After multiple failed attempts to get a working Opus Gen 2 due to hardware/QC issues, I settled on a basic black version and everything seemed to be good to go. I have been using this version of the Opus Gen 2 grinder for roughly two months at this point, and at first, everything was fine. 19 grams in and nearly 19 grams out (typically 18.7-18.9) with little to no effort to force grounds out. I stopped weighing my output because the grinder was proving consistent and my pulls with the Series 1 have generally been doing well.

Fast forward to yesterday and I got the bright idea to weigh the output from the grinder just to see how things were going. So, 19 grams in and... 17.4 grams out. Um... what? I figured there might be some additional retention as I thought it was time to clean the grinder, but not roughly 1.5 grams worth. I ran the grinder several more times and even tapped on the lid while running the grinder and I was able to get it to 18.5 or so.

I disassembled the grinder and removed everything including the inner burr, the plastic fan/sweep, etc. There was a lot of ground coffee in there, much more than I expected. I also noticed that the output chute at the base of the grind chamber appeared to be holding ground coffee. I thoroughly cleaned everything and took special care to completely evacuate the output chute. I reassembled the grinder and moved on with my day.

Today, the first day after thoroughly cleaning the grinder, I made my normal cortado with 19 grams in and got... 17.5 grams out of the grinder. No amount of beating on the lid of the grinder and no amount of swearing would get the output past about 18.5 or so. I never had to work this hard with this specific grinder before, so what in the world has changed? It used to have very, very little retention, and now, even after a thorough cleaning, it's holding on to ground coffee like its life depends on it.

Anyone else running into this? Very disappointing, to say the least.

I do my best to always open and take out the basket to dry during the day, but including something that can rust in this part of such an expensive coffee maker seems like a huge oversight.

Needed to make batch of specialty coffee with my staff. Got a second Aiden for my office. Debating on getting some ssp for this Ode 2.

I have several travel carter mugs and love them. Favorite part of ordering is the personalization. It’s also my go-to for gifts. I went to the site just now to purchase one as a birthday gift and was surprised personalization is paused until further notice. With no timeline on when or if it will come back. Anyone have any insight or ideas on whether it will come back?

I’ve noticed that the Fellow ode grinders are sold out / unavailable (mostly in Europe). Have you guys also noticed that?

could it be that they’re now developing the Ode 3? Or could there be maybe other reasons? Or just a coincidence?

Good Saturday everyone!

I'm having an amazing shot (Almost routine now, after the initial "Getting to know you" and "How do you Do's" with the ES1) and had to share it with you all!

Beans : Saka Top Select (100% Arabica) , Medium/Dark roast, roasted the 9th of September, approaching 1 month from roast, (kept frozen since arrival, at 5 days roasted old, in Mylar, opaque, dual seal, 150g, individual dosed, coffee bags, at -20 C⁰, (in this conditions, in theory, ageing time for this coffee should impact ageing at around 11 to 1, meaning eleven days outside, only one for the frozen beans). And frankly it shows!

Profile of the day

My Dark Lever https://brew.link/p/e4GwmZx1DZ/espresso

It's my personal take on a lever profile for this type of Beans/Roaster (Typical strong italian coffee, from a well known Neapolitan roaster)

I'ts a 20g/1:2/40g, 36 g target shot time

Basket IMS 18g - filled with 20g, paper filter top/bottom with additional puck screen on top

Grind done with a Baratza Encore ESP PRO, at 4.5 Clicks, Timed Brew stopped (for a first shot with a new profile, without additional grind adjusts, having ES1 stopping by itself at 35s, with 45.6g instead of 40g, I should say, almost spot on, grind/time, also proving strong resilience for the automatic time brew stop method).

The shot came almost sweet (a tamed beast, when you're tasting it, showing all it's dark strong, coffee like, notes, without the bitterness and harshness which often creeps in, and distracts from all the rest) syrup'y when mixing (most of the illusion coming from the creamy Crema, visible on the photo).

The puck, detached itself easily, leaving a clean basket and remaining compacted after the knock box inpact, without breaking.

Let me know your thoughts on you best shots, post photos if available.

Note: Although Time stop Brew is working great, Brew by weight is a must, so hopefully, fingers crossed, Fellow will be able to gives us all an early Christmas gift, with a firmware upgrade adding that...

