We’ve taken a First Look at the MHW‑3Bomber F74 Navigator, a grinder that has specialty coffee enthusiasts buzzing. With 74 mm titanium‑coated burrs, a 400 watt brushless motor, variable RPM control, and ultra‑low retention, it promises espresso‑level precision and pour‑over clarity at a surprisingly accessible price. Could this be the prosumer grinder that changes the game?
Visit the front page of CoffeeGeek./com today to read all about it!
Manual coffee grinders have come a long way since the Porlex Mini days. Our Best Manual Grinders of 2025 guide is live on CoffeeGeek./com (sorry for the weird link), featuring compact travel grinders, espresso dial-in champs, and everyday workhorses.
Every grinder tested, reviewed, or owned by CoffeeGeek staff. Ready to see which made the cut? Visit our front page today to read all about it!
Wie durft? Mijn V60 en ik zijn nog aan het oefenen. Doel: 2:30 minuten. Realiteit: ‘Het is een proces’. ☕️ #CoffeeGeek”
Dziedzictwo kultury - kawa zalewajka (eng: cheap grinded coffee just inside hot water, not filtered).
#coffeegeek
Checked out the 1Zpresso X‑Ultra and it is a top contender if you only want one grinder for everything from espresso to pour over.
Premium build, intuitive external dial, magnetic catch cup and foldaway handle, priced at about USD 160. Not perfect, since the catch cup can slip and the dial is a bit hard to read in dim light, but overall it is a high‑value grinder that delivers.
Visit CoffeeGeek/.com (sorry for the dulled link) to read it today!
Back from vacation, and first things first: a proper cappuccino.
My favorite travel ritual? Picking up beans from local roasters. No mugs, no magnets—just great coffee. #thirdwavecoffee #coffeegeek
CoffeeGeek’s Ethical Advertising Practices for 2025
In an era where the lines between editorial content and advertising are very often blurred everywhere you look online, CoffeeGeek remains steadfast in its commitment to upholding the trust we’ve cultivated with our readers over the past 24 years.
As part of our continuing transparency initiative, we want to shed light on our ethical advertising practices for 2025, reaffirming our dedication to both our loyal and long standing readership and our valued sponsors and advertisers.
Preserving Editorial Integrity: The No-Paid Endorsement Policy
At CoffeeGeek, we place the utmost importance on the trust you place in us. It’s the main cornerstone of our brand and something we diligently strive to maintain. To that end, we have consistently steered clear of a practice that has become commonplace in the social media era: paid endorsements.
Throughout our website’s history, we have never engaged in sponsored social media posts, endorsements on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Threads, or Bluesky, nor have we ever penned a positive review in exchange for any form of payment or advertising agreement. Our endorsements are solely based on the merit of the product or service, free from any financial influence.
This commitment to unbiased reporting stems from a deep-seated responsibility to provide our audience with fair, objective opinions and factual information. We believe that accepting payment for endorsements would compromise our integrity and undermine the covenant we’ve established with our readers since CoffeeGeek’s inception.
Sponsored Content: A Responsible Approach
CoffeeGeek’s sponsored content is limited to two forms: sponsored educational and informative content, a practice we’ve managed since 2004, and sponsored blog posts, introduced in 2021. Both are governed by a strict set of rules and guidelines designed to ensure ethical conduct.
Sponsored Educational Content: Reader Value is the Only Priority
Our sponsored ‘How To’ and ‘Guide’ articles provide valuable resources for coffee enthusiasts of all levels. By accepting sponsorships for this educational content, we can expand our offerings and compensate our contributors for their expertise. However, we maintain a critical caveat: we will not partner with sponsors if there’s a potential conflict of interest with the content.
For example, while we might collaborate with a coffee grinder manufacturer on a guide to making a cappuccino, or a comprehensive, multi-page milk and plant-based milk guide, we would never allow them to sponsor a guide on ‘How to Choose a Grinder.’ This ensures that our educational content remains objective and unbiased.
And while we do take sponsors on for our detailed, multi-page educational guides (which take enormous resources from my writing team), we have a strict rule of no sponsorship for our “Best of” Feature Guides.
