SIFTER BASE

Someone finally got it right!

Disclaimer: I do not consume coffee. I do roast cacao beans, grind, and cold brew cacao. I enjoy the bittersweetness of the cacao. Coffee people have the best accoutrements. When I supported the Kruve Kickstarter campaign for the Create 3 spout latte art pitcher, I discovered the Kruve Sifter. I purchased a Silver Sifter 3 years ago this May. Little did I know how useful this tool would become. Mostly, I was looking for a way to sift the cacao nibs to make grinding easier and to sort grinding results to up my cold brew cacao game. The first thing I did was learn how to press-fit the sieves into the spaces in the sifting trays. The sieves, when properly inserted, are slightly concave. The sieves are delicate and need gentle handling. For me, I found if I laid the sieve in the tray sieve space from above, then turned the tray over, it was easier to pop the sieve into place. I started at the apex corner (closest corner to the E in Kruve) and seated the tray edge into the groove; Working clockwise around the rim, the sieve gently laid into the rim. Once two corners were anchored, I worked both sides leading to the third corner to pop the sieve into place. There is a learning curve to fitting the sieves in place. I iterated the practice until I could load the sieves smoothly into place. I had packed in anticipation of moving (did not happen; long story) and could not find where I packed the Kruve sifter. As frequently happens in my life, I ordered a Black Sifter and the day after the new sifter was delivered, The Silver Sifter reappeared. Happy to have two! The Sifter does a wonderful job with Cacao nibs. The Cacao beans are too large for the largest bean sieve. No sweat. Once the beans are roasted and the Cacao bean shell is removed, the beans break easily into cacao nibs which can be ground to make beverages or ground into cacao powder. I use the different bean sieves to sort the nibs and the grind sieves to sort the ground nibs. Having the ground nibs in a similar size range very much improves the cold brew cacao. The Silver Sieve allows for a wonderful color contrast between the sifter and the darker sifting materials. The Black Sieve allows for a wonderful color between the sifter and the lighter sifting materials. Ah! But as an engineer, I am forever finding ways to use tools for other uses. Shortly after receiving the first Sifter, I tried sifting home-milled flour onto a rolling surface for pie crust. Since the flour was whole grain Einkorn, I wanted a fine sift on to the rolling surface. I used a 700 micron sieve in the top tray; a 500 micron sieve in the middle tray. The flour sifted nicely on to the rolling surface: a silicone mat which requires just a fine dusting. The bran layer of the whole grain flour was mostly contained in the top tray; the finer particles of bran were confined to the middle tray. The bottom tray caught the fine white flour when not being sifted onto the board. I also had a way of sifting the whole grain flour into its components of bran and all purpose flour when I wanted to bake with the all purpose flour. No other sifter available to the home cook allowed such wonderful separation. The bran gets used in bran muffins. I can sift enough flour in about 30 minutes to make pizza dough with all purpose flour or to make Einkorn soft pretzels. Plus bran for a batch of bran muffins. What other sifting opportunities awaited? I found I could sift out the small particles in the bottom of nut containers; sift out all the small crumbs from snacks such as potato chips or crackers and have a cleaner product to eat. The bean sieves are handy for sorting any number variety of beans and makes finding the broken beans or tiny stones easier to remove. Sifting ground herbs, spices, and seaweed for scratch cooking makes sifting out larger pieces and stems easier. I do bead work and found the bean sieves are handy for sorting beads. I grow seeds for sprouting and for replanting. The bean and grind sieves make sorting seeds easier. The Kruve Sifters: making life easier with a simple tool. They would make great gifts for the people who take their coffee seriously, or their cooking endeavors, or the artists. I could see the sifter used to sift clay for fine ceramics; or the artist who mixes their paints from raw materials. So many uses, so much to explore.

Sifter works fine but changing the sifter plates can be a bit finnicky and time consuming with the rubber gasket around them that can be difficult to evenly seat in the sifter bucket edges. I worry about long term durability of the seals when changing sifter plates frequently.

Customer support is the hallmark of a great company. After writing a poor review Kruve contacted me and provided a few hints on firmly seating the Sieve screens. I was able to seat the screens from the bottom and secure a very tight and functional fit. They work great and have found a place in the calibration workflow for different coffees for my new DF83V V3 grinder as well as a way to filter out “fines” for pour over. An indispensable tool for enthusiasts taking the guesswork out of dialing in a grinders particle-size distribution (PSD) and removing grinds that fall out of the desired range yielding a perfect brew. Screens are still not ‘a walk in the park” to insert, especially the finer meshes that are less compliant, but manageable - otherwise they would get a 5 out of 5. Very high quality sieves and carrier trays, thoughtful and artistic design and accompanying tools, like the ruler and sieve holder. Thank you for your excellent support Kruve! I discovered you can also also insert the screens from the bottom with the sieve size number viewable from the bottom of tray. This works better for me for some sieves‍♂️.

Life changing!

On the plus side, our coffee definitely tastes better when sifted. And the fines problem with French Press is largely mitigated. On the minus side, we’re burning through a lot more beans.

Great tool! Prevously used another product that only sifted out the fines. The Kruve’s ability to sift out both over and under sized grinds, the improvement in brewed flavor is absolutely incredible. Easy to use. Well made. Too dang expensive - I’m sure the quality manufacture of the sieves, themselves, is the price driver, so somewhat understandable.

