What does the Cali crusher do? I love the grinder but don't understand the screen section and all that. Any clue? Thanks!
1633070
The Cali crusher is for making compact pellets of kief, which you get on the bottom cup, filtered from the herb by the screen. Be prepared, kief is very high potency.
2204241
What I bought was a combination offer; it came with the food grinder, slicer/shredder, and also the fruit/veggie strainer. The strainer attachment can be purchased separately but I believe you need the grinder attachment to make the strainer attachment work, so I got them both. Since we do a lot of home canning and freezing of garden produce, I bought the strainer attachment because it would be the most used of the whole combination, as well as the most useful. The strainer removes the skins, seeds etc. from the produce (like tomatoes) and expels it out one end into a bowl and the juice is excreted out the back sloped 'runway' into another bowl. Haven't used the slicer/grinder/shredder attachment yet, since I don't do much with slicing cheese/meat etc., nor do I do much home grinding of meat to make my own hamburger mix. If I were going to make lots of sliced cheese, meat, etc. I'd use the shredder attachment, but for now my food processor does what little slicing, etc. I do. If you go to the KitchenAid site there are a number of videos showing the strainer in action. Just googling how the strainer attachment works got me to other videos as well.
1624347
Can I use my bricks or does it only grind? Also, this is my first Espresso machine, I know almost nothing about them. Does it come with a good manual? Based on some reviews I read I feel I need to hold a doctorate to operate one. Tell me it aint so.
1516988
Dang, people! I'm looking for an herb grinder to crush caraway seeds for my homemade rye bread. Now you've got me nervous that my mailman will think I'm doing weed!!!
1562022
Sorry this is late, maybe this can still be helpful to you. I find that I wobble along with the grinder in a complimentary movement way. I don't set it down on a surface to grind. I hold it in the air and let one arm grind and the other hand holds it, sometimes going in the opposite direction to be more efficient. I still use it everyday since I got it 2 months ago. No problems yet.Hopefully never!
1098000
You can set the grinder as to the size of the grind.I put mine right in the middle and it's fine with us.And it is easy to "grind"!
2264959
fine to coarse, mine stopped working after a month, could not return, no repair center, after I bought the Cuisinart DBM-8 Supreme Grind Automatic Burr Mill, still works great after 6 months, spend the extra money and save your self from this grinder, its a dud...happy fathers day
729734
Not sure of the specific grinder but we use it daily with a variety of machines. Good product, have used most of the competition, though we still deal with a lot of dust. Have not found the perfect solution.
86052
You have to make sure you either have a cut off disk rated for very high rpm, or you have to set the speed of the grinder low. Otherwise you risk shattering the cutoff disk do to speed, and that would lead to injury.
272672
I would advise against it. I never tried it but it I think that is stretching its capability. I think a grinder would do a better job.
1013365
First of all I love the 840 machine. Does everything perfectly well. I use the separate Brevell smart grinder. That also works just fine for my needs grinds everything exactly the way I want. The reason I have them separate is because I've just never a fan of combined machines in case something goes wrong with one or the other.
51267
Hi. This is a meat grinder. Stuff comes out of it like worms basically. You can grind all kinds of stuff with it but the finish product will always be like noodles. Thanks
2041135
Julie: Just pull the top silver piece straight off and fill. Be careful as today I filled my pepper grinder and I pulled the top rather firmly and some peppercorns flew when the top came off. My fault as I was in a bit of a hurry. Hope you enjoy the grinder. Do you have both the salt and pepper ones? I have both. Had to order from two different vendors, but love them both. They are well worth the money spent. Enjoy!
1779333
There's a device on top that you tighten or loosen to adjust the coarseness of the grind. After owning for 6 months, I would not recommend this product.
191387
I'm buying one myself, but will take it apart before first use just to see what could damage it. I suspect that the buyers who have problems are running the unit too long on too fine a setting, expecting performance of an $400 grinder. More expensive grinders are designed with heavier gears made of steel instead of plastic and better heat dissipation so they can run forever even on espresso settings. Such are the tradeoffs in designing a $100 burr grinder.
559439
The "strainer basket" is part of a garbage disposal installation. How would you get waste into the grinder if a strainer is in the way? Question makes no sense. I have a heavy duty Waste King attached to my Orca - screwed it in myself - and have had no problems.
1627643
Fredm - I purchased this grinder as a Christmas gift for a family member and ended up keeping it for myself and buying another one for the family member. I really like the product. It is a blade grinder and I find for automatic drip coffee-maker, I would normally set the grinder to medium. With this grinder, I need to set it more towards the coarse setting. You might have to experiment a little but I have no complaints about this grinder.