I have a Baratza Maestro Plus high quality consumer-grade coffee grinder for press/drip/pourover/etc. preparation that, as best I can figure, I've had for somewhere between seven and ten years. A couple of weeks ago it suffered a catastrophic failure due to violence not of its own making. Much to my surprise, not only was it readily repairable, but Baratza appears to go out of their way to make this a simple and pleasant activity. That sort of attitude is sufficiently rare these days that I thought it was worth a mention.
A Quick Review
The Baratza Maestro Plus is a now-discontinued conical burr coffee grinder targeted at enthusiasts who primarily brew coffee via one of the methods typically employing a coarser grind, such as pourover or press. When it was released it cost somewhere just under the $200 point (depending), and represented one of Baratza's more entry-level offerings. As mentioned, it is now discontinued and has been replaced with either the Encore or the Virtuoso, depending on your viewpoint and preferences. (In my opinion, it fell somewhere between these grinders, and compares more fairly with the Virtuoso, which is targeted at a somewhat higher price point.) Within its grind range it has a fairly flexible selection of grind size, but it doesn't get quite fine enough for espresso or Turkish with the kind of precision and grind consistency those methods ask for. I've used it for Turkish when I didn't wish to incur the tedium of a mortar and pestle, and it answers, but it's certainly not ideal.
It has a number of touches that cement its enthusiast-class reputation, such as a nice heavy cast metal weight in the base to give it stability (particularly for using the momentary push button grind trigger) and reasonably consistent burrs that produce a grind that, while it has some size variation, is a wide cut above the typical department store burr grinders. It also has some annoying misfeatures, such as a timer knob that falls off of its shaft with regularity. (A touch of silicone cement seems to have cured that particular ill for me, while still allowing the knob to be removed.) It is reasonably easy to clean and looks decent on the counter. The quantity of ground coffee trapped in the ejection chute between grinds is fairly moderate, which I understand can be a failing on some grinders in this class.
The failure
My particular Maestro Plus failed through no fault of its own — a small pebble managed to make its way through winnowing, roasting, and winnowing, and then into the grinder for my morning brew. (I blame this on roasting first thing in the morning, when I'm not at my most alert!) It wedged itself thoroughly between the stationary and moving burrs, and (as I found out when I disassembled the grinder) caused a metal pinion on the motor shaft to shear the teeth off a small section of the plastic reduction gear on the burr shaft. When I say it was thoroughly wedged, I mean that it was thoroughly wedged. I had to use more force than I was comfortable with to get it broken up so that I could pry it out from between the burrs for disassembly.
The immediate symptom of the failure was that the moving burr did not rotate reliably, and when it did, just a few beans between the burrs would stop it (by catching it when the stripped portion of the reduction gear was straddling the drive pinion). When it did rotate, it made a horrible periodic clicking/crunching noise.
The fix, and excellent support
Upon this failure, I said to myself, “this grinder is pretty
old, let me see what's on the market.” I rapidly found out
that what is on the market is grinders that cost more than I want to
spend for dubious improvements (or not) over the Maestro Plus. I
didn't want to spend the money to really trade up, and it looked
like the closest to a sideways trade I could accomplish would have
been
the Virtuoso
Being a fix-it-up kind of person, I decided at this point to see what was wrong with the unit and whether I could coax it into working. I quickly located the aforementioned pebble and removed it, but found that the grinder was still not reliable (due to the stripped gear that I had not yet seen). It was not immediately obvious how to get the cover off without damaging the plastic, which was disappointing to me — but when I did some searching I rapidly found that Baratza actually has a detailed PDF explaining how to remove it! This was surprising and gratifying.
I removed the case and immediately found the stripped gear, so I headed back to Baratza and looked to see if I could find parts ... which I immediately found on their parts support page, another gratifying happening! Not only do they have an extensive list of parts for both current and discontinued models, but they have upgrade parts and very reasonable prices. I ordered a gearbox rebuild and upgrade kit as well as a stationary burr holder (which had been cracked for some time, but never failed).
I want to take a moment here and throw in an aside, which is that the engineering of this grinder is really excellent where it matters. The motor, gear train, rotating, and stationary burr are all mounted together to a stiff plate (metal in the original version I had, and some sort of filled plastic with stiffening ridges in the rebuild) that forms the working part of the grinder and is really just mounted in the case for convenience and stability on your countertop. This entire assembly is rubber mounted in the chassis via little brass-and-rubber bushing assemblies. The chassis also contains the controller board (which I did not examine closely, but appeared to be mostly passives and a discrete bridge rectifier, possibly just a DC power supply), a safety lockout micro switch that prevents the grinder from operating when the hopper is not installed, and a mechanical timer and the momentary trigger. Wiring between the various components uses push-on blades. I see no reason this design shouldn't last forever.
In just a few days (I think I ordered on a Sunday and received the parts on a Thursday; I opted not to pay for express shipping) I received the replacement parts for a grand total of about $22. Using some really excellent instructional PDFs from the Baratza site, I was able to quickly install the redesigned gear assembly (critically containing a replacement reduction gear!). At this point I noticed that the rebuild kit was missing a couple of M5 Allen head cap screws that the instructions referenced. I called up Baratza to find out exactly what they were supposed to be, and in just a few minutes I had the answer: M5x12. The representative I spoke to offered to send out replacement screws immediately, but I opted to spend $0.66 at the local True Value Hardware instead, just to get back in operation faster. I don't consider this a major failure on the part of Baratza, because a) the missing parts were cheap, b) they assisted me in locating replacements, and c) they offered to make it right by sending out the missing parts immediately and without question.
The reassembled grinder works admirably. The grind sizes are a bit different on the numeric scale, so it took me a few tries to dial in a grind, but the consistency and quality of grind are good. The new gear train is quite a bit louder than the old gear train, but I seem to remember that the old gear train was louder when it was new; perhaps this one will wear in a bit and quiet down.
Closing remarks
All in all, I am very pleased with Baratza for producing a fine, well-engineered product, and then standing behind it. Very few companies in the 21st century can be bothered to provide parts and repair information to the consumer, much less via the support page on their web site with a simple shopping cart and order process. Baratza's attention to customer service kept a serviceable grinder out of the landfill for want of a $0.50 gear at a price that is perfectly acceptable to me as a consumer (and only about 10% of the price of a new grinder!) after nearly a decade of service. I look forward to the next decade with this grinder — maybe I'll put new burrs in it before then!