With uniquely designed products and a good price-quality ratio, the Californian brand Fellow has made a name for itself in the current barista scene. Their Ode and Opus grinders are quite popular in this world, and it is the second one, the Opus , that I will talk about in this review, after having tested it for a little over a week.
Fellow Opus Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
 | disponible | $195,00 in Amazon |
| Burrs | 40 mm conical, with 6 stainless steel blades |
| Motor | 6 Nm torque |
| Grinding speed | 350 RPM |
| Grinding levels | 41 |
| Portafilter holder |  |
| Container |  |
| Size | 33.7 x 28.5 x 16.9 cm |
| Weight | 3.37 Kg |
| Available colors | Black and white |
One of the things that convinced me the most about the Opus is its design. Modern and minimalist, the Fellow Opus and Ode are surely the grinders with the most original and well-crafted aesthetics you can buy for under 500$. As for the Opus, it’s not only beautiful but also compact: it measures just 26 cm high and 20 cm deep, fitting quite discreetly in the space I have reserved for it in the kitchen.
Additionally, while searching for information about it, I had read some reviews saying that its construction was very flimsy because the entire casing is plastic, but it didn’t seem that way to me; it gave me the impression that it can withstand the test of time well.
I don’t like that it doesn’t have a portafilter holder, something that is very convenient and practical for those of us who mainly use it to prepare espresso, but this is something I already knew beforehand, and there’s no room for complaint. Thus, the dosing system consists of a dosing cup that you can remove and pour into the portafilter.
This cup has a very nice detail: it has a magnet at the base, and there’s another one at the base of the grinder, so there’s a magnetic connection between them that keeps the cup always steady in the right position to prevent ground coffee from falling out. So it’s not just a design “gimmick,” but practical and useful.
At the base, a single button starts the grinder. A single press initiates a 30-second grind, two presses extend it to 60 seconds, three presses extend it further to 90 seconds, while holding the button for a few seconds performs a 2-minute grind.
Inside the Fellow Opus, there is a conical grinder with 40 mm burrs and 6 stainless steel blades. These conical burrs rotate at 350 RPM, which is quite slow: this makes the grinding a bit slower than in most grinders, but it also prevents the coffee beans from overheating. It also makes it a bit quieter than others, with a noise level that doesn’t exceed 80 dB.
The grinder has 41 grinding settings. The settings are arranged on a semicircular dial with the 41 stepped levels; you’ll hear a click at each one to confirm you’re on the indicated setting. Additionally, inside the grinder, there’s a micrometric adjustment that adds degrees of grinding between each of the external steps.
Let me give you an example. In my first test, I chose to start with the setting at number 2, which is actually degree 5 of the 41 that the Fellow Opus has, as the brand indicates that those first 5 steps are suitable for espresso. However, the espresso extraction was too fast, under 20 seconds, resulting in an under-extracted coffee.
According to the espresso calibration rules, it was necessary to grind finer, so I lowered the grinding setting to point 4 (or 1.4), but at this level, the grind was so fine that it even choked the coffee maker, and barely any coffee came out of the portafilter. It might seem like there’s no middle ground and that the difference in grind granularity is too much with just one step, but the internal micro-adjustments are precisely there to extend that granularity between each step of the external settings.
Thanks to this review by Coffee Nerd Aaron, I learned that each step of the external adjustment is 50 microns, while the internal steps are 16.7 microns. Thus, that internal adjustment allows for fine-tuning the calibration: there are six additional steps to the right and left, depending on whether you want a slightly coarser (+) or finer (-) adjustment.
This is how I was able to return to external level 2, and with the internal micrometric adjustment set to -2, I achieved a perfect extraction, of 30 seconds, resulting in an espresso with fantastic flavor, body, and aroma.
The grinding mechanism and the conical burrs are of unquestionable quality. The Fellow Opus can grind so fine that it can choke your espresso machine, and at its lowest levels, it can grind for Turkish coffee. The good thing is that its wide range of settings also allows it to be used for filter, V60, French press, or cold brew. It’s truly an all-terrain grinder, something quite unusual in a grinder around 200$.
But not everything is perfect. There are two main problems I’ve encountered when using the Fellow Opus. The biggest drawback, without a doubt, is retention. In all my tests, I’ve found that the grinder retains between 0.4 and 0.7 grams of coffee. Something good, which I don’t know if it’s done on purpose, is that the hopper lid acts like a bellows, and by lowering it, we can blow into the grinder to remove the more “rebellious” coffee that remains trapped.
Another recurring problem faced by this Fellow Opus is static. There is supposed to be an ionizer that should minimize this problem, but the truth is that there is still static that causes some coffee dust to accumulate in the dosing cup and at the grinder’s outlet.
These two problems are more frequent with light and medium roast coffee beans and much less pronounced with dark roast beans, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where someone buys a grinder like this to use exclusively with dark roast beans. Therefore, it is highly advisable to use the RDT technique and slightly moisten the beans when using the Fellow Opus, which greatly minimizes retention and static and makes daily use of this grinder much more “friendly.”
Another small inconvenience is that the hopper also gets quite dirty with particles and bits of beans that are expelled during grinding, so you’ll need to clean it frequently. This problem is independent of the type of bean roast and, to be honest, is also very common in all grinders, whether expensive or cheap. The good thing about the Opus in this regard is that the hopper is easy to remove for cleaning. The same ease applies to removing and replacing the upper burr for brushing, which I recommend doing regularly because, with the static issues mentioned earlier, a lot of coffee dust accumulates on them.
I’ll conclude with a summary of what I think is the best and worst of this Fellow Opus. The best, without a doubt, is how well it grinds coffee, with a wide range of grinding levels, and for espresso, which is the main use I’m going to give it, it’s perfect, with a very fine and homogeneous grind. Additionally, its design is beautiful, simple, and minimalist, and very compact, other qualities that I was also looking for.
The worst, clearly, are those static and retention issues. A solution to minimize them is to slightly moisten the beans with an RDT spray. Additionally, the manufacturer’s web guide indicates that the anti-static mechanism starts working better after 60 cycles of use. This is something I’m going to have to verify, but judging by some reviews I’ve seen, it seems to be true, so I’m going to give Fellow the benefit of the doubt.
Another area for improvement in the Opus is that the internal adjustment ring is not entirely practical when calibrating espresso, and every time you want to change the setting, you have to open the hopper, change the setting, put the hopper back… There are certainly grinders that make this process much faster and more convenient with micro adjustments directly on the external adjustment ring.
Even so, I didn’t find it difficult to calibrate the Fellow Opus to prepare a fantastic espresso with three different varieties of coffee beans, and I think it’s a more than good grinder if you want to use it for espresso. You just need to be aware that you’ll have to live with and find solutions to those issues I’ve already mentioned.
