I was not expecting for it to arrive today but here we are, the new Fellow Opus 2.
I haven't had much chance to play around with it to make a complete review but first impressions are positive in general.
Accesories
The grinder comes with a funny little magnetic brush and 2 magnetic catch cups; one for espresso and the second one for filter coffee. At first I was not thrilled because they are made out of plastic and I was concerned about retention/static issues, however after using both to grind 100g I take that back, the cups worked completely fine, no static at all!
Presentation
In terms of materials and design, you all know how Fellow rolls, all of their products for sure appeal to certain audience due to the minimalist looks, but one thing we also know is that they tend to be way too plasticky, this grinder falls into that category. The entire grinder is made out of plastic and the grinding setting mechanism is the worst part of it all, when adjusting the grind the grinder feels like it's bending, so you have to slowly adjust the setting to avoid any possible damage,
Performance
For all of my tests I used medium roast beans by Ruta Maya (shoutout HEB), which actually lean a bit more into a darker roast.
As Fellow advertises, this grinder is expected to have a retention of at least 0.1g for light/medium roats and .0.3-0.5g for darker roasts. I went through roughly 100gr of coffee beans, 70g for espresso and the rest on coffee filter. My first test was for coffee filter, I followed Fellow's advice found on their instruction manual and used the setting 8 for a big batch for the Aiden coffee maker. Oddly the grinder stopped mid way through the batch, I pressed the grind button again and it went through all the beans just fine. Final retention was 0.1g.
I then went for a few espresso shots, again following the advised setting in the user manual, setting 1 worked straight away really well, no noticeable channeling or any other big issues. I went through 4 double shots and all of them had a retention of 0.1g, until my last shot where I pressed the grind button 2 more times after getting done with the initial grinding and that actually gave me 100% output.
Retention
Now to get more specific about the internals and retention which was a big issue with the gen 1. I do not understand why Fellow didn't use any bellows or any other sort of mechanism to help avoid retention, a simple bellow would have definitely helped a lot. As you can see in the pictures, after 100g of coffee the burrs were all covered in coffee grounds.
A big area of concern was when I decided to take it apart (I loved how easy was to get into the burrs), I found that the base of the burrs has a weird thing going on inside, there appears to pointy bits of plastic coming out for no reasons, micro plastics in my coffee?
Taste
Drip/Aiden: since I used medium-dark roast beans for my first batch, I did not get to taste any noticeable differences in my coffee, I will try with lighter roasts this weekend and compare that to my DF54 and my K Ultra. Coffee was just good enough.
Espresso: FYI I dosed 18g and did no preinfusion. Coming from a DF54 I immediately noticed a bit of a heavier body and mouthfeel, overall it was a pleasant shot, although I will need to keep dialing those beans. I only drank straight shots but will try lattes and OF COURSE AEROCANOS later this weekend. I have not used the Niche Zero but this grinder sounds like it could give it a run for its performance, not so much on build.
Final not so final thoughts
While not perfect by any means, this is a solid entry level grinder for anyone getting into coffee, it has a highly competitive price and for some people this grinder could be their endgame if they don't deviate much from darker roasts. I will still play around with it and see how it keeps performing, specially with darker roasts which will more than likely lead to higher retention.
Feel free to ask any specifics about it!