Victoria Arduino has unveiled the next chapter of its Mythos line, finessing the coffee grinder from something iconic to something legendary.
The Mythos grinder from Victoria Arduino has become a staple on coffee bars around the world since its launch in 2013, and is appreciated both for its iconic design, high quality standards, and waste reduction.
Balancing great consistency with speed of service and sustainability, Marco Feliziani – Vice President of Victoria Arduino, parent company Simonelli Group – calls Mythos a revolution in coffee grinding, supporting baristas and roasters to enhance the quality of each coffee and to reach excellence in the cup.
“In the coffee industry, details matter. Victoria Arduino never stopped being in touch with the baristas and people working with the grinder to reach a new level of control and precision,” Feliziani tells Global Coffee Report.
Eight years after the introduction of the Mythos One, Victoria Arduino has unveiled the new Mythos, “with interesting improvement in terms of user experience, grinding control, and design”.
“The new Mythos was born to reach a new level of grinding perfection in accordance with Victoria Arduino’s values, where design, sustainability, and performance are the key factors for excellence,” Feliziani says.
“Like all the Victoria Arduino product range, Mythos pinpointed a goal: designing a product where workflow comfort meets aesthetical and functional qualities while continuing technological research and igniting innovative energy.
The new series of grinder is simply known as Mythos, like its iconic line, and is not just one grinder but four different models.
“They share the same platform, look, and software to create a family feeling across the line, but customers are able to make decisions about elements like burr size and technologies that will best suit their business and their coffee,” says Lauro Fioretti, Product Manager for Simonelli Group.
The new black glass touchscreen control and display panel offers seamless navigation of the grinder and dose settings. Fioretti says the software is so intuitive that the barista will likely not need an instruction manual to use it, itself guiding them through the main functions of the grinder.
The Mythos signature Clima Pro and Gravitech technologies have been improved in terms of performance and control, with an interesting impact on grinder design.
“To allow increased performance of the engine, we’ve installed bigger fans and moved the ventilation system to the back of the machine, which improves efficiency when cooling down the engine and stabilises temperature,” Fioretti explains. “This means more flexibility and versatility to set the temperature, from the touchscreen display to more attention to the design of the coffee shop: baristas can put two or more versions of the Mythos into one, with the same iconic design.”
The user experience is one of main drivers of innovation. By improving Gravitech’s performance and precision, Victoria Arduino engineers used machine learning technology to develop an adaptive algorithm able to stop the motor at exactly the right time to achieve the precise coffee quantity the barista wants in the portafilter. “In this way, the barista can achieve their goals more efficiently and has enough time to focus on added value activities such as customer experience,” Fioretti says.
This function even allows the Mythos to identify when a different coffee blend has been placed in the grinder and adjust itself automatically. Feliziani adds the algorithm even considers external factors like temperature, humidity, and grinder setting to continuously provide the best performance possible in terms of consistency, dosing, and speed.
“Often, to increase the speed of equipment you must compromise on the quality and consistency,” he says. “Thanks to our team of engineers and their creative solution, we’ve not only improved the speed of the Mythos and workflow of the barista but kept – if not improved – the level of control, quality, and consistency.”
“The only reference a barista traditionally has when setting the grinder is a micrometric adjustment knob with little numbers on the side. We’ve digitised this control on the touch display, so when you’re dialling in your coffee and find the setting with the best performance, you can set this as a reference point and the system can track if you’re moving too far in one direction, either too coarse or too fine, and bring you back on track,” Feliziani says.
“This is a big step to make the machine more user friendly for any barista. For those less experienced, even if they’ve never used a grinder before, it drives them in the right direction when adjusting the grinder. It’s also a good reference for more experienced baristas, who can save coffee and time when dialling in because they know the target and can reach it much faster.”
Quality of life improvements have also been made to the grinder when it comes to ease of maintenance. The routine replacement of the clump crusher – which regulates air flow from the burr set and removes static cling from the ground particles – has been streamlined.
Though the grinder is visually reminiscent of its predecessors, the casing has been completely redesigned. There is now an internal frame supporting the grinder components and an external cover with only four screws needing to be removed for full access for maintenance.
The upgrades and changes to the grinder, particularly the ventilation system, result in the Mythos being one centimetre wider than past units. Although a minor change, Fioretti says it vastly improves the overall stability of the grinder on the bench.
“Part of the success of the Mythos comes from its design being different to any other grinder available on the market. The main reason for that design came from a functional point of view,” Fioretti says.
“Victoria Arduino was the first company in the world that thought to incline the motor, putting it at a 50-degree angle which allowed us to reduce retention, improving consistency and making it zero waste. Most other grinders have a vertical motor, and while others have adapted many features of the Mythos for their own grinders, the functionality and design of Mythos is still unique on the market.”
A redesigned and adjustable grinder fork further improves the grinder’s consistency and efficiency, guiding the portafilter into the best place to distribute the coffee in the filter and reduce wastage.
Feliziani says this focus on waste makes Mythos complimentary of the latest espresso machine equipment from Victoria Arduino, such as the Eagle One, where energy usage was a key consideration of development.
“Consistency and efficiency quality were always values that we and our customers looked for in a coffee grinder, but Mythos was one of the first grinders that looked at sustainability. Reduction of coffee waste has always been one of the most important features of Mythos and was one of the first targets we had in mind with the grinder,” he says.
“Those three values together – consistency, efficiency, and sustainability – are the reasons Mythos is so appreciated by different markets and kinds of customers. We often refer to specialty coffee when talking about Mythos, but the grinder and its flexibility have found success and appreciation in many sectors. Even coffee bars as far as McDonald’s in Australia uses the Mythos.”
Victoria Arduino has collaborated with Puqpress to ensure a compatible under-grinder automatic tamper will be released alongside the new Mythos as it rolls out globally, starting from October.
“Mythos is a grinder that is synonymous with very big innovations in the market,” Feliziani says. “The grinder was already excellent, but we’ve been able to polish the small details, finetuning something great to make it even better.”
The new Mythos grinder will be available from October 2021. For more information, visit www.victoriaarduino.com/mythos
This article was first published in the September/October edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.