Note to self. Don’t fan boy out.
I absolutely love seeing excellence in industrial design. In my 23 years of reviewing coffee and espresso equipment, sadly, great ID is a rare beast in our hobby industry. More often than nought new products – especially from small cottage industry companies – are the products of engineers, not designers. They require big instruction manuals. Or have elements that just don’t make any sense from a usability standpoint for the common coffee lover. The very capable – but bad UI – Behmor Roaster comes to mind. Even my beloved GS3 from La Marzocco suffers from engineeritus, requiring cheat sheets and manuals just to figure out how to change the machine’s temperature.
The Lagom Mini, a grinder from Australia’s Option-O, is easily one of the best examples of industrial design I’ve seen in coffee gear in a very long time. And after a very short time using it, I feel comfortable saying the grinder’s functionality and output could very well match its high ID level.
It truly is a spectacular and unique product. Extremely intuitive. Simple controls. Everything (perhaps save for the power brick) just oozes quality. Quality of build, quality of materials, quality in tight design tolerances, quality in serviceability, quality in output… just total quality.
The Lagom Mini sets a new bar that a lot of companies, including big mainstream ones like Baratza, Breville, Nuova Simonelli and others will struggle to match. The grinder looks like it is carved out of a single piece of billeted aluminum. Kind of how Apple products looked at the peak of the Ives / Jobs collaboration.
When I opened the box for the first time, I honestly had a Macbook Air moment. You know, the first time you saw the Macbook Air, and how it was so radically different from any other notebook computer on the market? Seriously, I got goosebumps.
Am I fanboying out here?
About the Lagom Mini Grinder
So, if your coffee experience each morning is brewing with an auto drip coffee maker, crafting out 750ml, 1 litre or more of brewed coffee for you and your family, stop reading right now. This grinder isn’t for you, you might get upset to discover this fantastic piece of kit isn’t suited for your coffee needs.
That’s because the Lagom Mini is a single dose grinder, designed to grind a max of 30 grams of coffee, doing so only a few times a day. This is a choice Option-O made for this grinder in order for it to be as quiet as it is (it’s extremely quiet running when no beans are in it), and as small as it is.
The Lagom Mini is Option-O’s take on an electrically powered, manual hand crank grinder. They make a well regarded manual grinder, the Remi, but Option-O are best known for their Lagom P64 and P100 grinders, both recognized as some of the best single dosing multipurpose grinders you can buy today.
Even though the Lagom Mini is roughly 1/4 the cost of the P64, Option-O spared no expense in its design, materials or quality of build. The entire device, save for some elements in the burr housing, are made from either steel or aluminum. The main body, burr enclosure, grind selection dial, grinds catch cup, and even the lid on top are made from the same kind of spacecraft grade aluminum that Apple used in that original Macbook Air. They also have a similar anodized corrosion resistant finish.
The build tolerances on this grinder are among the best I’ve ever seen; even a company like Baratza could take lessons here. The Lagom Mini is a stepless adjustment grinder, with the grind adjustment coming via the threaded single dose portion of the grinder screwing on and off the main body, held in tension via three internal springs.
The action of the grind adjustment is buttery smooth with the near perfect amount of tension: tight enough for your grind setting to avoid shifting while the grinder is chopping up beans, but still smooth and easy enough to rotate and adjust the grind with absolute confidence. The P64 has the same traits.
The unit is powered by a 65W (!!), DC motor, rotating at around 200 RPM. Option-O provides a total hours rating for the motor – 600 hours – which means it can handle doing two double shots of espresso a day for around 80 years. If you do 4 doubles a day, that’s 40 years of life in the motor.
When I review this grinder, I will get into the nitty gritty of this motor, why it was chosen, what to expect, and perhaps even how Option-O could evolve this grinder down the road. For now, just keep in mind this is a grinder designed to be used a maximum of 3 or 4 times per day, doing single / double cup brews, and one or two double shots of espresso. Do not expect it to handle batch brew. Do not expect it to grind out coffee for espresso every 3 minutes, all day long.
200 RPMs has a lot of goodness to it. Fines are minimized, the coffee ground is more uniform at all settings, and cup clarity is amplified in conical burr grinders spinning at this speed. The main downside is it isn’t a fast grinder: 18.5g for espresso can take 50 seconds or longer. The Mini does get to decent speeds for pour over grinding, delivering around 1g/sec.
