Burr details: I got the brew from dgarrido back in November of 22 and he already had about 20lbs through them at that point. So older and well seasoned. The LU were new as of December 24. I put 10 lbs through them when I got em.

Grinder(s) used: Used in a Lagom 01, shimmed for alignment but no full circle OO shims.

Preferred flavor profile: I prefer high clarity. I hate astringency and dislike bitterness. So, a lot of my brewing preferences have centered around lowering astringency. I like ultralight, washed coffees. I don't often enjoy pushing extraction.

Usage: This was all done on filter. V60 with cafec abacas, around 525-575 micron gap, 93C, bloom and two pours. I preferred slightly longer blooms with brew (1:00-1:15s) than lu (0:45-1:00). I always pour pretty slowly and from a medium height to keep low, but present, kettle agitation. Slow feeding, a few beans at a time, maybe takes 10-15s for a 14g dose.

After getting LU well dialed, I put my brew back in and wanted to share some of my thoughts in comparison of the two. All thoughts are based on filter. (98 SSP Low Uniformity Silver Knight vs 98 SSP Brew Red Speed) This is all very opinion based. I know some may disagree. I reserve the right to change my mind.
All these observations are small in the grand scheme of things. Brew and lu are more alike than they are different, but I like trying to discern the differences, even if they are small. With all that out of the way:

Flavor Separation/Integration and Timing I find lu have better incorporation/tying together of different flavors into a pleasant, unified presentation. Individual notes for brew are separate and distinct/disunified. This is obviously a good thing for brew insofar as flavor separation goes, but I find that if the flavors are too separate there can be a lack of unity in the cup. All of this is in relation to the way the different flavors interact with each other, rather than how they present over time. To get more into the timing, I think brew present mostly all at once. Brew are straight to the point. There are multiple notes in one quick burst with a bit of quiet reverb after the peak. Lu seem to ramp up, strongly present a note, smoothly fade to a different note, and then to another as it slowly ramps down. Lu dance around more.

Sweetness and Acidity Lu have a present, almost taffy-like sweetness that can also present jammy. They have more sweetness than brew. Brew's sweetness is secondary to acidity and is more of a fresh fruit sweet. Both highlight the character of a coffee and will not impart much sweetness where it doesn't exist. Brew are more bright and lively in acidity. There is a distinct, almost sparkling quality to the acidity. Lu present a more juicy acidity. I find the lu acidity to be more mouthwatering and tied in with the fruit quality.

Presentation of Imperfections There are few perfect coffees. Most have something that is a little off. When it comes to these imperfections, brew shows these hard edges more clearly. If the experience of a coffee is a shape, then the juts or dips present are more sharp with brew. Lu presentation can still have some protrusions, but they are more rounded off or smoothed. Lu seems to hide minor imperfections, while brew has them presented more distinctly. For example, I had a very light coffee that presented some green, underdeveloped sort of notes that were present on brew that were not detectable on lu. There is a common thought that very high clarity necessarily means showing both the good and the bad of a coffee clearly. While this may technically be correct, I don't think it is always as simple as that. Lu showed the good of coffees well/clearly while hiding some of the bad. I would still say lu are very high clarity. You very clearly get the notes presented. Because of this, they shifted my conception of clarity. Brew fits the more standard thought process. They readily present the more desirable and the less desirable of a given coffee. Brew are more analytical in this way. Lu are just slightly less analytical, but in a pleasant way that shows the good and hides the bad.

For brew, as compared to lu, the highs are higher and the lows are lower. But, I think the delta between the highs is less than the delta between the lows. To say that in a different way, the degree to which brew's highs are higher is less than the degree to which the brew's lows are lower. Lu might not present a 10/10 coffee as well as brew will, but lu will present an 8/10 coffee in a more pleasant way than brew, since the deficiencies will be more apparent in the brew presentation.

Last Thoughts Overall, they both rock. I love having both and switching depending on what I am feeling. I hope this is helpful, or at least interesting. I don't claim that this is the absolute truth or comprehensive. So, if you have tried both, feel free to riff off of this with your thoughts and reactions. If you haven't tried both, I guess the only way to know if you'll like one more than the other is to get them both. Or, you can remember that all of this is super small in the greater context and both are really close to each other and both make amazing coffee. 

Burr details: Titus Brew burrs V3 July 2024

Grinder(s) used: EK43 (well aligned + Titus BC)

Preferred flavor profile: Raspberry, Peach florals generally. Tomato in Kenyan coffees. Light body. No Funk.