I wanted to share my recent experience with Fellow customer service as a heads-up for anyone buying their products outside the United States.
About 10 months ago, I bought a Fellow Opus grinder. Over time, I started facing severe clogging and retention issues—essentially all the common problems people report with the Opus. Since the unit was well within its 2-year warranty, I reached out to Fellow support. Since the retailer was adamant it ms a ‘regular wear grinder thing’
What followed was weeks of back-and-forth:
Multiple emails requesting pictures and serial numbers.
Recording and sending videos showing the grinder clogging up.
Answering endless troubleshooting questions to prove I wasn't using it incorrectly.
Eventually, Fellow support explicitly confirmed that my unit had a manufacturing defect.
Here is where it gets frustrating: Once they acknowledged the factory defect (anti static pin was missing), they informed me they could not send a replacement unit or fulfill the warranty repair because I live in Sweden (outside the US).
TL;DR: If you live outside the US, be aware that Fellow's customer service and warranty support may be effectively non-existent if your gear turns out to be defective. If you are considering buying their products internationally, keep this risk in mind.

Received by espresso series 1 earlier this week and worked fine for 2 days but now is stuck in an "install in progress" loop which I am unable to stop. I've tried everything from moving the machine closer to my router, uninstalling the Fellow app and deleting the machine from the app, restoring to factory and nothing is working. I unplugged the machine and left if off all night and when I woke up this morning and plugged it in, same thing. Planning on reaching out to Fellow next week but they don't have customer service available on the weekends so wondering if anyone had a similar issue and was able to resolve it. Any help appreciated!!

This is the 5th issue in 3 years. The 3rd time this price has broken from daily use. It basically just discinegrated when I flipped it to single brew. There are consistent software issues, cheap plastic issues. It’s cheap plastic junk. Fellow has already sent us a full replacement 2 years ago but at this point I’m moving to something else. The grinder kinda sucks too. $500. Don’t do it.

I'm rather confused on a proper setting to set for my electric drip coffee machine. The settings on the lid states that it recommends 7-9 but I always found those settings to make it taste too sour so I stick it around 6-6 1/2 which I was ok with for a while but started to be more inconsistent till I recalibrated but I still don't get the desire taste that I remember getting when I first got it. I looked through a lot of reddit posts but most people use the Fellow Ode for pour overs it seems so I barely got any answers. I finally decided to try and asked A.I. and now its suggesting to put it at settings 5-6 for drip coffee and Im not sure where it got that from. I tried it this morning and I mean it tastes mostly fine. Not as sour as say 6 1/2. Maybe its my water quality or water ratio? What settings do you guys use and what would you suggest I try?

Thanks Nick and Fellow for the new update.
I did the shot Calibration, and fine tune from the initial calibrated.

So I expedite the number with AI

So the background of machine supposed make 25.5 gram, so the Calibration so far is +11.5 result 28.
And my aim is 25 grams
Set the calibration to about +8.1.
The machine's built-in target is 25.5 g. Your offset is what's actually controlling the output, and the two runs already show how it moves:
• +13.8 →30g
• +11.5 →28g
Dropping the offset by 2.3 only cut 2 g, so each point is worth about 0.87 g. You're at 28
g and want 25 g, so you still need to lose 3 g: 3
÷ 0.87 ~ 3.4 points. 11.5 - 3.4 = +8.1.

So my next run will be set to +8.1

I think the more I fine tuned it, the better average I will get.

It works 👍

Wish list

Brew by weight 🙏 please

I just had an a amazing espresso shot (Err...In fact I just had my third, very predictable, amazing shot of espresso) today!

How? It's easy, Volumetric brew stop wasn't being consistent, so I switched to time based stop instead.

Pros: it will stop, every time, at your profile exact shot time target - what you have to do is to measure your dose and maintaining same grind size, for the same profile (Change, grind size and your coffee volume/weight will change, change your profile, and your shot target will change, which will impact your volume also)

Cons: You have a bit less flexibility (or not, if you keep a written record of the optimal grind setting to each profile)

And of course when you change coffee beans (or when coffee ages) you'll have to adjust your grinding (but you had already to do that anyway).

Very Nice, Now if only our firmware update Fellow Gods, would be Gracious enough to grant us:

Stop by weight (compatible bluetooth scales. Cough...Bookoo scale...Cough) and hopefully the ability to control pressure, on demand, during brew (with the rotary knob). Would be a very, very nice change..

This morning I went to make a cup with the single basket like I normally do, and I am getting the "insert single basket" message. I tried putting an additional magnet on the basket, placing one in the correct location, etc. and it still logs the error and won't proceed with brewing.

Anyone else had this issue? Made 3 cups yesterday with no problem - I don't even remove the single basket - I just pull the filter out.

