Femobook A68 in the Test: Why We Weren't Impressed by the Best Values

The Femobook A68 is a single-dosing Kaffeemacher with a 68 mm conical burr set, priced at around 750 euros, and it's been requested for testing quite frequently by you. There are some positive videos about this grinder online, though most are a bit dated. So it's all the more worthwhile to examine the A68 systematically: What does it do well, and what doesn't it do well?

In advance: we have a somewhat different opinion from many voices online. There's hardly a grinder that does everything very well, and thankfully, hardly one that does everything poorly. With the A68, the picture is particularly divided. In the measurements, it racks up best values left and right: retention, consistency, replicability, all top-notch. And then comes the espresso.

As always, we bought the grinder ourselves to guarantee neutral testing.

Design and construction: just under 6 kilos of aluminum

The A68 is small, but no lightweight. It tips the scales at 5.7 kilos, with an aluminum housing that's really well made. At 10.6 cm wide, 16 cm deep without the plug, and just under 30 cm tall, it takes up very little counter space. The plug sticks out a bit in the back, so you'll want to account for that when setting it up.

The bean hopper is somewhat small. A few millimeters more in diameter would have been nice.

What we notice when handling it: the burr set has some play. The cone isn't as snug as we're used to from other grinders. That makes it all the more surprising how good the reproducibility turns out to be. More on that below.

Burr set and technology: 68 mm conical burrs with stepped adjustment

The heart of the A68 is a conical burr set with a 68 mm diameter, driven by a 200-watt DC motor. The grinder runs at a slow speed of 60 rotations per minute. The grinder doesn't have speed control.

Femobook has a large product range: there are models for filter coffee and, for example, the battery version A4Z. The A68 is supposed to do both—espresso and filter coffee. In this test, we focused on espresso, and we'll tell you below why we deliberately left out the filter coffee in the video.

The grind size adjustment is stepped, not stepless. And it's one of the most pleasant grinders we've operated in a long time. One click changes extraction time by at most two seconds, usually one. With our recipe of 18 g coffee and 45 g espresso, grind setting 0.1 was 27 seconds, and one click finer brought 29 seconds. This allows for precise adjustment with the smallest steps and minimal changes in the cup. We think Femobook has done a really good job achieving this with a conical burr set of this diameter.

Operation: good with water spray, a mess without it

We need to distinguish between two scenarios here. If you spray a few drops of water on the beans before grinding—in other words, if you work with RDT—the operation is good. Little static, the coffee lands in the catch cup, and the workflow is fine.

Without water, the ground coffee charges statically incredibly. Michel experienced the biggest mess around a grinder he's ever encountered. The coffee sticks to the catch cup, it hangs in the cone below—there's literally coffee everywhere. The process looks like this: grind, blow a bit, turn the cone so the grounds move along, tap so the rest comes out, tap again so it falls. By the time the coffee gets into the portafilter, we've really worked for it.

The consequence: water spray isn't a recommendation with the A68, it's a requirement. You weigh your 18 g, 12 g, or 9 g, spray them in the catch cup with a small spray bottle, and put them in the grinder. This makes sense with many grinders and isn't much effort. With the Femobook, it's a necessary step. And there are more expensive grinders where this is also necessary.

When cleaning, the A68 shows its best side. Lots of magnets, tool-free disassembly: one part off, the next off, pull up, done. Anyone who wants to regularly brush out their burr set will have hardly any trouble here.

Grinding speed and noise: 12 seconds for 18 grams, 81.6 dB

The A68 takes 12 seconds for 18 g. In 10 seconds it grinds 17.3 g. For a conical burr grinder of this size, that's absolutely fine and fast enough for everyday use.

During operation, we measure 81.6 dB(A) at 20 cm distance. That's just above the threshold where we talk about a rather loud grinder. It's not quiet, but it's not annoyingly loud either.

Grinding temperature and consistency: 0.05 g standard deviation

The first sample is at 31.8 °C, and after five consecutive grinds with 20-second intervals between them, the temperature rises to 33.2 °C. That's a slight warming, not a thermal problem. Even if you grind multiple espressos in a row, you don't need to worry about heat-sensitive light roasts.

