Mazzer Super Jolly V Pro – Everything I Hoped For

I’m sure some of us remember the day when I got my Mini B and declared it to be my endgame grinder. I remember that, and I’m still convinced that this should be seen as sufficient of an endgame grinder. But it wasn’t my dream to own it, even though it has everything you need for an on-demand 64mm machine – build quality, power, esthetics, easily accesible parts, reputation, longevity. The Mini is a grinder that will last at a lifetime. I got it knowing I’d still want to own a Super Jolly V Pro one day, but wasn’t sure if I’d ever get one as it seemed like such a ridiculous idea! It’s a big commercial machine, total overkill for home, and I couldn’t grasp that this is actually happening until it was delivered.

After trying single dosing for a while, I’ve decided to walk the on-demand path long ago and bought my Mazzer Mini B. I’m really embracing the on-demand workflow, and there are many things that were improved with the new line of Mazzers that I simply want on my bar. Although I intend on keeping my Mini B forever, as it really is an amazing grinder, all Mazzers of that generation come with the same set of features – the same portafilter fork, a very similar burr chamber design and almost the same path for the grounds to come out from the chamber into the portafilter with nearly identical simple declumper. This has never really bothered me, because I was used to dosing into a cup, and this really helps with redistribution, static and clumps. I’m not saying that the Mini B has static or clumping issues, but I’m trying to make my workflow easier, I want to dose into the portafilter directly and I want it to be perfect. I want to get rid of the dosing cup so to speak.

This new generation of Mazzers brings many hard to ignore innovations to the table, and many of these address the things I wish were better on the Mini B for a certain type of a “simplified” workflow. These innovations were first introduced in around 2019 with the big boys, such as Major V, Kony S, ZM and Kold S, and now they’ve trickled down to the Super Jolly V Pro launched in 2021. We’ll go through a few of them.

My ideal workflow is to weigh the portafilter (that’s why I bought an Acaia Pearl recently) and slide it into the fork, hands-free grind, fluffy grounds land perfectly in the portafilter, wiggle the portafilter to settle the grounds on sides of the basket, tap and tamp. I want to step outside of this insane puck-prep routines people follow these days, I want to make my espresso simply.

Quick note right at the start: I understand that there are many ways of redistributing coffee grounds in the basket, such as WDT. I bought a very nice WDT tool, tried it for a while and haven’t noticed any improvement. If it’s there, it’s not enough for me to care. While I’m sure WDT is helpful in certain circumstances and may improve your extractions, I’m not doing it, as I haven’t noticed a benefit in the cup. I’m also not a fan of single dosing, I wanted an on-demand, hopper based grinder and that’s what this grinder is engineered to do well. I know I’m not alone with this view, so please respect other people’s opinions and be nice!

The new Mazzer grinders now finally have a new adjustable portafilter holder. The new fork is designed to hold the portafilter firmly, for the portafilter to be inserted and removed effortlessly and for the position below the funnel to be perfectly centered. It’s absolutely brilliant! The fork on the Mini B is simple, works, but doesn’t work with every portafilter. For example, the supporting “heel” on a La Marzocco spouted portafilter causes it to slide to the side, so if you’re not holding the portafilter the grounds will land either on the left or right of the basket. This is solved with the new holder, now it’s absolutely perfect. The push-button used to activate a dose is also adjustable – you can adjust the distance between the portafilter. It couldn’t be simpler, as I really only slide the portafilter in, wait a few seconds and take it out. Simple, effective and precise. Absolutely no hassle.

The second critical point for this workflow to be perfect are the distribution of coffee, static, and declumping of the grounds. This is where the innovative declumper, new Grind Flow Control (GFC) system, plays a huge role. It reduces static, prevents clumping and it totally works. Instead of a simple wire mesh like on the older Mazzers, there’s now a spring shaped perfectly for a specific purpose. The whole GFC module can be taken out for cleaning or adjusting.