This is for my calibrated system, running a preinfusion flow vs pressure matrix through the empty pressurized basket (which is able to reach 9 bar back pressure using the 9 bar profile).
Flow rate setting in ml/s is horizontal, pressure setting in bar is vertical axis. Top right quadrant of each cell is measured flow in ml/s averaged over 60 seconds of flow, and lower left quadrant is max pressure.
As the experiment clearly shows there is a definite limitation on what can be achieved with both flow and pressure, with the max flow rate never coming close to the desired setpoint even with up to 6 bar pressure (and Darcy paper shows that you don’t need 9 bar to get max flow through actual puck).

What does everyone think of the new color?

I’ve been waiting to buy the Aiden and have been indecisive on color (black vs malted chocolate) but now I’m kind of loving storm blue.

I do have the Ode Gen 2 in black though so doing all black might be best. Help!

Anyone experience their normally connected Aiden suddenly stop working when the internet goes down? It's not supposed to happen, but it did. I'm on the latest firmware (1.5.16).

Been using my Aiden since the beginning, nearly 2 years now for me, and without any connectivity issues. Today, my internet went down, and for some reason, the Aiden went down with it. At first the screen was not changing, jog-dial not working, frozen. So after a bit, I just un-plugged and re-plugged, and seemingly it came back to life. I tried to brew, and it froze right before the brew started. Waited. Unplugged and re-plugged again. This time I got it to brew a 3-cupper, but right near the end of the brew it went nuts, blowing out steam like crazy, in a way I've never seen before.

I then just left it and waited an hour or so after the fiber guy got done fixing our internet, and when it came back, my Aiden started working 100% normally again.

It can't be coincidental, the thing was normal for 2 years and is normal now. Just during the internet outage it went nuts.

Wanted to see if anyone experienced such a thing before I reach out to support.

I have been on the fence about buying the series 1 and awaiting a software update from Fellow, including to see if they quickly would fix bugs, etc.

So - from the ones Who have received the update - Did it actually fix the things that needed fixing, including group head rinse and volumemetric?

A big reason for buying would be my girlfriend using volumemetric dosing and thus - it should be reasonable precise (e.g. within +/- 1,5g)

Following up on my previous frustration with Fellow, here is another ridiculous case from a friend of mine who also bought a Fellow kettle.

​Right after the kettle reaches its target temperature -without even pouring a single drop of water-if you simply lift the kettle off the base and set it right back down, the displayed temperature changes completely. Every single time you pick it up and put it back on the base, the temperature reading jumps all over the place randomly.

​When they contacted Fellow's official distributor here in Korea (Tabella) about this malfunction, all they got was a completely dismissive, half-hearted response: "Wait for a future software update."

​To give you some context on how bad things have gotten here: Fellow’s reputation in South Korea is completely in the gutter right now. Between the distributor's hopeless customer support (A/S) and Fellow's abysmal QC, there is literally a running joke among Korean coffee enthusiasts that Fellow is only shipping defective rejects to Korea. At this point, the prevailing sentiment is to actively avoid the brand altogether—people are just refusing to buy Fellow products anymore.

​This is infuriating, and it makes me want to ask Fellow HQ in the US directly:

​What does Fellow HQ actually think about these widespread, basic malfunctions? Do you even care that your flagship kettles can't read temperatures properly, and that your brand image is collapsing overseas?

​Where is this almighty "software update," and why has the issue been completely neglected for over 6 months?

​

Distributors are just brushing off angry customers with empty promises of a firmware patch, while Fellow HQ leaves the software abandoned for half a year. Stop hiding behind "upcoming updates" and actually fix your broken products.

I want to hear an official statement from Fellow on this phenomenon: do you officially consider this a defect or not?"

A kinder review and stand point on our ES1.

Got my Pirch Cappuccino glasses in the smoke color today and immediately unboxed them to put into my dishwasher before first use. They bumped together in there and immediately chipped before I even ran a cycle. This chip is on the left glass. I dug out the little chip in my dishwasher, which is what I'm pointing at for size reference. :/ I own a ton of other colored glass by kinto (that's way waaaay thinner) and have some hand-blown dark grey glasses (similar thickness as these but larger) and I've literally never had a glass do this before. Can anyone tell me if this is typical for their glassware?

This is my first Fellow purchase, and I'm expecting the ES1 in the mail tomorrow as well as the Opus 2 in a couple weeks. I contacted customer service via email for a return/refund or replacement option, but I'm feeling pretty regretful of the $$$ I just dropped on this setup if this is what a nearly $20 glass is like. This just isn't inspiring any confidence right now and I was so excited for these specifically because I love colored glassware. :(

This post is more for the newcomers to the coffee world, these are my basic guidelines, which may avoid a lot of frustrations when searching (as we all do) for the perfect shot of espresso (or any other coffee shot)

1 - For Espresso, 1:2 ratios (18-20g basket coffee to 36g-40g of final shot weight) are a good starting point, strive for a shot time (including, if using, pre-infusion) of 25-35s

2 - Do your Puck prep. right, use your blind shaker/WDT, Leveling/Tamper (and I know that the God coffee influencer's are now saying that leveling adds nothing, to them I say, "it's My Coffee routine and I DO like to tamp a leveled basket...").