Usage: 63/23 (tpc water) and tpc recipe for everything except substance where I mostly use substance water and the substance recipe (with some exceptions where the tpc water and recipe perform better)

The burrs really lends itself to Ultra light roasted coffees. Washed coffees are presented quite delicately with a good balance of sweetness and acidity. When the roast is somewhat darker than TPC Omni the brews tend to highlight the roast notes and become hollow and ashy. If the roast is good I think the burrs are rather forgiving for not optimal dial in. Overextraction presents itself to me as a muddling of flavors that make the coffee taste somewhat generic while underextraction leads to a thin body with too much acidity and again turning the coffee rather generic (this is highly overemphasized here as in reality both the “over” and “under” extracted cups are still really good and drinkable). 

With more processed beans the coffee can have a decent mouthfeel and long linger with intense flavor notes.

Burr details: Red speed 98 Brew v2 (probably), early-mid 2022 purchase

Grinder(s) used: P100

Preferred flavor profile: I appreciate and enjoy a wide variety of coffees, provided they are balanced and roasted well. I am however partial to the very light spectrum of roasts where the flavors are delicate and clean - not super intense or heavy, and not overly mild or stoic. I particularly enjoy coffees with apple, pear, and honey notes even though my favorite beans overall are sourced from Yemen. I'm also a fan of medium-dark and dark roasts, specifically in roasts where the bitterness compliments the palette instead of clash. Barrel-aged coffees are nice too. Some roasters that I enjoy: H+S, Hydrangea, Hatch, Caffe Lusso, Saka

Usage: I brew filter 80 percent of the time, with the rest being Turkish (great with darker Yemeni roasts), moka pot, and espresso. My daily driver is an Orea V4 Wide coupled with a Melodrip and 155/185 filters. My bloom times vary from long to short depending on the coffee's age and roast level and I often incorporate WWDT. My water is a heavily diluted Third Wave Water Classic packet with my own ratio of other minerals thrown in, ending up somewhere around 41GH 22KH.

My main use case for these burrs are for determining roast transparency while also making tasty cups. An analogy for this is something akin to a pair of high-end studio reference monitors that are highly clinical, but at the same time pleasant to listen to and do not traverse the bounds of a sterile and cold/boring sound. My approach has always favored balanced, transparent brews rather than techniques that mask defects or enhance perceived acidity. These burrs align nicely with this philosophy, particularly now that I've developed significant familiarity with its characteristics.

In my opinion, this is a forgiving burr. It is quite easy to make tasty cups, even when things are not perfectly dialed in. However, ultimately it is quite a revealing burr, and shines with portraying how integrated a brew is. If the acidity of a brew/roast is not very well-integrated, you can very much taste this and with all the little details this burr throws at you, it becomes easy to understand what's going on and why this is going on (roast issue, low rest time issue, brewing issue). The same is also true with darker roasts - you can taste how well the bitterness integrates with the cup. Even if a darker roast brewed with a less clinical burr may "taste" better, the cup brewed with these burrs are, to me, of higher quality. Very small grind adjustments are also easily discernable in the cup. Overall burr profile is light, delicate, and unveiled. Brews are not "intense" or heavy or mild. Moreso what can actually be considered intense is the structure of a brew when using these burrs. Flavor notes do not come in waves but rather almost all at once before dissipating, giving one little time to comprehend what is going on. This little trick is something I really enjoy.

Burr details: 98 TC brew

Grinder(s) used: EK43s

Preferred flavor profile: Red fruits, berry, florals, sweet, melon, citrus, clean. Fav roasters September, Minmax, H S, SEY, Flowerchild, Moonwake, Hydrangea, Isle, Manhattan. Pink bourbon, gesha, sl28 non tomato kenyan washed, caturra.

Usage: typically WWDT+melodrip 5 pours 50 ppm GH 20 KH 1:2 ca:mg ultra slow feed single bean at a time. grind size 400-700 micron gap.

I have no experience with any other type of 98mm burr besides the new 98mm Titus Brew, so I cannot make comparisons to other large burrs. The only other burrs I have tried are heptagonal conicals, various 64mm burrs, and ghost burrs.

That said, these burrs offer the highest clarity of any I have tasted, compared to various shop grinders (I don’t know what burrs were in them) and "midrange" grinders (64mm, conicals). The first sensation is a rapid-fire presentation of all the notes, with a good amount of acidity and enough sweetness to balance. Despite their clarity and transparency, I believe they provide more mouthfeel than one might expect.