Sponsored Blog Posts: Transparency and Limited Engagement
Our foray into sponsored blog posts in 2021 was preceded by a thorough examination of blogging practices within the specialty coffee industry. Recognizing the prevalence of undisclosed paid promotions on other platforms, we opted for a more transparent approach: native advertising.
Native ads on CoffeeGeek are essentially rented blog spaces where advertisers can publish their own content. These posts are clearly identified as sponsored and are subject to a set of ethical guidelines. They must be relevant to our readership, free of misleading tactics, and devoid of any implied or explicit endorsement from CoffeeGeek.
Furthermore, we limit the lifespan of these sponsored posts to a maximum of six months, ensuring that our blog remains primarily focused on original, non-promotional content.
We do have a few of these kinds of posts on tap for 2025, including one by our latest advertising sponsor Kruve. We really do appreciate their support, but hosting their blog post is by no means an implied endorsement on our part.
Affiliate Partnerships at CoffeeGeek
In July 2024, we updated our readers about our approach to affiliate links, emphasizing a commitment to balancing ethical considerations with revenue generation. Our primary focus remains on delivering informative, engaging, and entertaining content for our readership.
Our pilot program for Affiliate Link Partners is ongoing. We will be adding a few manufacturers to the list for 2025, and have removed two that were temporarily added in the fall, because we felt the demands and expectations of those partners did not match our site ethics policies.
At this time, we still will not be adding vendors or crowd funding sources to our pilot program. The reasons for this are outlined in the linked article above. But in some additional transparency, I am in talks with two vendors, one in Canada, and one in the US, specifically about our ethical concerns, and they have both been very positive in their responses, so this could change later on in 2025.
The Value of Trust: A Concluding Note
CoffeeGeek’s advertising philosophy is rooted in the belief that your trust in us is paramount. We understand that our readers rely on us for honest, unbiased information, and we are committed to preserving that trust. While we acknowledge that our ethical stance has definitely resulted in missed financial opportunities, we believe that maintaining our integrity is ultimately more valuable.
In a digital landscape often characterized by paid promotions and ambiguous endorsements, i hope CoffeeGeek stands as a beacon of transparency and ethical advertising. I recently watched a very informative video from Micro on Youtube that highlights just how pervasive this kind of sponsored content is, and what kinds of companies are often involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3t1d1zzu54
We hope to avoid these kinds of sponsorships and partnerships for the foreseeable future. We are dedicated to providing our readers with authentic, informative content, free from external influence. We are also proud to partner with brands and sponsors who share our commitment to ethical practices. If you believe your company fits that bill, and would like to be associated with the CoffeeGeek website, feel free to reach out – our Advertising Partner Page has a contact form at the bottom.
The MiiCoffee Apex, V2. Improvements include
- easily adjustable OPV valve
- improvements to preinfusion modes
- slight improvements to controller interface / UI
- better tuned PID.
Still missing: hot water function.
Here it is, alongside the DF54 grinder, as well as a Lelit Victoria.
Hola Fediverse. You know I love sharing with you my insider, deep dive, behind the scenes stuff about what goes on with coffee and espresso we test at CoffeeGeek. I spent two full days with the Mazzer Philos production unit grinder now, and here's my condensed notes from the last two days of testing.
Sidenote: when I see the Philos, it's as if coffee nerds kept showing Mazzer the Zerno Z1 and similar grinders from cottage industry makers, and Mazzer says "hold my beer".
A visual reminder that you can pour latte art in a traditional (drink of 3rds) cappuccino. Trying out some new glassware from Kruve, brewing and steaming with the Lelit Victoria.
There's been a delay in getting our Cuptimo Snapshot Review out, because I'm trying to coax a great cup out of one of the devices I chose to compare it to: the Ceado Hoop.
I love, and hate the Hoop. I just can't seem to consistently brew a great cup with it, BUT I've had some great cups of coffee from it, brewed by others.
Anyone out there have better luck with the Hoop?
I absolutely love these coffee measuring bowls. Extremely unique, and while they look like hammered iron (see 3rd photo), they are actually hard porcelain with an iron finish glaze. I know because I broke one by accident.
Don't ask me where to get them - the place I bought them from is no longer in biz sadly. But at least I have four. I use only two at a time, and have the other two in reserve... you know, in case I break them again.