Hello, I love the idea and I do love the product. The functionality of the base would greatly improve if all the parts had a similar fit at the lid does. This would add a huge amount of security when handling it. Also, the lid is a bit of a pain to get off without a finger notch or something. The base that holds the screens is also not the most user friendly. It is hard to get the screens to naturally sit evenly and it slowly kills my OCD. Just for giggles feet would be stellar. But after all that.... There is currently no competition with your product(s). They are functional and they are pleasing to look at. I, as a consumer, would like to see some minor tweaks and improvements to help me feel like it was worth the price. It felt fairly high for the product received. Anyways, I use it every weekend and am having fun dialing in my brews. I look forward to the next generation and hope that my criticism was taken as constructive as that is how it's meant.

Well built, aesthetically pleasing, does a great job of sifting out unwanted fines.

I've been roasting for the last 5+years. 1/2 lb.micro batches. For Christmas, my daughters gave me The Xmas Bag from Sweet Maria's in Oakland. 30 1lb.bags from 30 different small farms from around the world. What a wonderful gift ! I now want to share my love of fresh beans with others. My intention is to roast and grind 1lb batches and offer it to the public at our local gas station. A sort of pop up vibe. I want to duplicate and refine the grind of the coffee they're currently using; Folgers. Your Kruve sifter will be the tool to achieve my goal. My problem is the missing Brewler. I'm not if it was excluded or if was thrown out by mistake. Can I purchase another one? I think it would be a very useful tool. Thank you.

I've been using a French press for years and have been fine with the utilitarian "grind-->brew-->drink" process. But about a year ago I read about how the size of the grind can be used for different kinds of brewing. I figured I'd give the sifter a chance. WOW! My french press coffee tastes so much better now! Honestly I was very skeptical and thought is was a sales doo-dad product. But now I have several different brewing options to accommodate the different sizes of grounds that come out of the sifter. I look back on years and years of drinking the mud that came out of the press in years past and realize what a heathen I was. LOL Thank you for the resources and education on your website. I love the art and skill you bring to the experience. I can only have 1 cup of coffee per day and getting to spend more time breathing in the morning ambrosia while grinding, sifting, brewing and sipping is really great. Thank you! I've now bought sifters for different members of my family. :-)

The screens will not stay in place. When I open it, there is nothing in the top section, everything falls in the next section and the fines are caught in the 3rd section. There is a big mess. I am close to sending it back and return to my Fellow Sifter.

Excellent and super useful purchase. It's made such a big difference in the flavours we get out of our coffee! The wooden lid seemed to not quite fit when we first got it, but now it's fitting great. It's a bit challenging to swap the plates but at least they stay in secure whole sifting. Glad we finally picked this up.

Awesome

The sifter is an accurate tool to evaluate grinder settings, quantify the results and separate.the desired particles.

The sifter works well. There are 2 issues though: 1) The way it's packed uses a lot of tape that leaves residue on both the bamboo lid and the sieves which is impossible to remove without chemicals. 2) The default sieve selection is ok for everything but not perfect for anything which leaves you with the only option to buy the full pack. It would be immensely helpful to allow customizing the selection of sieves or to allow purchase of individual sieves.

item arrived bent/damaged. kruve made it right and allowed exchange. works great!

When I receive it, I’m sure it will be good. But I have not yet received this product.

Well, if you order directly from Kruve, EXPECT to wait a LONG time for the shipment to arrive via slooooowwww air freight from China, took 2 weeks. Amazon, much faster. Enough of that… As for the sieve, it has improved my brewing of smooth wonderful full of favor coffee so much my spouse is drinking 50% more coffee. Even ‘bad’ roast bean (Stumptown) can become outstanding coffee. You need to be a self-starter with this device, there are NO instructions and the videos are a 1 on a scale of 5 (presenter is a bit too pompous assuming EVERYONE should know this stuff, there is so much missing from the videos, ALL of the videos, you have “read between the lines” to get the idea of what to do or how to do). Anyway back to the sieve, it works great for “A SINGLE PERSON”, too small for two people (750 to 900 mL is our daily volume using 60 grams, 45 after sieve), but the middle sieve tray only holds about 38-40 grams, so I have to sieve in two batches, too time consuming, but worth the smoothness of the coffee. So yes, I would recommend it for a brew volume of <=500 mL or be willing to do 2 serving batches each morning. I brought the basic unit with 5 sieves and these are working out well. The cost of the ‘full set’ is not worth it, over priced and in 70% of my brewing types (FPress, PourOver, Cold Brew, and Drip) the defaults serves are working fine with a little fine tuning (what Kruve calls ‘calibration of your grinder’ - fancy name) of the grinder settings. The bamboo cover is a bit too tight, so be careful removing it or you’ll have grounds all over the counter, plus there was not “use and care information” so I coated mine with USP Grade Mineral Oil, it helps keep the grounds out of the bamboo which would eventually end up discolored and rancid, so coat it about 3-4 times, then don’t was the bamboo cover. As for the sieves, I just ‘dry tap’ out the stuck grounds leaving the sieves in place. NOTE: Nothing is dishwasher safe, only hand wash. The ‘dry tap’ works well for about a week, then a good soapy cleaning is necessary, see rancid comment. Improvement to the product… need a larger volume “middle” tray, NOT every is a single person or drinks 4 oz. of coffee in the morning, yes we drink 12-14 oz. as “a morning cup of coffee”, the middle tray should easy accommodate 45-60 grams. Worth the cost of admission! Yes! Buy it an enjoy the smoothest coffee you have ever had at some using a low cost burr grinder (Cusinart) and when you get the bag of bean that you would normally send back or throw out, you can now brew it up!

I like to use this to keep my grinder honest. It's very useful for that perfect cup of coffee.