Eureka Mignon: Tech Tips

This video covers 3 top tech tips for the Eureka Mignon coffee grinders, including how to open the burr chamber to fix a jammed grinder, fine-tuning your espresso shots and adjusting your grind for coarse brew methods.

1. Opening the Burr Chamber

First, let’s talk about cleaning. One of our favorite things about the Mignon grinders is how easy it is to open them up and clean out the burr chamber. This comes in handy if the grinder is ever clogged. You’ll know this is the case if you hear the grinder running but aren’t getting grounds out.

First, just pop this Eureka badge off the back. It’s clipped in and the plastic is durable, so don’t worry about hurting it. Unthread the screw hidden behind it and you’ll be able to simply slide off this top panel. Under that, you’ll undo these three screws holding down the top burr. Then, you can lift off the upper burr and access the burr chamber. All in all, this requires just one tool - making it very simple.

We find the quickest and easiest way to clean the burr chamber is using a vacuum cleaner and following up with a small paintbrush or toothbrush. Make sure to focus on the opening of the chute here, as there will often be much more coffee hidden inside. Be sure to use flexible tools so as not to damage the metal screen at the chute’s opening.

2. Fine-Tuning your Espresso

The micro-metric grind adjustment knob on Eureka grinders makes adjustments both big and small quick, but it can take a little while to get a feel for how much of an adjustment you should make to nail down your desired shot time.

First, it’s important to remember that if your shots are pulling too fast there’s a 99% chance that all you need to do is grind finer. When the grind is too coarse it can seem like your adjustments aren’t getting you much closer, until suddenly the next adjustment doubles the shot time, so stick with it. These grinders are durable and powerful, so don’t have any fear of grinding too fine. Even if you do, the grinder will jam which won’t hurt it and can easily be fixed by adjusting the grind coarser.

Let’s say you’ve pulled a shot with a new coffee and you got your desired output in 15 seconds and you’re aiming for 25. That seems like a big gap, but just by turning the setting 1.5 to 2 settings finer we’ll be almost spot on. Let’s pull another shot. Looks like we got our output in about 23 seconds so we’ll just need to make a minor adjustment of maybe a quarter to half of one setting. This sensitivity will vary depending on the temperament of your coffee, but sticking to increments of half-settings at most will prevent you from overcorrecting.

3. Grinding for Coarse Brew Methods

These grinders are also great at grinding for brew methods that require a coarser grind like pour over or drip coffee. In order to switch this grinder to pour over, we’ll have to make a much larger adjustment than we’d ever make for espresso, starting by rotating 1.5 full rotations coarser. A half to full rotation coarser than that will get us to a good setting for drip coffee. Once you’ve done this, grind a small amount of coffee and inspect the size of the grounds to see if they seem right for your brew method, then adjust accordingly or brew your first batch.

We highly recommend taking note of your espresso grind setting before making big adjustments. This will come in handy when you want to get back to pulling shots, but you’ll still need to do a bit of fine-tuning before you’re back on target. Before adjusting finer we recommend removing the hopper and grinding through whatever might be in the burr chamber. After you’ve done this you can make the large adjustment back without concern of jamming your grinder. When you’re back to your espresso setting grind a couple of grams of coffee to purge any large particles that may still be in the burr chamber, and you’re ready to go!