We are initiating a new pilot program on CoffeeGeek to introduce limited commission generating links for some of the products we review and write about.
This policy change has been a long time coming. Yet it remains something that weighs very heavily on me, as the Senior Editor for this website, and the person ultimately responsible for all the content, and the unbiased nature of what we try to do here. However, with the evolution and changes to how content creators can expect to generate a sustainable income, after resisting this change for half a decade, I’ve had to finally adopt and adapt to this.
For 2024 and beyond, we are starting a new pilot program, working with select manufacturers (no vendors) to use commission-generating links whenever we review or write about their products on CoffeeGeek. Every manufacturer we contract with this new policy is very clearly informed the use of their commission links has no bearing or influence at all on any of the content we write, or the products we decide to cover, on CoffeeGeek.
This policy change is fully detailed on our Terms and Conditions Page, but I also wanted to give some context and history here. Feel free to read either or both for more details, and how I came to this decision and how it will influence our website in the future.
Background on CoffeeGeek’s Avoidance of Affiliate Links
For the 23+ years CoffeeGeek has been online, we’ve steadfastly avoided and refused to participate in direct vendor and manufacturer affiliate links, or direct commission sales schemes for any product we’ve listed, written about, featured or reviewed. We have done this to avoid any perception of bias in our product reviews, and also because we did not want our readers to be under the impression we were solely covering products and services for the purposes of generating income.
There has been one exception to this blanket “no affiliate links policy”: Amazon. Back in 2011, we started a pilot program with very strict rules: we would link to our newly created Amazon Affiliate link in a product review only if a) we bought the product ourselves, and b) none of our active advertisers sold the product (if they did, we linked to their product sales pages directly, with no commission generating links used).
In 2014, we amended this policy to a) products purchased directly by CoffeeGeek or b) products supplied to us by a manufacturer directly. We still gave priority links to our active site supporters who sold those products, again, with no income-generating url links used.
Amazon was a good fit within our site ethics policies because Amazon had no expectations of positive or negative reviews, indeed, they had no involvement at all, other than providing our website a place to point people to if they wanted to buy a product we reviewed or wrote about. When independent vendors decide to give out commission-generating links to reviewers, there are often implied and direct expectations of positive reviews, in just about any product category, not just the coffee and espresso world.
Even when we did use Amazon links in our reviews, guides, how tos, and blog articles, we still provided direct links to a) manufacturers, b) manufacturer sales pages, and c) our active banner advertiser supporter pages that sell those products. All three of these link types were straight URLs, no commission-generating links were used. We did this so you, our reader, would have a choice and range of where to buy the products we review and write about. One link on the page made us income. The others did not.
There was another part of this ethics policy we practiced: if a vendor supplied us with a product for review and coverage, we would not use our Amazon affiliate link in the content published on that product for one full year. All the “where to buy” links would point directly to the manufacturer, and exclusively to the product supplier. And these links were direct vendor links; they contained no commission-generating cues. We made nothing off these reviews for the first year after publication.
Further, I was determined to never post “click bait / affiliate link only” content just for the sake of making income for our website. Any content we produced had to first and foremost be of interest and newsworthy to our readership. It would also have to be about products that we’ve had a chance to review and evaluate.
For the first 20 years of CoffeeGeek’s existence, these policies worked well for us because we were able to make a sustainable income as a website from traditional Internet advertising models: banner and graphical advertisements.
However, this source of income is drying up. More and more specialty coffee vendors and manufacturers are moving towards spending their Internet advertising budget on giants like Meta and Google. Others believe banner advertisements are no longer as effective as they used to be (this may be true for many websites, but our website still enjoys industry leading click through rates and most of our self-hosted banner ads cannot be blocked by ad-block style systems).
Meanwhile, just about every other influencer website, Youtube channel, Instagram account and TikTok account covering specialty coffee had moved to the 100% commission link system. This started about ten years ago, but in the past five years, it has become the norm. It is very rare that any website or social media channel that reviews coffee and espresso equipment has any link that does not generate some income for the content creator. CoffeeGeek was, seemingly, the lone holdout on this kind of policy.
