# Iberital grinders



## thirteeneast (May 18, 2011)

Is it all iberital grinders or just the mc2 that has some shockingly horrible build quality?.

I know the Spanish make some pretty horrid white goods but the mc2 build quality is nasty.

Self taping screws into metal work, brackets on dosers that aren't straight, UN-insulated electrical connections.

It's horrid, I'm not knocking it's grind capabilities but what must the Germans have thought when they bought up seat.


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## froggystyle (Oct 30, 2013)

Its the ford mondeo of the coffee world!


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## risky (May 11, 2015)

As someone on here once said, if you can get past the fact it feels like it's been made in some bloke's shed then it's a good little grinder. Maybe it's a big 'if'.


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## Spazbarista (Dec 6, 2011)

froggystyle said:


> Its the ford mondeo of the coffee world!


It bloody isn't its the Lada. Cheap, rough, and crap.

Mondeos are two-a-penny but they are superb.


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## froggystyle (Oct 30, 2013)

Err if you say so.


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## Flibster (Aug 15, 2010)

Spazbarista said:


> Mondeos are two-a-penny but they are superb.


And a majority are held together with chewing gum and duct tape...


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## Jumbo Ratty (Jan 12, 2015)

First Ive heard: I thought it was the go to grinder for the man on a budget.

Thanks for the heads up,i shall definitely not get one or even consider one in the equation should I ever make the step up from my trusty krups 75.


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## rmblack78 (Oct 9, 2014)

I have one. No real issues for me, it's noisy, but it does the job. I've had mine for a year or so and bought it primarily because a) it's cheap and b) wanted to certain I could be arsed before spending more money on something better.

It's not brilliant, but for the same money 2nd hand I'm not sure what else touches it?


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## Spazbarista (Dec 6, 2011)

Nothing, as long as you paid £50 for it.

But you will see an enormous instant improvement in your coffee when you shell out £150 for a used Mazzer


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## Jumbo Ratty (Jan 12, 2015)

rmblack78 said:


> It's not brilliant, but for the same money 2nd hand I'm not sure what else touches it?


Im thinking the Graef CM800.

if the build quality of the Iberital is so shocking I wonder why its endorsed as much as it is.


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## coffeechap (Apr 5, 2012)

Spazbarista said:


> Nothing, as long as you paid £50 for it.
> 
> But you will see an enormous instant improvement in your coffee when you shell out £150 for a used Mazzer


Or 20 pence at the going rate


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## rmblack78 (Oct 9, 2014)

If anyone has a Mazzer for 20p I'm all the way in!


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## russe11 (May 12, 2012)

As in life "you get what you pay for" If you have just spent your hard earned cash on buying your first real coffee machine and your budget is tight, the mc2 is a decent first grinder. Admitted its not the most attractive or most well made but all it has to do is sit there and grind... and it does.

Not everybody is in a position to buy the all singing all dancing grinder... that is why we continue to upgrade? We are searching for the next level... when funds permit (dont tell the wife)!


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## Spazbarista (Dec 6, 2011)

coffeechap said:


> Or 20 pence at the going rate


I'll give you a quid for your entire stock.


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

Jumbo Ratty said:


> Im thinking the Graef CM800.
> 
> if the build quality of the Iberital is so shocking I wonder why its endorsed as much as it is.


It gets mentioned alot , as people ask

What can i get for under £100 that will do espresso

Answer invariable used to be . not much apart from an MC2 second hand....

Why did they use to be be so many around - coz people buy em , get annoyed with em and sell em on..

Buy in haste, sell second hand for a loss...


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## coffeechap (Apr 5, 2012)

Spazbarista said:


> I'll give you a quid for your entire stock.


I am not lowering the price dude


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## Jumbo Ratty (Jan 12, 2015)

Well I applaud* thirteeneast* , until now I havent seen anywhere the mention of dubious quality regarding the iberital MC2


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## coffeechap (Apr 5, 2012)

Jumbo Ratty said:


> Well I applaud* thirteeneast* , until now I havent seen anywhere the mention of dubious quality regarding the iberital MC2


You haven't looked very hard then, I think they are complete rubbish, sound like concord and are a nightmare to dial in


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## Spazbarista (Dec 6, 2011)

coffeechap said:


> You haven't looked very hard then, I think they are complete rubbish, sound like concord *and are a nightmare to dial in*


Yah god....I'd completely forgotten about the 'dialling in'on an MC2.

****. I once tried to dial up for filter then back to espresso. It took about an hour and I had no skin on my fingers afterwards


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## rmblack78 (Oct 9, 2014)

Right shut up now, I need to sell mine soon!


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## Sk8-bizarre (Jan 22, 2015)

Got one, and using it now so here goes.

It is really LOUD, the timer dial is near useless.