After the initial spike of clarity, I notice a strong back-palate spike before the linger quickly diminishes. The linger is longer than that of the new Titus Brew but shorter than that of the K Ultra or MP. I’m not sure if I would call these burrs forgiving they will certainly punish mistakes and expose bad flavors. However, despite the lack of "EQ," the overall beverage still retains pleasant qualities and does not become overbearingly astringent, bitter, or sour. Unpleasant flavors will be just present enough to be perceived, but up to this point, even with messed-up brews, I have not had any cups I outright couldn't stomach. 

These burrs are also very tolerant of extremely high extraction. It’s hard to get a brew to taste overly extracted. I’ve had delicious brews ground at a 300-micron gap that took over five minutes to draw down, with a one-minute bloom. In this respect, they are more forgiving than the Titus Brew, which, to my palate, starts to taste over-extracted at anything finer than 400 microns.

Other hobbyists I've talked to have touched on the idea that "clarity" can present in different ways—for example, as distinct notes appearing one at a time or as everything hitting at once. For me, these burrs are definitely the latter. Some burrs might be like a narrow-angle lens slowly panning over a landscape, while these feel more like a super HD panorama—or even two panoramas: one that hits as soon as the coffee touches your palate and another on the back palate.

This is my favorite burr so far, as it presents the "clean" coffees I enjoy very well. It does not hide flaws in green coffee, roast level, roast development, staleness, etc. With these burrs, I like to dial in with temperature, as small temperature changes can highlight different notes. Adjusting the calcium-to-magnesium (CA:MG) ratio can affect sweetness and intensity. Slow feeding makes less of a difference with these burrs than with others I have tried.

I would recommend these burrs to anyone who shares my preferences for roasters and enjoys very high-clarity brews but doesn’t care too much about a lingering aftertaste. That’s not to say these don’t have aftertaste, as some have said about SSP Brew—they certainly do, just not as lingering as other burrs. I would not reccomend them to a coffeeshop unless they only want to sell coffees that go well with these burrs. These burrs may limit a roaster to very light coffees with little funk. It might be an ok commercial burrset if the shop already has an all purpose burr in a different grinder.

For anyone considering "upgrading" from the current geometry Titus Brew to TC Brew, I would not confidently claim that TC is an "upgrade." I never had the opportunity to taste these side by side, so I cannot comment on nuanced differences between the burrs on specific coffees. However, after using each burr set daily for a few months, I would not say my experiences with TC Brew have been significantly better. The two burr sets are much closer in character than they are different. IMO, the initial hit of clarity is nearly the same, as are the mouthfeel, sweetness, structure, acidity, and bitterness. TC Brew does have more of a back palate hit of clarity after the initial peak, whereas Titus seems to fade out after the first peak. The overall linger is similar in length both are pretty short.

Burr details: Titus's 98mm SSP Brew, purchased around spring 2023, I believe.

Grinder(s) used: EK43 and currently Option-O P100

Preferred flavor profile: Clean coffees, high acidity. I like florals, red fruits, berries, stone fruit, citrus, apples, etc. I avoid funk, savory notes and notes like dark chocolate and nuts.

My prefered roast level is around TW and Coffee Collective from 3 years ago, traditional "Nordic light", tho I also enjoy the ultralights of say H&S and TPC.

Usage: I use RO water, but with the setup I have, that still leaves me with water that reads 20-30ppm. 

For pourover, I usually brew 12g to 200g or 210g. On the P100, I grind between 7-8 which yields grounds ≈500-800 microns meassured with the breweler, medium-fine. I do slow feeding, but not one bean at a time.

I brew with the Kono and v60 primarilly, using cafec T90s, almost always the same recipe:

• Double 30g/30s bloom at 0:00 and 0:30, pouring with a broken stream, no swirl, but sometimes a stir on the first bloom if the coffee is very fresh. 

• At 1 min, I pour in a spiral pattern with a moderately slow flow rate to 140g. When the water is just nearing the bed again, I pour the remaining water in a smaller spiral, as low flow rate as possible, staying within a large coins radius of the center.

Honestly this burr is great for the same reason that it's hard to dial in. When I grind too fine, it's rare that I get intense astringency or bitterness. Instead, I encounter just slightly slower flow rates, sometimes lower extractions, and a little more muddled or unclear flavors, which means I have to be more analytically engaged in the dial in process.

When the coffee is dialed in, I get a very clear and simple picture of the coffee with high flavor seperation. Not very intense, nor particularly sweet, in my opinion. Acidity is decently sharp and distinct, tho not searingly sharp. I feel like the burrs tend to highlight florals and aromatic, perhaps because it doesn't obscure those notes with more complexity/bitterness. This can also accentuate certain herbal notes a bit more, for example the "tomato" quality of some Kenyans, the herbality of Central American coffees, etc.