Lastly, the weight of the grinder. It’s only 1.5kg (3.3lb) but one’s perception is the grinder is way heavier than that, because of its diminutive size. Pick it up, and it has some serious heft. Confidence builder, right there. Even so, at 1.5kg, you can easily pack this in luggage for taking with you on vacation. Apparently (to be confirmed), the power brick changes from 110V to 240V, so with a basic plug adapter, you should be able to use this grinder anywhere in the world.
Updates Since Launch
Option-O has done some minor updates to this grinder since it launched. Initial reviews by some Youtubers and Redditors griped about the grinder stalling when they put extremely light roasts (aka baked coffee instead of roasted) through the grinder. This was a problem with the power supply, not the motor, and Option-O fixed this over a year ago.
A lot of the Youtube reviews you’ll see for the Lagom Mini spend a lot of time talking about this grinder’s burrs, but today, that information is out of date.
Option-O is famous for having a wide variety of burr options for their P64 grinder, and initially offered the Mini with 38mm and 48mm burr options. They soon ditched the 38mm, but introduced a second 48mm burr (the original was the Obsydian burr, the new choice is the Moonshine burr). Most recently, they have discontinued the Obsydian and just offer the grinder with their in-house designed Moonshine burr.
Keep in mind, swapping out burrs in the Lagom Mini is fairly easy, and the company even has a video walk through of the process. Down the road it’s possible Option-O will offer different and improved burr options for this grinder, letting end users “upgrade” to the latest and greatest.
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Also, they have changed the laser etched markings on the grind collar since launch. Initially, the Mini had 20 markings on the grind collar: numbers from 0 to 9, and a tick mark between each number. They have changed now to 50 markings on the collar: 10 large dots for every “fifth step” (this is a stepless grinder), and 4 smaller dots in between each larger dot. Keep in mind you’re not limited to 50 grind selections: first, it is stepless, but second, you can do multiple 360 degree rotations going coarse enough for press pot (reports are, that’s around 75 or 80, or 1 full revolution plus another 25 dots).
Option-O also includes a sheet of sticker dots in the box, in white and black, that you can place on the grind selection dial at your favourite settings for easy reference.
Using the Lagom Mini
This is just an introduction post, and I’ve only used the Mini about 40 times before putting pen to paper, but already, I am in love with this grinder; or at least as much love as a coffee nerd can have for a really good coffee product. I cannot overstate how simple and intuitive it is to use. It is beautiful. It is tiny. It is quiet. The output is nice and fluffy for non-espresso methods (espresso grind clumps a bit from the weight of coffee in the narrow catch bin).
The grind quality is fantastic already, even though I don’t consider these 48mm Moonshine conical burrs fully seasoned yet. The La Marzocco GS3 loves this grinder. The Superkop lever machine loves this grinder. The Hario Mugen / Hario Switch immersion nobypass brewer I use most days loves this grinder. Even my dogs love this grinder, because it is so quiet: extremely so under no load; and pleasantly so when grinding coffee (the Baratza Sette 270Wi sends one of my dogs running every morning).
Every brewing method, from espresso to Chemex, has been used with the output of this grinder so far in my early testing, and the results in the cup are impressive. I’ve read the grinder can do a Turkish grind for ibrik brewing, so that will get tested for the review. We’ll also see how this conical burr does for press pot grind, including how many fines are produced.
The most impressive thing so far for me isn’t so much the espresso grind (which is excellent) but the beautiful uniformity and visual lack of fines that a V60 grind has with the grinder. Again, I haven’t done sieve tests yet, but visually, it looks on par with one of the best brew grinders I’ve used in recent times, the flat burr Wilfa Uniform.
Wrap Up
A lot of reviewers have expressed joy and love for this grinder for some time now, and I totally get it. Option-O seems to have knocked this one out of the park. I still can’t believe such a small production-run grinder is only $375 USD ($549CAD in Canada, from the fine folks at Cafune). Think about it. The Commandante C40 Mk4 hand grinder is $325USD, and you have to spend more to get the special adjustment system so it can do a good espresso range.
I can’t wait to put this grinder through our full review process. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and good tasting coffee. For now, just a hearty congratulations to Option-O for crafting, manufacturing and selling such a wonderful product.
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
One Response
I really enjoyed reading this article.
There is a difference between engineered and designed.
Thank you for reinforcing that point.