Pu’er Coffee

 After talking with plenty of coffee enthusiasts, I’ve noticed that this seems to be one of the biggest curiosities people have about grinders: If it can grind coffee beans, can’t it grind other things too? And that’s usually when a few “mad experimenters” begin a series of questionable trials—only to fall into complete silence afterward… Let me put it plainly: please don’t use your coffee grinder to grind anything other than coffee beans , especially if you actually care about it. Seriously. 😄 To be honest, no matter which stage of my coffee journey I’ve been in, I’ve never even considered this question. To me, a grinder is a tool with a very clear, single purpose. Trying to repurpose it for other kinds of grinding just doesn’t make much sense. Sure, in theory , anything softer than the burrs might get crushed—but from a practical and safety standpoint, it’s a very bad idea. First, let’s be clear about one thing: the heart of any grinder is the burr set. Whether it’s flat burrs...

 Mahdi certainly wouldn’t miss a market opportunity like this. In the past, they had already released several mid-priced grinders designed for home users, but those products alone couldn’t fully create a complete at-home coffee-making setup. So earlier this year, they made a strategic move: Mahdi’s parent company, Hemro Group, acquired Berlin-based Xenia Espresso. The purpose of this acquisition was to relaunch Xenia’s flagship espresso machine under the Mahdi brand. Xenia Espresso was originally founded in 2012 by members of a German online coffee enthusiast community. In many ways, it was a product born from collective wisdom—a machine designed entirely from the perspective of hobbyists, hitting all the right notes of what home enthusiasts expect in a coffee machine. The original Xenia already featured a dual-boiler system, a quiet pump, pressure sensors, and PID temperature control for its advanced heating system. Beyond these foundational components, the newly redesigned machin...