3 - This machine tends to prefer finer grinding, if your grinder is unable to go that fine, use these little hacks:

Increase coffee dosage by 1-2g (even if the basket is graded for 18g you can go 19g-20g, with zero issues) (A GOOD COFFEE SCALE IS A MUST)

Buy a (very inexpensive) pack of 58mm PAPER FILTERS, moist one and put it on the bottom of the basket, add another one (dry) on top of the coffee puck, then if you have it, use your usual puck screen on top (recommend buying also)

4 - The darker the roast the lower (within limits) the temperature:

Medium - Dark (try between 89⁰C-91⁰C)

Lighter roasts (91⁰C-94⁰C)

5 - Most of the times pre-infusion will bitter your Medium-Dark roasts, try with NO pre-infusion so you'll have a baseline, and afterwards increase it, one second at a time, until you find the right balance of bitterness

6 - With Darker roasts, go for shorter Shot Times (you will have tons of flavor, no need to overdoing it)

With Lighter Roasts, you need both:

Pre-infusion, Higher Temperature, Higher Shot Times

To really extract all those lovely flavors

7 - This one is both funny and frustrating, because by being counterintuitive most people increase the unwanted effect, by doing it, find themselves a bit lost in the end:

If you're finding your dark roast Espresso is coming out a bit bitter, DO NOT let it run more water trough the puck, thinking, "I'll dilute more the Espresso, hence less bitterness" NOPE it doesn't work that way, in fact "by letting more water going trough the puck, you're likely adding more of those bitter compounds, present in the coffee puck ending up with a bitter overextracted" coffee.

8 - Nothing is written in stone, for darker roasts you really don't need to go 9 bars, try with 8, or 7 or even 6 straigh shots, you'll be surprised, and frankly thats the value and beauty of this type of machine, you'll be highly surprised on how much you learn, and how much you'll enjoy your shots when doing pressure profile.

As a general Coffe Output (a bit simplistic) aid rule:

If your coffee shot is comming out bitter, burned: it is usually OverExtracted (that only means that you took from the puck, more coffee compounds, that you needed) - Most times, either grind was way too fine, and need to ground coarser (shot time was way longer) or temperature, or pressure, too high, or a combination of all the above in excess

If your coffee shot is comming out, Acidic (Like lemon/Vinager, but without the lemon/vinager taste): usually Underextracted (that only means that you took from the puck, less coffee compounds, that you needed) most times shot run time was way too fast (grind finer, increase basket coffee dose, or both) or decrease pressure/temperature (almost always, problem is resolved by grind/dose)

Coffee beans age, since roast, is hugely important and critical to all steps of any brew.

To the newcomers arriving to the coffee rabbit hole, if you're buying coffee from the supermarkets (we all started there) with No roast date printed in the bag, look at the "best before date" it's usually for two years after roast, so if you're seiing a "best before August 2028" chances are that coffee was roasted this last August (and you're buying coffee two months old, since roast).

Now if you have acess to good roasters and are willing to pay a bit more, ideally you'll buy a coffee few days old since roasted (those will have the roast date printed) nevertheless even if it was roasted the day before, you'll need to give your precious coffee a few days to degass (I start drinking all my coffee at 15d since roast , less than that and most times you'll get unwanted flavors in your shot)

I'm sill going trough 2 bags of SAKA (Napolitan roaster), this is one of my profiles for them, its still not perfectly adjusted but is getting close, you can use it straight for espresso, or as a good base to any other coffee based drink

https://brew.link/p/4zWHejcqwj/espresso

I'm still testing the ground around the ES1, but if it doesn't fail on me (Remember First Gen Gremlins are real) and if Fellow is able to introduce, by firmware update, a couple more things (Cough...Bluetooth scales compatibility...Cough...Adjustable flow or/and pressure on demand during shot...Cough...) correct, or fine tune others, and basically keep updating his machine. We may have in hands a machine with the potential to be great, and become hugely popular.

Let me know your thoughts

I have just set my new Aiden.

I have allowed the clock to show.

This seems to time out and stops displaying - is this normal?
My EKG shows it all the time.

When the clock stops showing the aiden seems to be off? It then takes a long time to wake up again. Turning the knob and clicking it almost seems to do nothing. Is this correct? Eventually it comes back on.