Review: Mahlkönig E65S GbW Grinder

I’ve only been drinking coffee since 2016, and since then I’ve been mostly been making my coffee at home. I started off with a De’Longhi bean to cup coffee machine, and then later upgraded to the Breville Oracle, followed by the Rocket Appartamento and then finally to a La Marzocco Linea Mini a couple of years ago. Along the way I upgraded my grinders as well, the first two machines had grinders built in, but with the Appartamento I got a Rocket Faustino Grinder for it, and with the Linea Mini I got the Mahlkönig X54 grinder.

I didn’t end up liking the X54 at all even though I love the Mahlkönig brand (they make some of the best commercial grinders). The X54 wasn’t very consistent, it was slow, and the grind adjustment knob felt horrible, the whole tactile experience actually was poor. Compared to the experience of using the commercial quality Linea Mini machine, the X54 felt very plasticky. So I decided I’d upgrade my grinder to one that would match the quality of my coffee machine. I did a lot of research and had eventually settled on the Ceado E37s.

I found a website online that would ship it to Kuwait and after their Black Friday discount and removing VAT, the price shipped to Kuwait was 525KD. Not cheap, but it was commercial quality, had large 83mm burrs and highly recommended by reviewers online. Just as I was about to make the plunge, I found out about the Mahlkönig E65S GbW. GbW stood for grind by weight, it was a new grinder by Mahlkönig where you could set the weight of coffee you wanted grinded, and then just place the portafilter into the machine and it would grind enough beans till it hit your weight. It was also fast, commercial grade, had a large adjustment ring as well as a large digital screen. It wasn’t cheap, online I found it for around 690KD after discount shipped to Kuwait, but since I knew the local dealer, I figured I could try and get a better deal locally.

The local dealer referred me to Coffee Tools who were selling the machine for a whopping 836KD (they since dropped it down to a more reasonable 731KD). I tried to work out a barter deal but that didn’t pan out but they did offer me a 25% discount which brought the price down from 836KD to 627KD. It was around 70KD cheaper than the price I found online so I decided to pull the trigger and get it (along with a much shorter 250g hopper). It was the best decision I made.

The E65S is such an incredible grinder. Firstly performance wise, it’s fast grinding out 18g of coffee in under 6 seconds (compared to 18-20 seconds of the X54). It’s also been really consistent and I’ve been using it daily since January. I don’t adjust the grind settings as much as I used to, and if I do it’s generally minor adjustments. It’s also really easy to adjust the grind size since the adjustment ring is large and the screen displays a digital read out of the distance between the two burrs. So I have my baseline set at 0.094mm and I generally adjust anywhere between 0.088 and 0.0096mm. It’s minor adjustments which I can do accurately because of the digital read out. But, the best feature is grind by weight. I use 18g of beans for my coffee, with regular grinders you use a timer to measure that out. So for example with my previous grinder, 18 seconds would grind around 18g of coffee, sometimes it would grind 16g in that time, sometimes 19g. It wasn’t a very efficient workflow either. You’d first put the portafilter on the scale and reset it to 0g, you’d then place portafilter in the grinder and have it grind for 18 seconds, you then put the portafilter on the scale again and see how much coffee it grinder, if its under 18g you have to put it back in grinder and manually grind a bit more coffee, if it’s more than 18g then you have to remove some coffee. It was a slow process and messy. The new workflow is so much better because of the grind by weight feature. All I have to do is place the portafilter into the grinder, and the grinder takes over and does all the calculations for me. As soon as I place the portafilter into the machine it starts grinding the coffee while measuring the weight. I think I read somewhere it does 6,000 calculations a second. Once the machine grinds 18g of coffee out, it stops and flashes green to let me know it hit the weight.

My coffee making process in the morning is a much more pleasant experience. I know a lot of people won’t understand or care about any of this, but as I’ve gotten older and I can afford nicer things, I’ve started caring about my experiences with objects a lot more. It could be a fork, it could be a car, I just like the experience of using nice things. My grinder and coffee machine are the first things I interact with in the morning. Then it’s my computer and then it’s my car. So having a good coffee making experience, then sitting in front of a fast computer with fast internet followed by driving to work in a 1970 Alfa Romeo, it’s really a great way to start the day. So would I recommend this grinder, yes. Do I recommend investing in expensive coffee equipment, for most people no. But if you enjoy using nice equipment and like the process of making coffee then yes. It’s actually cheaper to spend 3,000KD on coffee equipment than to have two coffees a day at a coffee shop. If you have 2 coffees a day, thats around KD1,460 you’re spending a year. So you’ll make your money back pretty quickly making coffee at home. If you’re married and your wife also drinks coffee then you’re going to make your money back twice as fast. And a commercial grade coffee machine is going to last a pretty long time at home.

I also highly recommend La Marzocco in Kuwait, their customer service department is one of the best I’ve experienced in Kuwait. Because they’re commercial machines, anytime I have an issue I’m treated like a coffee shop where any downtime is bad for business. I usually get a service person over either the same day if I report a problem in the morning, or the next day if I report a problem in the evening. So 5 stars to them.