The consistency is excellent. Over five grinds with 18 g input each, 17.9 to 18.0 g lands in the catch cup, with a standard deviation of 0.05 g.

Retention: 0.1 grams, but only with water spray

The retention is what the A68 does best. Temporary retention: 0 g. Permanent retention: 0.1 g. Absolute, therefore 0.1 g. That's a top-tier value. It's a cone, and practically nothing gets stuck in that cone. When removing the lower cone, 0.1 g of coffee sticks, which we count as permanent retention, and that's all.

However, this value only applies when working with RDT. Without water spray, as described above, you have to put in real effort to get the coffee out of the grinding cone. If you counted everything that sticks in the grinding cone without assistance after grinding as retention, the value would be considerable. With water spray, retention isn't an issue, every portion is fresh, and you can switch beans anytime. Without water spray, you completely forfeit this advantage.

Grind size replicability: back to the same point after adjustment

In the adjustment test, we go from our espresso setting to ristretto, then to café crème, and visually back to the starting mark. The main peak in the starting sample T4 is at 323.7 µm and in the return sample T7 at 323.9 µm. That's practically identical. The fine peak goes from 40.8% to 39.0%, and the x50 value shifts from 209 µm to 231 µm.

If you switch back and forth between espresso and a coarser setting, you land back at the same recipe when you return and don't need to recalibrate. Given the play we felt in the burr set, we would have expected larger deviations in the main peak.

Particle distribution: main peak 324 µm, fine peak 41%

We analyze particle distribution in cooperation with ZHAW using the Retsch Camsizer X2. In the espresso setting (T4), we measure an x50 of 209 µm, a fine peak (proportion under 100 µm) of 40.8%, and a main peak (60% peak width) of 324 µm.

The main peak is broad. Not the broadest we've ever measured, but clearly above the 300 µm mark and also above the roughly 320 µm threshold where it starts to concern us. What does a broad main peak mean? A large portion of particles is in the target size range, but not exactly there—rather to the left and right of it. These particles extract differently, which brings an unfocused image to the cup. We call that a scattered espresso.

Add to that the fine peak. 40.8% of particles are smaller than 100 µm, which is a high value. We know many fine particles from very good grinders with a narrow main peak too. There, they're needed to build sufficient resistance in the gaps between the uniform particles. But with the A68, these gaps don't exist at all. The grounds are a broad, frayed particle carpet, and on top of that come the ultra-fine particles. In the portafilter, this shows up as a channeling image: the puck seals off, and the flow slows down toward the end instead of speeding up.

A conical burr set often has a tendency toward a somewhat broader main peak, but not to this degree. We know conical grinders that handle this much better: the Option-O Lagom Casa and also the Niche Zero don't deliver a super narrow main peak, but really solid coffees.

Tasting: heavy body, no sweetness, lots of bitterness

For the tasting, we ground our dark roast, the Compadre. The extraction itself runs unusually. At the start, three grams per second pour out, then the flow slows down instead of speeding up. Normally, the puck breaks open as extraction progresses and the flow accelerates—extremely with light coffees, slightly with medium to dark roasts.

In the cup: sweetness is missing. The body is there, but as a heavy, clumsy weight, not as an elegant fullness. The positive, creamy texture that this coffee normally brings is gone. The espresso is unfocused, unclear, and incredibly bitter, with a dry aftertaste. Michel sums it up: "This is the worst Compadre I've ever tasted."

Filter coffee with the A68

The A68 is supposed to handle filter coffee too. In the video, we skipped it due to the particle distribution. However, our test brews of filter coffee confirmed the picture. Sure, you can brew filter coffee. But we don't think the quality promise is kept. The coffees lacked transparency and each had an unpleasant dryness in the finish.

Technical specifications at a glance

As always, we tested this grinder according to our KM protocol and bought it ourselves. This test was not requested by Femobook.