# Rafino - coffee grind refinement on Kickstarter



## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

This looks like an exciting new tool for brewed coffee especially, but could conceivably be used to sieve out boulders from espresso grind.

It could certainly help identify median (AKA average) grind size, as well as sieve out smaller particles &/or boulders to improve grind size distribution.

Sieves are typically unwieldy & not very kitchen friendly, but this seems much more practical.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rafino/the-rafino-coffee-grind-refining-system?token=502c1573


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## aaronb (Nov 16, 2012)

I thought we did want fines now, even in filter coffee?


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## PPapa (Oct 24, 2015)

Not a new idea in the world of coffee, but seems like a neat solution. Nearly bought the 8 sieve version, but it costs approx. 75 pounds with shipping to the UK







. I suppose all the brew timings would be off the charts after sieving, so dialling in would be needed.

Grind with the blade grinder and then just sieve for spro, V60 and Chemex...


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## froggystyle (Oct 30, 2013)

PPapa said:


> Grind with the blade grinder and then just sieve for spro, V60 and Chemex...


Wastage would be high though.


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## PPapa (Oct 24, 2015)

froggystyle said:


> Wastage would be high though.


I wasn't serious. I thought the smiley face in the end was enough to suggest that I was joking!


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## NickdeBug (Jan 18, 2015)

Well presented.

Would work with the cheapest grinder, so potentially a more cost effective solution than spending big bucks on a high end grinder that produces a tight span.

Wastage would be a factor and electrostatics can be a pain when sieving. If you already have a fairly static bean (e.g. MM) then this will be a problem.


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## froggystyle (Oct 30, 2013)

PPapa said:


> I wasn't serious. I thought the smiley face in the end was enough to suggest that I was joking!


Sorry, thought you were getting happy with the thought of getting a blade grinder


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

aaronb said:


> I thought we did want fines now, even in filter coffee?


The objective is a narrow distribution (Randy Pope of Bunn did an experiment at the Nordic Barista Cup where he only used 850-1190um grinds & this was the overwhelmingly preferred cup), you can remove all the grinds that fall outside your target, or remove from either end.

If you sieved out the small particles & boulders, you could drop the small particles back in, or use sieves that just took out the boulders?

You could set the grinder coarse, sieve out the smaller range, regrind the larger range, for a narrow distribution & low wastage.

Not sure how we actually differentiate "fines" from small particles that are beneficial?

Beyond that, if you were to say "My grind is such that 60% falls between 300-600um" & you used it all, someone else could then replicate that.

Once you have the sieves you can use them any way you like.


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## jlarkin (Apr 26, 2015)

I like the fact the amount is presented as Canadian Dollars, ignoring PPapa's post above - it's like buying something with monopoly money. I have no concept of how much CAD is


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

NickdeBug said:


> Wastage would be a factor ....


You can fine tune wastage with a little practice, I typically sieve out 10-15% of the larger grinds for my daily Sowden. The benefits are worth it in terms of the brew produced.


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## PPapa (Oct 24, 2015)

froggystyle said:


> Sorry, thought you were getting happy with the thought of getting a blade grinder


I'm pretty happy with my Feldgrind for brewed just now, I don't think it would be a massive improvement for myself. When you think about it, if one had a Hario grinder, it would rather be better getting a decent hand grinder instead of having a sieve to filter out the boulders and fines. As you said, it's also wasteful.

By the way, I'm glad an attempt to joke was more successful in front of 40+ people yesterday!


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## NickdeBug (Jan 18, 2015)

PPapa said:


> Not a new idea in the world of coffee, but seems like a neat solution. Nearly bought the 8 sieve version, but it costs approx. 75 pounds with shipping to the UK
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Just to correct one thing (pedant alert!)

It is a Kickstarter campaign so you would not actually be "buying" anything.

A small distinction but I am always amazed by the number of people jumping up and down complaining about how long it took for the start up to send their order.


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## froggystyle (Oct 30, 2013)

Would be interested to taste the results, but cant see me shelling out for one.


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

PPapa said:


> I'm pretty happy with my Feldgrind for brewed just now, I don't think it would be a massive improvement for myself. When you think about it, if one had a Hario grinder, it would rather be better getting a decent hand grinder instead of having a sieve to filter out the boulders and fines. As you said, it's also wasteful.


