Did this pricey coffee grinder stand up to our tests?

Any coffee aficionado can tell you that grinding your own beans is a must for getting the best-tasting coffee. One of the better grinders the BestReviews Testing Lab tested in pursuit of the best coffee was the Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder. 

It has a hefty price tag, but it also packs in 41 grind settings and several enviable features. We found some of these features didn’t perform as well as they should, but at the same time, we can’t deny the almost flawless performance when it comes to actually grinding beans. If it falls within your budget, it’s an easy recommendation.

What is the Fellow Opus Grinder?

The testing team found the Fellow Opus Conical Burr Coffee Grinder to be an excellent machine that’s well worth the price.

Product Specifications

Dimensions: 5.1” W x 8.3” D x 10.6” H | Style: Conical burr | Capacity: Fellow claims it can hold enough beans to grind up to 12 cups worth of brewed coffee | Average Grind Time: Four grind time settings, in seconds: 30, 60, 90 and 120 | Grind Range: Approximately 200 microns and up

The Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder is a high-end grinder made for people who love to make various kinds of coffee. Its 41 grind settings are all remarkably consistent, though we did have some issues with jamming when grinding at the smallest setting.

It has several excellent quality-of-life features, too, that somewhat help justify its steep price tag. The best of these are four automated grinding times, triggered by just a click or two of its power button. We tested these and found the purported times of 30, 60, 90 and 120 seconds were dead on. Another excellent feature is the magnetic collection cup. This forces the cup to sit directly under the center to avoid any excess mess. It also claims to have an anti-static feature to prevent grounds from clinging to its walls, but we thought this performed poorly enough to wonder if it was working at all. 

Pros

• It has 41 grind settings on its main dial and an inner dial that lets you slightly increase or decrease each setting’s grind size.
• It has several special features like timed autostop and anti-static technology for a cleaner experience.
• The ground coffee collection cup magnetically centers itself to prevent accidental messes.

Cons

• The smallest grind settings consistently jammed every time we tested them.
• We found the anti-static feature doesn’t work as well as it should.
• We thought the special portafilter dosing cup was more trouble than it’s worth.

Performance

The Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder is high-performing, and here’s why.

Grind settings

The Fellow Opus has 41 main grind settings. These are all accessed and adjusted by twisting the well-labeled outer ring. We did find this ring a little stiff, making it tough to adjust between adjacent settings.

It also has a small inner ring for further fine-tuning. This was even tougher to adjust, and it only got tougher the more bean dust got in its cracks. Still, it’s a good way to get the exact grind you need for persnickety coffee machines.

Grinding guide 

The hardest part of grinding your own beans is finding the right grind size for your machine. This process is often called “dialing in.” To help out, the lid of the Fellow Opus has a diagram that shows what each of its 41 settings are best for, whether that’s espresso, French press, pour over or almost anything else.

We question its overall accuracy though. When using it to grind for espresso, the lid’s guide had us starting far away from our eventual setting.

How we tested

The smallest grind settings jammed on every test.

We put every aspect of this grinder to the test.

• Grind consistency and versatility: This was a simple matter of grinding at multiple stops of its 41 offered settings and grinding several cups of coffee at each setting to test its consistency. It performed perfectly.
• Grind adjustment precision: We tested this alongside the consistency and versatility tests. We found it was remarkably precise at every step.
• Features: There were three main features we put to the test. Its anti-static feature was tested by checking how many grounds were stuck to its various walls. There were too many to say it works as intended. Its portafilter cup was tested by transferring beans to a portafilter as it’s meant for. We found it made a considerable mess despite being intended to cut down on messes. It’s timed auto-stop grinding was tested by timing each one, and each one was accurate to the second.

Additionally, we compared its noise level to other kitchen appliances (we found it was about half as loud as a blender), and we compared its general ease of use against other grinders we tested or have used in our own coffee-making pursuits.

Price and where to buy

The Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder retails for $195. You can find it at Amazon, Best Buy and Fellow.

How to use the Fellow Opus

Give it several good, stiff taps when you’re done grinding to get the last of the coffee out.

Using the Fellow Opus grinder, no matter if you’re grinding for your French press or for a pour over, is simple.

1. Set the grinding size. First, set the main outer ring to one of its 41 settings. If you’re not sure what setting to use, the lid of the Fellow Opus contains a grinding guide for various coffees to use as a starting point. Secondly, set the inner ring if needed. If you don’t need to tweak your grind that finely, leave the inner ring in the middle.
2. Fill the hopper with your chosen beans and set the collection cup underneath the grinder. The collection cup has an insert called the portafilter dosing cup if you’re grinding for espresso. It’s supposed to make it easier to transfer ground beans to a portafilter, but we found this more trouble than it was worth and stuck to the regular collection cup.
3. Press the power button to trigger one of its four timed grind settings. You can stop the grind at any time by pressing the power button again. If you don’t want to grind to any of the four timed settings, trigger the two-minute setting and cancel it once your beans are ground as you wish.
4. With your grind complete, tap the body of the grinder several times to force as many loose grounds in the body to drop into the collection cup as you can. If you skip this step, you’ll quickly find piles of ground beans on your counter.
5. Transfer your beans to your coffee maker and clean up.

Is it a good grinder for French press coffee?

Absolutely. Not only is this grinder excellent for French press coffee, whether you’re brewing it the traditional way or with something like the Aeropress, but it’s also excellent for pour overs, drip coffee makers and espresso machines. The only common coffee type we can think of that it may not be good for is Turkish coffee, because the smallest grind settings jammed consistently. Whatever other coffee-grinding needs you may have, the Fellow Opus should be more than enough.

The bottom line

When it comes down to it, we have no reservations about recommending the Fellow Opus Conical Burr Coffee Grinder. It’s a superb machine. While we do have some minor quibbles with it, and we again want to warn any Turkish coffee drinkers away because of the jamming issue, it otherwise performs as a $200 grinder should.

That said, $200 for a grinder is a steep asking price, especially since you can find many excellent options for $100 or less. Those may not have the sheer breadth of grinding size options the Fellow Opus offers, but if you only drink one kind of coffee, you only need one high-performing setting anyway. So unless you like to shake up your coffee-drinking habits to keep things fresh, or you don’t mind spending top dollar regardless of how many ways you plan on using it, you may want to consider a more affordable grinder.