The grind is 'passable' but I haven't used the SJ I just got to compare to yet so may change my mind after I have.

It does look cheap. It is easy to clean if you want to.

Retention is an issue and darker roasts tend to block up the neck section under the burrs so beans don't fall through so easily, luckily I am more of a mid roast type of person. To get round the blocking I smack it hard on the side when running sometimes, it doesn't solve the problem that well. Oh I did have some beans a while back that wouldn't even fall through the neck of the hopper to get to the burrs as its neck was to small or the beans to big, you decide.

All in all its not great but got me by, would I recommend it? Not a chance and yes overall dialling in can be a total bag of crap, but then I am new.

Will I be selling it on now I have the SJ no, why? It will be more hassle than the money I get for it.

It's either staying at home to do the decaf or more likely going into work to pair and just do grinds for the press or cores mug to replace the Porlex and be quicker........

I am being fully honest as have and am using right now but have in the space of six months gone Porlex to MC2 (i left the Porlex in work one weekend so new it was a tide me over and a panic no coffee buy) to an SJ.

For your own good and for the sake of probably not even twice as much the prices Mazzer SJ's or similar seem to be available at the moment just wait an extra months wages and get yourself which a cafe would happily use. I have had the Mazzer SJ in individual broken down parts as just fixing up and the comparison of the two is so far apart it's not even worth trying to explain. I can almost guarantee the SJ you find will be on better nick than the one I am working on.

To pay probably less than twice as much to grab a commercial grinder price wise is a small jump but the quality of the machines compared is night and day. Oh and the decibal level is laughable, I could have been fooled into thinking the SJ wasn't running where as everyone in the house shuts doors on me when I turn the MC2 on and moans like buggery.


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## thirteeneast (May 18, 2011)

Lol, I thought I'd get flamed for voicing my opinion.

And everyone thinks the same.

Crash with an old Seat and them self tapers will tear you to peices.


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## rmblack78 (Oct 9, 2014)

I'm standing by my initial comments, far from great but as a starter grinder its does the job.

In the mean time I want to thank you all, on behalf of whoever buys mine, for getting them such a good deal...


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## Spazbarista (Dec 6, 2011)

Don't you worry. By the time you post up a sales thread we'll all be saying 'best value for money grinder out there'


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## oursus (Jun 5, 2015)

The build quality on them is rubbish when you compare to a commercial, but compared to a Vesuvius, a classic is a tinny amateurish piece of crap too!


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## oursus (Jun 5, 2015)

Spazbarista said:


> Yah god....I'd completely forgotten about the 'dialling in'on an MC2.
> 
> ****. I once tried to dial up for filter then back to espresso. It took about an hour and I had no skin on my fingers afterwards


Take off the hood, two screws mounting the worm drive, Wind it back down using the collar, replace the worm drive! Long road back otherwise!


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## Kman10 (Sep 3, 2014)

I've had mine since Xmas and I'm very happy with it for the price, is my first electric grinder and at the time my budget wouldn't stretch to anything better.


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## Spazbarista (Dec 6, 2011)

Get a decent grinder and you'll realise just how unhappy you actually were


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## cold war kid (Mar 12, 2010)

It is what it is. Build quality wise it get's slated and people say it's nowhere near the build quality of an sj. Well, of course not, it's a cheap domestic grinder, the sj is a commercial quality grinder. I've had mine in a domestic environment for 5 years and it's never missed a beat.

Also, people often compare it unfavourably to a mignon and again I can't see the point they're trying to make. Second hand an Mc2 is about £65, the mignon often goes for £200. It's sort of like complaining that a Mondeo isn't as good as a Porsche. If it costs nearly 4 times a smuch you'd be gutted if it was no better.

I've upgraded to a Pharos now and in the cup the notes are often the same, just amplified in the Pharos. The Pharos is a better grinder but the mc2 can do a job on a budget.

I'm not sure why grinders in general just seem to get slated and people wont pay money for them. On this forum recently I've seen things like sj for £200 and majors for £350 delivered with very little interest in them at all so it just shows it's right across the board.

One thing I would say though is that with hindsight, if you cn afford something like a second hand sj or a Pharos in a reasonable time frame then I'd skip it ( along with the mignon) and go for that, but if you're on a tight budget I still think it's a good option at a second hand price.


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## Jon (Dec 3, 2010)

What other grinder can you buy used, use for a year and sell for the same price (ok maybe an SJ; but you take my point)?


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## cold war kid (Mar 12, 2010)

It's mad isn't it. Looking at it that way it's a free grinder that does it's job and people seem to think this isn't any good because it's not as good as something else they might like. It's noisy and it's difficult to dial in initially but once it is dialled in it's fine and the results in the cup are more than fine at it's price point.

If you want to move between different grinds it's useless BUT, many people on this forum have a very expensive grinder for espresso and a hand grinder for brewed because there's so few options that are successful at this at any price point.