Sieving can target grind in a way that no small conical burr grinder can. Even if there was a tangible difference in grind distribution between a Feldgrind (which I own & love) and a Hario grinder - which has not been established - sieving the grind will make a difference to distribution of many orders of magnitude greater.

Wastage, isn't really a significant issue, as you can control it. Besides, every cup of coffee I have, that isn't as good as it can be, feels like a waste.


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## tambu (Sep 7, 2015)

MWJB said:


> Sieving can target grind in a way that no small conical burr grinder can. Even if there was a tangible difference in grind distribution between a Feldgrind (which I own & love) and a Hario grinder - which has not been established - sieving the grind will make a difference to distribution of many orders of magnitude greater.
> 
> Wastage, isn't really a significant issue, as you can control it. Besides, every cup of coffee I have, that isn't as good as it can be, feels like a waste.


Out of interest, have you ever had time with Ditting burrs?


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

tambu said:


> Out of interest, have you ever had time with Ditting burrs?


No, but no burr grinder, by itself, can target as tight a distribution as sieving. Burr grinders produce tiny particles and large particles around twice the size of the target median. This is still regarded as 'normal' & 'even' distribution.


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## tambu (Sep 7, 2015)

MWJB said:


> No, but no burr grinder, by itself, can target as tight a distribution as sieving. Burr grinders produce tiny particles and large particles around twice the size of the target median. This is still regarded as 'normal' & 'even' distribution.


Of course; I meant that there may be a tangible difference between a small conical and some Ditting burrs.

I don't have any experience with Ditting burrs unfortunately, and I'd be curious to see whether they make any real difference given that I've put a reasonable amount of effort into adapting recipes to my hand grinders. The primary trigger, ultimately, might be that I occasionally get arthritis in the mornings and find it difficult to hand grind.


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## Phil104 (Apr 15, 2014)

jlarkin said:


> I like the fact the amount is presented as Canadian Dollars, ignoring PPapa's post above - it's like buying something with monopoly money. I have no concept of how much CAD is


It's about 50p (at the moment).


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

tambu said:


> Of course; I meant that there may be a tangible difference between a small conical and some Ditting burrs.
> 
> I don't have any experience with Ditting burrs unfortunately, and I'd be curious to see whether they make any real difference given that I've put a reasonable amount of effort into adapting recipes to my hand grinders. The primary trigger, ultimately, might be that I occasionally get arthritis in the mornings and find it difficult to hand grind.


Certainly, I'd expect there to be a difference, distribution-wise, between Ditting burrs & conical hand grinder burrs, especially for drip. But also, your adaptation of recipes will be a big factor.

Rafino doesn't necessarily strike me as a method to 'upgrade' a grinder (though that's a possibility), more that it is a way of manipulating distribution in a way burr grinders cannot. Also, it can help us identify & share grind requirements in a more objective way, rather than vague, subjective descriptions.


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## Chrisrayner (Feb 6, 2016)

Well I've had a look and am sufficiently intrigued to flash the cash. Could be a whole new thing or yet another coffee gimmick to add to the pile of similar gewgaws under the sink.


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## Glenn (Jun 14, 2008)

I'm in.

Lets hope it gets funded.


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## "coffee 4/1" (Sep 1, 2014)

ideas great, pity no 125-150 microns for super fine, as i double grind plus use flour sieve, under 10 times magnification on fines i see most of the fines are chaff which i don't want, so hope theres funding and all sizes mesh,


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## fatboyslim (Sep 29, 2011)

Can't see anywhere where it mentions international shipping costs?


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## Chrisrayner (Feb 6, 2016)

fatboyslim said:


> Can't see anywhere where it mentions international shipping costs?


$15 Canadian to UK.


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

\ said:


> ideas great, pity no 125-150 microns for super fine, as i double grind plus use flour sieve, under 10 times magnification on fines i see most of the fines are chaff which i don't want, so hope theres funding and all sizes mesh,


150micron median grind size would fall under 300um max. Problems start when trying to sieve with very fine grinds/mesh sizes.


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## Milanski (Oct 10, 2013)

Are you guys all double grinding and sieving with a flour sieve atm?

Need to try this...


