Eureka Mignon Filtro Coffee Grinder Overview
No arena in the home coffee market is more hotly contested than that of sub $300 coffee grinders. For the past few years, the front has been pretty quiet, but a new company is stepping into the ring. That company is Eureka, and the ace up their sleeve is the Mignon Filtro.
At a glance, the form factor may seem familiar. Eureka has been making great use of its new Mignon body as a platform, adapting it to create a range of grinders with different specs for different tasks. The Filtro is the newest example. The all-aluminum frame makes it tough and gives it a premium feel that comparable grinders simply can’t compete with.
It has 50mm burrs like its espresso focused siblings, but they’re cut in a way that optimizes them for the coarser settings required by other brew methods. Internally, it boasts the same 260-Watt motor as the Mignon Silenzio so it’s plenty powerful and can grind a 20-gram dose in around 15 seconds. A lot of this is due to the coarser setting and the lack of the screen normally installed on the espresso models. On an espresso grinder this helps reduce clumping but removing it on a brew grinder helps ensure that grounds flow out quickly, substantially improving particle size distribution.
As always, Eureka’s micro-metric grind adjustment dial makes for easy adjustment whether you’re fine-tuning or switching from pour over to French press. Tests across the entire range of brew methods gave us delicious results. It has quickly become our go-to grinder for drip coffee around the office where we’ve used it for a range of coffees – from fruity African single origins to traditional dark-roasted blends. Dialing in by eye, we were able to consistently get perfect extractions on our first or second batch.
When tasked with grinding for espresso, the Filtro does a good job. Sine the new burr design isn’t ideal for it, we still recommend the Silenzio or Specialita for the best tasting espresso, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t impressed. The power and fine-tuned adjustment of the Filtro are there to make it possible, which is where other entry-level grinders normally fall short of making good espresso. If you pull a shot every now and then or use a manual or stovetop espresso maker, this ability to confidently grind for any brew method is a huge asset.
We’re impressed with the flavor we got from our coffee with this grinder, but aside from targeting extraction percentages, it’s hard to be objective about taste. What’s far easier is to look at the build quality and performance of these grinders. In those departments, it’s easy to see that they stand head and shoulders above the competition while being quieter, more versatile, and just as compact.