out the kitchen, this is more power and speed than anybody at home will need.

Build Quality

Build-wise, the E64 WS looks and feels like a premium grinder. It’s worth noting that these grinders are manufactured in China rather than Germany, but they have so much going on from a features standpoint that I don’t think they could swing the $1,199 price tag otherwise. The grinder is solid, and heavy with some thoughtful considerations like the grinds tray that attaches magnetically.

One thing I’m not a huge fan of is the hopper slide. On the one hand, the hopper slide is made of heavy duty metal with fitted slots so it only installs one way. On the other hand though, you’re not able to cut off the flow of beans without disconnecting the hopper, which stops the grinding mechanism from being able to engage., This means you more or less need to remove the hopper completely, empty the coffee into a container, and then replace the now empty hopper if you want to grind through any coffee still in the grinds chamber. I also find that you typically have to pull fairly hard to fully close the hopper slide as beans tend to get caught in and crushed by the slide.

Accessing the burrs requires you to remove the hopper and loosen a set of Philips head screws that are labeled with 360°. These screws don’t need to be removed, just loosened, then you twist an inner ring counter-clockwise which disengages a lock that holds the cover in place. Then, four more screws that you loosen (not remove) allow you to remove the upper burr carrier to access the top and bottom burr.

From a usability standpoint, the E64 WS is fairly straightforward. The two buttons and encoder make navigation and selection easy, while the crisp screen and intuitive use of color make it easy to understand what you’re doing.

Things We Love

I personally feel that digital burr positioning and tracking is core to the future of grinding. It’s especially cool that the grind position can be saved as part of a recipe. I also love the convenience of portafilter recognition and the intuitive design of the interface, with the encoder doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to keeping the user experience seamless.

As I mentioned above as well, the Assisted Dial-In is something that I really appreciate and it’s definitely a natural extension of the shift towards the use of digital and automatic grind adjustment.

Things to Consider

For me, one of the major considerations with the E64 WS is actually also one of its selling points, that being the Sync System itself. What I mean by that is that in order to take full advantage of Grind by Sync, you will need to purchase the Sync Scale. If you factor that into the final price of the E64 WS, you’re looking at a $1,448 price tag all-in. Price-wise that puts the grinder on par with the Eureka Atom W 65, so it’s not too high, but if you already own a more premium scale like a Varia AKU Pro or Acaia Lunar, you may have to find a new home for your old scale or content yourself with owning two.

I'll also mention that in my time pairing the devices and using the app, I encountered some difficulty that may create more friction for people with less aptitude for technology. Something else to consider is that if you’re only pulling one shot a day, or perhaps every other day even, the frequency of use isn’t going to get the same payoff from Grind by Sync.

Final Thoughts

In an environment that seems to be trending more towards single-dosing designs, I’m very inspired by Mahlkonig’s decision to continue to refine on-demand, weight-based grinding. The E64 WS is one of the strongest grinders in its price range and a worthy bearer of the crown of the King of Grinders.

Photography and Graphics by Grace Walker and Elley Ellison

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