At last, Mahlkönig entered the home grinder market. (Unless you consider the EK43S a home grinder, which I do, if only out of wishful thinking.) The German “King of Grinders” is modern X54 is the first product in the Mahlkönig Home product line, billing itself as a one-stop shop for all your home grinding needs, from espresso to French press and everything in between.
Before him official premiere in Americawe were able to take the modern X54 for a test drive to see if it lives up to the hype and reputation of its vaunted manufacturer. The answer, in low, is yes… for the most part.
Key features
Named after its 54mm flat steel burrs, the X54 offers 35 continuously variable grind settings, from espresso to French press, with a 1,050 rpm motor and a 500-gram hopper. The overall design resembles a scaled-down version of the company’s espresso machine PEAK grinder, bringing features (for better or worse, more on that later) more commonly found in commercial applications – including programmable time-based grinding – but at a more consumer-friendly price point of $849.
In action, this whisper-quiet grinder—Mahlkonig claims it operates at less than 70 dB—generally had no real grind stop; what you put in is what you get out. The X54 offers an even grind across nearly the entire spectrum of settings, although a few boulders start to creep deep into the abrasive end. To illustrate this, we spread 20 grams of ground coffee across three different settings: 3 (espresso), 17 (v60 pour-over), and 33 (Chemex). The espresso grind was sieved at >250 μm, 250-500 μm, and <500μm, with the v60 and Chemex being sifted into >500μm, 500-1000μm i <1,000μm. (Originally the latter two were sifted to >250 μm, but virtually 0 g was produced.) The results can be seen in the scrolling text below.
The biggest advantage of the X54 is programmable timed grinding. But a timed grinder is only as good as its accuracy. To test this, we ran a 250-gram bag of coffee through the X54 to grind for 10 seconds. And to our surprise, the amount of coffee in the hopper had no major impact on performance. After two test doses that resulted in fairly low weights (only one of which is reflected in the chart below), the X54 settled down nicely at an output of around 17 grams with a deviation of around 0.1 or 0.2 grams.
Other features we liked
There’s a lot of love for this versatile grinder. First of all, it just looks good on the counter, and its relatively miniature size means it doesn’t take up too much space during the process. It has solid construction throughout; when you turn the knob to adjust the grind settings, you can feel the mechanism move the burrs.
One of my favorite parts about testing the X54 was how intuitive it was to employ. Without having to open the instruction manual, all the functions are simple to read. Switching between manual and timed grinding, programming the timer, and even switching between the coffee and espresso front plates was a piece of cake. And once the espresso plate is attached, the X54 has a trigger that you insert the filter holder into, which starts the grinder.
Where the X54 really shined was in making espresso and finer, single-serve drinks like the V60 or AeroPress. When I made espresso in my home espresso machine, a single-boiler Rancilio Silvia, the ground coffee came out airy and fluffy, with no lumps. From the first shot, they were some of the best I’ve made in this machine. And there was plenty of room to grind finer if necessary. At one point, on setting 3, I could choke the machine with a grind that was too fine, something I’ve historically never done in my Silvia. For the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to hot up my espresso machine at noon, because the results were consistent and definitely worth the wait.
Things we didn’t love
Still, we think there are some aspects that could be improved, and a lot of that comes from scaling down the X54 to a more commercial design. For example, the hopper can be a problem when storing the grinder under a cabinet. Measuring a total of 17 inches, the grinder barely fit under the 18.5-inch cabinet clearance, which made loading coffee every day a bit of a pain. About 6 inches of this total height comes from a tank that is about twice the height of other domestic tanks. All this can be solved with a smaller tank, but according to Mahlkönig USAWe are not currently working on one.
Overall, the reservoir is too enormous for home employ. And while having a 500-gram reservoir for taking multiple servings makes sense, in my experience most home users only put the amount of coffee they need in the reservoir for the drink they’re making.
The same problem applies to the timed grind option. As you can see above, while the accuracy is a tenth of a gram or two, the timed grind is best suited to busy coffee shops, where a little fluctuation in performance here and there is a willing sacrifice to efficiently handle the workload. Home users, on the other hand, have the advantage of being able to manually load the coffee into each shot for greater precision in dosing. The feature is nice, but I don’t see many home users using it, given the trade-off. That said, the grinder seems sturdy enough to handle airy commercial employ, such as a pop-up, and the timed grind feature would definitely be a positive in this context.
Another potential drawback comes in when grinding for larger pour-overs like the Chemex. That’s not to say the X54 can’t produce a Chemex grind, that’s true, but I found I had to push the settings quite a ways higher to get a good brew. When making a 50g Chemex, I settled on around 33 or 34 out of 35 (using denser Scandinavian-style roasts, which tend to work better with a heavier grind), which actually created a few boulders and left a little room to move around to get more up if needed.
Verdict
Overall, the Mahlkönig X54 is a very good, very attractive grinder that brings a lot of commercial power to the home countertop, although it could be improved with just a few minor changes (please, please, please, give us a smaller container, I beg you). Ultimately, its ability to live up to its promise as a versatile home grinder depends on how you plan to employ it. If your primary needs are espresso and miniature to medium pour-overs, the X54 is an simple choice at a fairly reasonable price for what you get. But if your primary goal is gigantic ancient Chemexes, there may be other grinders on the market that better suit your needs.
Mahlkönig X54
Design Functionality Consistency Noise Speed |