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## Jon (Dec 3, 2010)

The problem is exactly what you detail - people compare it to things that are 3, 5, 10, 15 times the price. The Iberital is poor compared to a £750 grinder - but that shouldn't be a surprise.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

My problem with the MC2 is that it doesn't allow you to get even close to the best out of a coffee. A blade grinder is 10 to 20 times cheaper than an MC2, and it would be poor in comparison but....

There are two types of people for whom buying a MC2 makes sense: Those who are unable to grind by hand or those who want the convenience of electric.

If you want convenience a MC2 is still a pain to adjust and you'll almost certainly be pairing it with a coffee machine that requires quite a bit of faffing. Get a pod machine and save yourself the trouble. If you like the coffee from that then you might want to step up to better machines and grinders.

What's the point in spending approx £130 (new) or £80 (used) on something that produces crap coffee just because it's electric? You can get a Lido E or Pharos for a little more and sell them on for very little loss if you want to. Sure, they're hand grinders and not everyone is up for that but realistically it takes an extra minute? two minutes? With those you'll know if espresso is worth it for you or not. You won't find yourself complaining about bad flavours and not enjoying the results, only to be convinced to upgrade to something better. Of course you may well be convinced to switch to flat burrs but that's another matter...

If your budget is so tight you can't up to a Lido E or Pharos, skip espresso entirely and go for syphon, drip, moka pot. Bide your time. A crap espresso grinder is going to make crap espresso; what's the point in that?


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## cold war kid (Mar 12, 2010)

If you're saying it doesn't get close to the best out of coffee I agree, but to get the "best" out of the beans you're talking an outlay of at least £1500 and this is where comparisons can't really be made.

When you say on the other hand that it makes crap coffee there's one of two things going on.

A, You have a faulty machine, or

B, Quality is so varied from machine to machine that one grinder is good value and a decent starter machine (mine) and the other is completely unacceptable (yours).

There's something not right because you say it's a pain to adjust yours. I can get a new bean, run a shot through the machine and just by looking at the way that flows from the portafilter I know exactly how much I need to adjust the grind to get the next shot absolutely bang on. Ok, admittedly I've used it everyday for 5 years so I've had lot's of practise but there you go.

The Pharos is thought by many to be the equal of grinders that are much more expensive and there's only really slight flavours the mc2 can't pick out that the Pharos can. What the Pharos does do, for me at least, is give such a clean cup that it amplifies those individual tasting notes and makes them much easier to pick out. At the moment I'm using a Silvia as my espresso machine so maybe that will change as I improve the quality of the machine.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

Taste sensitivities, freshness of beans, depth of roast, temp and temp stability of extraction, pressure etc etc etc all effect the differences you'll perceive between one grinder (MC2) and another (Pharos). I've never used the Pharos or Lido and refer to them on reputation alone.

It's been a few years since I had the MC2. I found it easy to 'dial in' as you described, but switching to syphon and back to espresso was a pain. It wasn't as simple as counting the turns in one direction and then counting the turns back. I found it would drift over time and repeated adjustments. I marked the point where the worm met teeth of the adjustment collar for the burr and counted carefully, I always found it moving out a few teeth at a time until the marked point was nowhere near the worm. Dialing in from shot to shot is easy, probably because of the consistent (and large) quantity of fines produced which clog up the portafilter. The grinds felt a lot coarser on the MC2 than on the Mignon which I moved up to.

To illustrate my upgrade path simply:

Delonghi, pressurised baskets -- Zassenhaus 'z' grinder (crap wobbly burrs)

-- Weird. Foul. Not as good as Starbucks or Costa. Taste like dirt probably because of oils and grinds stuck in the pressurised basket as well as a crap machine.

Pavoni Pro, MC2

-- A step up. Not great. No flavour clarity, different beans, different roasts, all taste exactly the same. Not much improvement with fresh roasts compared to month old roasts. Starbucks and Costa just about on par. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.

Pavoni Pro, Mignon

-- No more visits to Costa or Starbucks. Clearer flavours, detectable differences from bean to bean when related to body and sweetness, but subtle differences such as fruity/winey acidity not so apparent. Shots not muddy but not 'clean'.

Brewtus, Mignon

-- More consistent than above. Better body.

Brewtus, Ceado E8

-- Subtle differences now apparent. Different types of sweetness and acidity detectable. Very clean if the bean can deliver.

Reading your post back it seems as if you don't value the clean cup quite so much. Personally I don't think you should feel the need to follow an espresso with water. When you say the Pharos gives a clean cup that amplifies the individual tasting notes, what else do you expect from a grinder? You're talking about a device intended to provide an even particle size of coffee to extract in order to minimise under and over extraction across a given quantity. There aren't going to be massive differences in the flavours present, just how they're presented thanks to the avoidance of bad flavours from uneven extractions.