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

Milanski said:


> Are you guys all double grinding and sieving with a flour sieve atm?
> 
> Need to try this...


I sieve out the largest 10-15% of my Sowden brews with a regular kitchen sieve, after grinding with a Lido 2.

I don't sieve any French press or cuppings, unless dialling in a test grind to get the average in a ball-park range (~400um) .

Nor, do I currently sieve drip brews. This is largely because the sieves I have are bulky & it's too much faff...but if I had a nice compact little set...?


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## Milanski (Oct 10, 2013)

I'm using a V60 with a Feldgrind. So if I don't sieve would double grinding be of any benefit?

Maybe I should stop asking questions and just try...


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## "coffee 4/1" (Sep 1, 2014)

Milanski said:


> Are you guys all double grinding and sieving with a flour sieve atm?
> 
> Need to try this...


If you want chaff free it's the only way, it's what the EK-43 made for or any auger bag grinder.


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

Milanski said:


> I'm using a V60 with a Feldgrind. So if I don't sieve would double grinding be of any benefit?
> 
> Maybe I should stop asking questions and just try...


Yes, if it narrows the distribution (reduces boulders). Jeremy Challender has discussed this on the Prufrock blog http://www.prufrockcoffee.com/re-hulling/

This method means grinding at one coarse setting then regrinding at a finer setting (rather than putting your original grind & all the fines back through for a second run).

You could have another grinder set coarse, then regrind to fine tune with the Feldgrind?


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## "coffee 4/1" (Sep 1, 2014)

MWJB said:


> 150micron median grind size would fall under 300um max. Problems start when trying to sieve with very fine grinds/mesh sizes.


what I'm looking for is the ideal mesh size when using bag grinder first to break beans into 5-6 pieces to remove chaff then to sieve the fines from this only,after this espresso grind in conical grinder, at the moment 3gm to 40gm loss of fines & chaff, just trying to find the ideal sieve size.


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## jlarkin (Apr 26, 2015)

\ said:


> it's what the EK-43 made for or any auger bag grinder.


You mean it was made for double grinding, which I don't think I've ever heard before, or I'm missing the point?


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## "coffee 4/1" (Sep 1, 2014)

jlarkin said:


> You mean it was made for double grinding, which I don't think I've ever heard before, or I'm missing the point?


give it try, go courses of course blow away chaff, then calibrate to your preferred grind setting.


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## adamkrupa (Mar 17, 2016)

Hi everyone,

My name is Adam and I'm one of the creators of the Rafino. I just wanted to introduce myself, and make myself available for any questions on the forum.

Mark (MWJB), thanks for sharing with the community.

I also wanted to thank everyone for the feedback, the discussion and the pledges on Kickstarter, it's the community that can make the Rafino a reality.

Just to give you a little background, I started seriously getting into coffee about two years ago reading everything I could get my hands on, but I am by no means a coffee expert. As an engineer and cook I found it difficult to follow recipes that said, use x grams of coffee, x grams of water, x degrees of water temp, brew for x min:sec and to use a "kosher salt" size grind. Medium-course or kosher salt size is subjective and lacks repeatability even using the same settings on the same grinder of the same manufacture, let alone the arbitrary grind size settings between manufactures. Because as we know; among other factors, coffee extraction relates to the size of particles, and the different size particles will release different flavour compounds at a different rate that just kills the idea of a recipe, at least for me.

The other thing, when I tried to produce the "kosher salt" size I got a grind distribution of something like 1000+um, that is you get particles as small as 50um and as large as 1050um. When I did some research I found that this large uneven particle size distribution produces an uneven extraction. So even using a refractometer and aiming for the 18-22% extraction only gives you an average TDS. With smaller particles extracting closer to 30% breaking down the tannins and releasing bitter, astringent flavours, and the bigger particles extracting closer to 10% and not breaking down the sugars and sweet flavours. In essence no matter what brewing method you use you will not be able achieve even extraction of all particles if they are not uniform in size. Of course that's a very simplified version and there are many people that have talked about this extensively.

When I fist tried sieving coffee I took a bit of tweaking in the brewing time and method but in the end I was blow away with the results. In our tests we found that narrowing down the particle distribution for a particular brewing method allows for more refinement, more consistency, a more even extraction and better flavour. The problem was we couldn't find a product that did what we needed. With that in mind we set out to create a tool that would allow the user to create a grind profile to their exact specifications of consistent size and range, that they can use to further refine the complex coffee flavours, and use a common language in describing grind size very accurately (as some have pointed out already).