Mazzer offers multiple springs to be inserted into the GFC, and the one that comes with the Super Jolly V Pro as standard is a “Hybrid” one. There are also “AntiClumping” and “AntiDust” ones, but they come with the larger Mazzer models and I’m not sure whether they can be fitted into the GFC on a Super Jolly V Pro (I’ll most certainly give this a try at some point and update this article). From looking at the construction of the GFC in the SJ V Pro, they might fit. The hybrid one works perfectly however. No clumps – I mean, none, absolutely no clumps. The Mini B uses wire mesh and produces very little clumps, I haven’t noticed static at all, but with the GFC on the new SJ V Pro I see absolutely zero clumps, whatsoever. No static, no clumps, no grounds flying around, fluffy grounds land straight in the middle the basket, clump and static free. It does the intended job perfectly. So we have a perfect portafilter holder, grounds exiting the burr chamber perfectly fluffy and static free directly in the center of the basket. All I need to do is wiggle the handle to settle the grounds, tap and tamp.

Another really nice feature is grind time pause. You can set a certain percentage of a dose to grind in the first step, the grinder will pause and let you settle your grounds in the portafilter, and then resume grinding to finish your dose. The display also shows a nice graphic to let you know where the pause is and how much more you need to grind.

Grinding on the Super Jolly V Pro is time based. I think grind-by-weight would be a neat feature, but it makes very little sense at home and it is a feature some manufacturers charge insanely high markup for and yet still can’t execute it perfectly. The ones that decided to make a cheaper version of this feature delivered half-baked product, and the ones who delivered a somewhat reliable product charge astronomical price for it. I’m glad Mazzer decided to stay away from grinding by weight for a while longer, the tech just isn’t perfect and it’s unfair to charge thousands more for a feature that isn’t 100% reliable.

What if you want to clean or change the burrs? The process with the Mini B is as follows – you unscrew the collar, remove the upper burr carrier, you have to make sure to clean the threads and not leave a single spec of coffee behind (otherwise you may damage the threads), clean the burrs (or change them), lube the threads and put everything back together. If you’re like me, everything needs to be perfectly clean and newly lubed before assembling everything back together, it’s probably not something you feel like doing often. You will lose your grind setting almost for sure, and you’ll need to recalibrate the touching point and go from there. The whole process can take half an hour, sometimes longer if you’re a perfectionist. Sure, it’s a joy to do at home few times a year, but can this be done easier? Of course, with the Super Jolly V Pro, you simply remove 4 screws and lift the whole adjustment mechanism off, which also acts as a burr carrier – this is how you access the burr chamber. Cleaning takes less than 10 minutes.

So you clean the burrs and the chamber (or replace the burrs), put the mechanism back in place and you’re done. You keep the grind setting, everything is as it was when you first removed the screws. Super quick, easy and not only that – there’s a new adjustable size dial. A numeric ring around the adjustment collar that can be rotated. It’s called “Memory Track System”, and it let’s you find the point where burrs touch and adjust the zero on the dial to reflect the burr-touching point perfectly. No more guess work. Here’s a short video of how it works.

Let’s mention a few words on retention – I’ve mixed feelings over how we measure retention, but I’ve put 20g into the hopper when the grinder arrived, 16g came out. Next 20g dose came out completely, so take it as you wish. I think the main focus should be on exchange, not total retention. I could clean the chamber now after 4kg, measure how much I have on the table, but this definitely isn’t the best way to measure retention, as the real world scenario is simply different, and most of the coffee that get’s stuck in the grinder stays in the grinder and stops the grinder from retaining more, essentially leaving you with exchange to worry about. So far it seems the exchange is very low. I usually throw 100g of coffee into the hopper for the day in the morning, and if I purge 1-2g before making coffee, the first dose will be fresh. The chamber, as mentioned, is very tidy and tight, with 50% less space for coffee to get stuck in (than in the previous generation) and is easy to access and clean. The path for grounds to exit the chamber is also much shorter than on older Mazzers.

Wow, we’ve gotten this far and we haven’t even talked about the specs yet! I suggest you view this in landscape if you’re on mobile.