Commission Links on CoffeeGeek in 2024
Even though our website enjoys some of the industry’s highest click through rates for our traditional banners and graphical advertisements (all sold directly to specialty coffee businesses: we do not use Google or Meta’s ad programs here), over the years, the number of vendors who use our website to connect with you, our readers, has dwindled. It is at the point, in 2024, where CoffeeGeek is no longer sustainable. As the Senior Editor, I had to finally consider a change I’ve long put off: using commission-generating links (and not just Amazon links) in some of our content, going forward.
I’ve thought long and hard about this. I know, from past experience, that some (certainly not all) third party vendors have certain expectations if you enrol in their commission generating link program. Namely, they expect positive content. If the content creator doesn’t provide this positive, promotional content, they will not maintain the creator’s commission program, or reduce their commission rate (yes, this is a bit inside baseball, but it’s the main reason I’ve avoided doing vendor commission linking as a blanket policy).
Manufacturers are a bit different. Most do not have expectations of positive content if you enrol in their commission-generating link programs. Of course, they expect the products they make will garner positive reviews, but it is rarely a requirement to be part of their programs. Again, just like vendors, not all of them are like this, but my own experience within the industry is, most do operate this way.
After a lot of discussion and debate, both within my own team, and with select manufacturers, we’ll be going forward in a test pilot program enrolling in three manufacturers’ commission sales programs. Those companies are Lelit, Shark Ninja, and Breville. The first you’ll see on CoffeeGeek is for Ninja.
We selected Lelit because they do not sell their machines on Amazon, and have overhauled their direct sales model in the US for 2024 and beyond. We selected Shark Ninja because their direct sales channels provide the best prices and warranty services. And, we selected Breville because we have a very long working history with Breville on this website, and never once have they a) had expectations of any kind of positive review (indeed, they’ve taken some of our past criticisms of products we reviewed to improve their products with updates); and b) continue to be one of our premier site supporter and advertisers, even though we’ve been less than kind to some of their products in our reviews.
For these same reasons, we may be also adding Baratza to this list in the near future.
Our new policy still will not be applicable to third party vendors. For the foreseeable future, the only commission-generating links will be for manufacturer-direct sales pages, and only if the manufacturer agrees to our “no influence, no guaranteed positive review” policy that we share with them. If a manufacturer does not agree to those terms, we will not participate in their commission links program.
What This Means For Our Readers
Your trust in all the content we publish on CoffeeGeek is absolutely paramount to me. We spent 23 years earning and maintaining your trust, and it is one of the most valuable things I feel I have earned in several decades.
I hope this rather long post reassures you that, going forward with this new limited and curated commission links program will result in no content editorial changes to CoffeeGeek. We will still call out companies when they can do better. We will still be brutally honest in all our reviews. We will still write everything with the mission of “we fight for the consumer”, providing you with the best information we can to make informed and sensible choices in the coffee and espresso equipment you are considering.
https://coffeegeek.com/blog/news/a-change-to-coffeegeeks-policy-on-affiliate-links/
Completely re-written and fully updated: our First Look at the Breville Bambino Plus espresso machine. It's longer than most full reviews. We cover the history of the machine, changes it has had, and its position in today's marketplace.
cc @espresso
#espressomachine #brevillebambinoplus #bambinoplus #coffeegeek
https://coffeegeek.com/reviews/firstlooks/breville-bambino-plus-first-look/
#coffeegeek #coffee When using a French press Hoffman and Hendrik both skim the top after stirring the bloom back in. Does this change the flavor profile or does it make a cleaner pour?
Anyone know?
Not my best or most even roast, and a little darker than usual, but I found my usual time wasn’t dark enough so…
Oft… That was CLOSE!
Been really busy today with garden and forgot I was running low on coffee…
Imagine if I hadn’t just done the dishes and noticed…. And then started yesterday as “Normal”.
@coffeegeek that makes a lot of sense to me, but how do hand powered grinders do?
Brewing coffee with the all porcelain (including the filter) Bayreuth brewer. There's not many all porcelain brewers out there; I should write this one up more on CoffeeGeek, because it's pretty good!
Shot with a Fujifilm #X100T camera, same Tri-X film simulation, straight from the camera.
cc @coffee
#bayreuthbrewer #porcelain #coffeebrewer #brewingcoffee #nopaper #coffee #coffeegeek
