I’ve been using this grinder in my own kitchen for months now, and it’s one we’re really excited to share with you at Square Mile Coffee. What I love about the Ode Gen 2 is that it delivers café-quality brews at home—giving you excellent extraction, clarity, and balance in the cup. Whether you’re just thinking about buying one, already waiting for yours to arrive, or looking to get more out of it, I think you’ll find something useful here.

Getting Started: Grind Sizes That Work

One of the first questions anyone asks about a grinder is: What grind size should I use?

The fellow has included a handy guide under the Ode’s lid with a range of settings for different brewing methods. However, we wanted to go further, so we tested numerous brews using different methods with our Square Mile coffees. Our recommendations aim for a sweet balance of flavour, strength, and extraction.

(Note: these settings are based on a well-calibrated grinder. That means the burrs almost touch at the finest setting. If you’re unsure how to calibrate, check out Fellow’s calibration guide.

Here’s where we landed:

• One-Cup Pour Over (15g dose) → Grind size 5
• AeroPress (17.5g dose) → Grind size 5
• Clever Dripper (24g dose) → Grind size 5
• French Press (30g dose) → Grind size 6
• Two-Cup Pour Over (30g dose) → Grind size 7
• Automatic Filter Brewer (2–3 cups, 60g/L) → Grind size 9–10

Tips for Better Grinding

After a couple of months with the Ode Gen 2, here are some tricks that have made a real difference for me:

• Start the grinder first. Switch it on before adding the beans. This helps achieve a cleaner, more consistent grind and extends the life of the motor.
• Enjoy the auto-stop. The Ode senses when it’s finished grinding and switches off automatically. Simple, but very handy.
• Keep it clean.
  • Wash the grinds catcher occasionally with dish soap to remove oils.
  • Give the knocker a tap or two to clear out retention.
  • Use a vacuum or a soft brush to get rid of stray grounds.
  • A quick wipe with a microfibre cloth keeps it looking sharp on your counter.

Design & Build

The Fellow Ode Gen 2 feels like a premium grinder in every way. It’s solid, weighty, and built to last, yet its compact footprint means it doesn’t take up too much kitchen space. It’s that rare balance of form and function that makes you want to use it every morning.

Final Thoughts

I’ve really enjoyed using the Ode Gen 2 at home, and our team has been just as impressed with it in the training room. It’s a premium grinder with excellent build quality, and more importantly, it consistently delivers a delicious, balanced cup of coffee.

If you’re looking for a grinder that brings out the best in your brews every day, we think you’ll love the Fellow Ode Gen 2 just as much as we do.

Video Transcript: 

"Hi, I’m Gareth here in the training room at our roastery and this is the Fellow Ode Gen 2 grinder. It’s a grinder that I’ve been using personally in my kitchen for months now and we’re excited to finally share this with you at Square Mile Coffee. It’s a grinder that I believe gives you cafe-quality brews. It gives you great extraction, gives you good clarity and great balance in the cup. If you’re thinking about buying one, you’re expecting one or you’ve already got one, we believe there’s something useful in this for everyone.

So obviously with any grinder, the most useful and most helpful thing to know is what grind size to use for different coffees and different brew methods. Out of the box you’ll notice that under the lid of the grinder, Fellow has provided a really nice range of different grind sizes for different brew methods. But we wanted to get a little more exact with these recommendations. So we’ve made lots of different brews using different brew methods and we have aimed to achieve a nice balance of flavour, but also a specific strength and extraction when brewing Square Mile coffees. These grind sizes are based on a well calibrated grinder. So what that means is the burrs are almost touching but not quite when you’re at the finest grind setting on the grinder. If you’re not sure about calibration, or want to know how to do it, check out Fellow’s useful calibration guide here: https://help.fellowproducts.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052069632-How-to-calibrate-your-Ode-Brew-Grinder  

Okay, so here’s some of the more common brew methods used at home for filter coffee. Hopeful you have one of these and use one of these on a daily basis. But let's now go through these one by one and just give you our recommendation when brewing Square Mile coffee. So firstly, we’ve got the one cup pour over. So this is more specific to using a 15g dose and for that we recommend that you start on grind size 5 and we’re going to keep on that grind size also for the Aeropress, when using about 17.5g of coffee and also the Clever Dripper when you’re using about 24g. So it’s the same grind size for all three of those.   Now for the French Press, when brewing about 30g of coffee, we’re going to nudge it just that little bit coarser, over to about number 6. So at 6 for the French Press and then if you’re brewing a two cup pour over using that same 30g of coffee, then that’s going to be a bit coarser again towards number 7. If you’re like me and you like lots of coffee in the morning made easily and automatically using an automatic filter brewer, then that is going to be the most coarse setting. So it’s actually going to be over about number 9, maybe edging into number 10 as well depending on your dose. But I’m using around 60g/L for 2 or 3 cups for two people.

Okay, so some general tips and tricks when using the grinder I found over the last two months:

First one is definitely make sure you turn the motor on first and get the burrs spinning. That will do two things: that will improve the grind size quality that you get and it will also help extend the life of the motor. The second thing that you might have read already on the product info page or might not be aware of, is the grinder turns itself off. So the grinder knows when it’s ground all of the beans that you’ve put in there and it will automatically turn itself off. Thankfully the grinder doesn’t need that much cleaning or that much maintenance, but to keep it looking pretty and keep it working at its best, some things I like to do at home are to take out the grinds catcher, put that in the sink with some dish soap and just get rid of any grinds or any oils that have built up in there. I also like to give the knocker a couple of knocks and whenever I’ve got the vacuum cleaner out I’ll just gently go around it and maybe just try and take out any extra bits of retention. The last thing is just wiping it with a microfibre towel sometimes just to keep it looking pretty, but that’s about it!  

So I’ve really enjoyed using this grinder in my kitchen for the last few months and as the team at Square Mile enjoyed using it in our training room. It is a premium grinder, but for that, the build quality is excellent. It feels quite heavy and solid, but it does also fit nicely in this really compact size as well. So it’ll fit nicely in any kitchen. So overall, we think that you’ll really enjoy brewing your coffee every day using the Fellow Ode Gen 2 Grinder."

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Brew Guide: French Press