Fellow Ode Gen 2 Review: The Filter Grinder Owners Rate Highly, and Where It Runs Out

Strengths

• Excellent filter coffee across brewers: Owners rate the cup highly for filter brewing: one calls it hard to fault for filter, French press and AeroPress, another says it makes amazing drip coffee for the price, a third calls it great and its coffee excellent, and a former owner who fed a filter machine with it calls it great and recommends a used one.
• Best with medium-light to darker roasts: Where roast level is discussed, the Ode Gen 2 is the recommendation for medium-light and darker roasts and funky processed beans, with the A4Z named for light and ultra-light washed coffees instead. For batch-brewing medium-dark roasts it is called a much better grinder than the A4Z, which that commenter finds not great for medium roasts and poor for anything darker.

Common Complaints

• Burr cleaning can throw off the taste: Three months in, an owner who opened the grinder to clean the burrs instead of using cleaning tablets followed the instructions, and since then every cup has been hollow with a bitter aftertaste. Another owner also struggled to realign it after cleaning, though their coffee is excellent once it is right.
• Died after three and a half years, with no help past warranty: One Ode 2 cut out mid-grind after three and a half years and would not turn on again, even after its owner opened and cleaned it; Fellow's customer service was of no real use because it was out of warranty, leaving the owner searching for a repair shop for a $400 grinder.

Fellow Ode Gen 2 burrs: cleaning, alignment and the SSP upgrade

The Ode Gen 2 uses flat burrs, and the burr questions owners raise are cleaning, alignment and upgrading. Flat burrs are credited with more clarity in the cup than the conical burrs of the Opus 2, which tend to produce more fines and more body, so the choice comes down to preference. Cleaning the burrs yourself means taking them out and realigning them, and both owners who describe doing it had trouble afterwards (see the complaints above). Aftermarket SSP burrs fit, and one owner runs them, but with very light coffees from roasters such as XLIII and Big Sur, setting 11 is no longer coarse enough to avoid clogging the filter and stalling the brew. That is a modified grinder with an unusual roast choice, but it shows an SSP swap shifts where the useful range sits. Two commenters in one thread who ran SSP burrs think the Ode 2 holds them back: one, who owns both an Ode 2 and a DF64V, points to its fixed-speed 140 W motor at about 1,400 rpm, which fluctuates under load, and looser build tolerances, while still calling it a good grinder at under $300; the other found play in the rotating burr carrier that adds fines, making the SSP burrs unforgiving and less clear than at the 800-900 rpm another grinder allows.