Now, I’m sure you’re curious about results in the cup. This is the exact same burr set I’ve put into my Mazzer Mini A for the past few months, having it grind 18g in 7 seconds – the new 233M burrs. They’re fantastic burrs. I’ve talked about these burrs often, they personally surprised me when compared to the SSP HU burrs in my Mini B. I know these burrs well and I like them. They are an absolute bargain and I would absolutely get these over the SSP’s HUs had they come out earlier. These are espresso focused burrs with a great mouthfeel, enough clarity to enjoy specialty light/medium but also darker roasts. They are really great and I’ll be keeping the Mazzer burrs in the grinder for some time.

As you can see from the specs, the grinder also has a fan cooling system to keep the burrs cool – that’s very handy at home as well. Let’s say you want to season a new burrset, you can grind 3kg of coffee in a day (that’s the maximum amount this grinder was designed for) and the fan will keep the burrs and the motor cool. I’ve managed to grind 3kg of coffee through the Lab Sweet burrs in two days! There was a question that popped up once, it seems most people’s only complain with this grinder (given they want to use it at home) is that the fan is loud for home. Good news is that you can simply disconnect it if you don’t need it – that’s it. I’m sure you’ll be fine without it if you grind 3-5 doses a day, but remember it is there for a purpose. The fan turns on for three minutes after each grind, and can also be turned off by restarting the machine. I got used to the fan already anyways, as it’s really not louder than a fan in an iMac or a desktop PC, about as loud as fans on my MacBook Pro.

Apart from the new digital control panel (TFT Display), these new Mazzers also offer optional IoT, which enables Mazzer app connectivity. The new control panel let’s you set up three doses – single, double, tipple and there’s also a separate button for manual dose. My favourite feature, as I’ve mentioned earlier, is the ability to pause grinding at a set percentage of a dose, letting you settle the ground before finishing the dose – the pause lasts up to 30 seconds. You can also choose whether you want the dose to be activated via the panel, or by pressing a button with your portafilter. There’s also a setting that reminds you to clean or replace the burrs, and also one that let’s you reset the shot counter. All of these features are extremely helpful and a big step up from the previous generation.

Here’s a small table on grind amount consistency with timer set to 9 seconds:

A few words regarding the design and built quality – it’s a Mazzer. Wherever you look, whatever you touch, everything seems finished to perfection in every smallest detail. Everything you look at and touch screams high quality work, high quality materials, high quality paintjob, this machine is made to last in a busy cafe for decades. That’s more than your average lifetime at home. They even paid attention to the screw holding the hopper, attention to detail is intense. Even how the GFC or the screen makes a satisfying click when they snap in place, just wow. They absolutely nailed it.

The design is modern. Still reminds us of the iconic grinder that Mazzer first started selling over 50 years ago, this is a much deserved evolution of the Super Jolly. I can’t express how cool it feels to have one on my counter!

Another few features worth mentioning are the new hopper design – especially the lid, it now has a nice rubber lip which seals the hopper when closed and reduces coffee oxidation. Mazzer also packs another pair of lugs for the new portafilter holder, these are a bit longer, making sure you can set the height of these for every portafilter.

Lastly, I’m not only legally obligated but also proud to disclose that I’ve received this grinder from Mazzer as a gift for my content. You may know my content by now, it’s purely workflows, just me making coffee. I don’t make reviews or videos just to be telling you to buy this or buy that. I wrote this article for those who have questions about the grinder, just to highlight some of the new features and share my thoughts. Mazzer hasn’t asked me to write a review, I asked them to help me with a unit because I always wanted to own one. I also write it for myself, because I like to write things from time to time! If there’s any bias here, it’s because I’ve been wanting the new Super Jolly V Pro for a long time and am very happy to have it here. You don’t need me to be biased to see that the machine clearly lives up to high expectations. This article describes features (literally anyone can talk about features) and my thoughts on their execusion. I’ve absolutely nothing bad to say about this grinder, I can’t even nitpick a single flaw here. It really shows Mazzer made sure the grinder is perfect before it’s release. If Mazzer hadn’t accepted my offer for collaboration, I’d still buy it at some point. This grinder really is my final destination.

Please let me know if you have any questions, I’m usually quick to respond. And be nice!

Jaroslav