I've lost about £180 on grinders over the years. The Zassenhaus was £40 and hasn't been sold on, the MC2 went for £80 after ebay fees and the Mignon has gone for £189 after postage. That's a total loss of about £170.


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## Jon (Dec 3, 2010)

This raises an interesting point for me. I'd always sort of assumed that the issue with the MC2 and the Compak k3 was me and my poor technique in my earlier years - and I'm fairly sure today I would get better coffee from them both. But maybe - just maybe - they can shoulder the blame with me. I definitely get far better coffee now from my 75e - although I had always assumed the biggest weak link in the chain was me. Not the grinder.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

You could pick up the MC2 in the sale thread and find out. I shared the same assumption. The thing that made me upgrade was the truly stunning range of particle sizes when grinding for syphon. I might have plugged at it for longer if I didn't want brewed.


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## cold war kid (Mar 12, 2010)

Rob1 said:


> Reading your post back it seems as if you don't value the clean cup quite so much. Personally I don't think you should feel the need to follow an espresso with water. When you say the Pharos gives a clean cup that amplifies the individual tasting notes, what else do you expect from a grinder? You're talking about a device intended to provide an even particle size of coffee to extract in order to minimise under and over extraction across a given quantity. There aren't going to be massive differences in the flavours present, just how they're presented thanks to the avoidance of bad flavours from uneven extractions.


I was hoping that when I got the Pharos flavours that were on the tasting notes that I couldn't previously pick out, like maybe blueberry, would be more apparent but that hasn't really happened. I'm still hopeful that when I upgrsde the silvia to something a bit more stable this may be the case.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

I read something somewhere about tasting notes being very subjective, there was a handy pie chart which illustrated how a coffee really tastes vs how the tasting notes would have you believe it tastes. As you can imagine the tasting notes pie chart was packed full of different flavours which all took various shares of the pie but the real chart basically said "99% coffee; 1% Something else". By that it meant the flavours you would expect to find are caramel, chocolate, earthiness, with sweetness and acidity. If the acidity and sweetness are identified as blueberry or lemon or strawberry that's just a description of a small part of the coffee.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying their coffee tastes like blueberries and actually mean it. The coffee I'm drinking now tastes of caramel and banana. If I really wanted to focus on the acidity over all other flavours I might trick myself into thinking my coffee tasted like bananas, but it doesn't, it's a very small note compared to the caramel and chocolate. Sometimes I taste nuts but really I just notice it's nice and crisp and a little dry, if I'm paying attention.

I couldn't find the article with the pie charts but I did come across this: http://coavacoffee.com/blogs/news/13010609-taste-notes-flavor-notes


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

Your mouth - your taste . Doesn't represent how I or others taste or experience coffee and vice versa . People aren't trying to trick you into a flavour - you just taste is differently to others .

If everything rates of chocolate they more likely a function of the beans and toast but hey .

N.b - yes I have had plenty of coffee that evoked and tasted of berries - blue - red and pink


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## risky (May 11, 2015)

Also, as per the good disclaimer on the LSOL, the taste notes are based on their taste, with their equipment and their water. Most people buying the coffee to use at home probably don't even have 1 out of those 3.


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## cold war kid (Mar 12, 2010)

Very true. I've often thought that when you get several people on a thread all saying they get the same notes as the roaster just how much of a placebo effect ( for want of a better word )might be going on. I mean, it's not like a bottle of wine were 10 people in different areas can all buy a bottle and if it's the same vintage and without fault they'll all get the same notes if they have tasting experience.

If a roaster uses an industrial grinder and a 2 group commercial machine in a hard water area, it's unlikely that Billy in a different county with soft water and a Gaggia classic is going to get the same notes every time.


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## hotmetal (Oct 31, 2013)

I agree it's very subjective, and although sometimes I think "bang on" about a taste note, would I have come up with the same description myself? Water, kit and skill are indeed as much of the picture as the taste abilities (not to mention preferences). I admit I do have a little fist-pump and yay when it tastes like it says it should. But I also would say the primary taste for me is "coffee" with undertones of blueberry, apricot whatever. I can see what people mean when they say "pure strawberry milkshake" , but if you blindfolded me and put a coffee in one hand and a strawberry milkshake in the other I don't think I'll be fooled!



Mrboots2u said:


> If everything rates of chocolate they more likely a function of the beans and toast but hey .


I've yet to find a bean with tasting notes of "beans on toast" Lol!


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## cold war kid (Mar 12, 2010)

Ha ha. If I come across a roaster who thinks his coffee tastes of beans on toast I don't think he'd be getting an order from me just in case he's right.


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## hotmetal (Oct 31, 2013)

Breakfast blend?


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