We hope that the coffee community accepts the Rafino and our Kickstarter goal is reach so we can work together to further refine those coffee recipes.

Regarding making smaller seized sieves, that is absolutely possible the chemical milling process we use to make the sieves is the same process used to make medical filters that have extreme accuracy, here is some info for those interested http://www.tech-etch.com/photoetch/microscreens.html

The reason we stopped at 300um at the moment is that we have not tested anything bellow that size. But it's feedback like this that will help us make this better.

With that said, what sizes would others be interested in? we can include those as stretch goal.

Again really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,

Adam


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

I'm in on this. If nothing else it'll be interesting to be able to measure the distribution of my grinders. I can see myself sieving for syphon brews but it might be a bit much to do for espresso regularly. It's only £55 so easily worth a punt.


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## DoubleShot (Apr 23, 2014)

Probably really late in noticing this but just spotted a quote from our very own @MWJB on the Rafino main page:

"Wastage, isn't really a significant issue, as you can control it. Besides, every cup of coffee I have, that isn't as good as it can be, feels like a waste." - MWJB

You'll be signing autographs next, lol!


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## Glenn (Jun 14, 2008)

Last call via Kickstarter - closing tomorrow


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## DoubleShot (Apr 23, 2014)

In case anyone else wonders where United Kingdom is in the drop down menu when you get to the credit card screen under the 'Billing address' part, oddly it's in between Gabon and Grenada!


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## Obnic (Jan 14, 2014)

The stretch goal add ones have made this a winner for me. I was 'in' on the brew filters but now they're including espresso filters too. Very pleased. Looks like a tidy piece of kit too.

Vesuvius with Robur


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

England, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Britain. Who knows where on the list we'll fall.


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## Phil104 (Apr 15, 2014)

DoubleShot said:


> Probably really late in noticing this but just spotted a quote from our very own @MWJB on the Rafino main page:
> 
> "Wastage, isn't really a significant issue, as you can control it. Besides, every cup of coffee I have, that isn't as good as it can be, feels like a waste." - MWJB
> 
> You'll be signing autographs next, lol!


I know that you suggested that light heartedly but, actually as part of the stretch goal experience, I'm getting a set with Mark's signature etched on to the sieves.


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## DoubleShot (Apr 23, 2014)

Really?! Didn't see that option? Guess the follow-up survey will give you all the available options which should be anytime soon...


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## CoffeeJohnny (Feb 28, 2011)

Overlooked my email saying I have been charged now, really looking forward to getting this. I am getting 4 sieves and part of me is still wishing I'd gone for the full set.


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## MrShades (Jul 29, 2009)

CoffeeJohnny said:


> Overlooked my email saying I have been charged now, really looking forward to getting this. I am getting 4 sieves and part of me is still wishing I'd gone for the full set.


Yeah, you need 11 obviously.... everyone does. I shall be sieving everything I can lay my hands on!

Wife thinks I'm nuts.


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## Missy (Mar 9, 2016)

MrShades said:


> Yeah, you need 11 obviously.... everyone does. I shall be sieving everything I can lay my hands on!
> 
> Wife thinks I'm nuts.


I've got some play sand i could send out in small packs? Hours of sieving fun...

Rafino sieves, for the toddler in all of us!


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## CoffeeJohnny (Feb 28, 2011)

Yes this is true I also want a full stand as it will look empty I know I will end up getting more



MrShades said:


> Yeah, you need 11 obviously.... everyone does. I shall be sieving everything I can lay my hands on!
> 
> Wife thinks I'm nuts.


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## Milanski (Oct 10, 2013)

I've just caved in and gone for the 8 sieve set


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## Phil104 (Apr 15, 2014)

Milanski said:


> I've just caved in and gone for the 8 sieve set


 And you'll never look back...not once.


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## Milanski (Oct 10, 2013)

I never look back.


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## Flibster (Aug 15, 2010)

I went for the complete set... Spaces in the rack would just annoy me.









Although, having the set available in red may have swayed my decision a little bit.


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