Design and Setup

The Femobook A5 arrives in a box with a carrying handle. Inside, the grinder comes already assembled, along with a cleaning brush. The only step needed for setup is attaching the hopper, which connects to the top of the grinder through a magnet.

Power and Basic Operation

The A5 runs on a rechargeable battery rather than a wall plug, with the battery housed inside the grinder itself. A USB-C port handles charging, sitting next to a power switch. To grind, coffee goes into the hopper, the grind size is set, and the switch is turned on. The grinder senses when the chamber is empty and shuts off on its own, so there is no need to time the grind[1]. Once it stops, the catch cup can be removed to collect the grounds. Bueno noted that twisting the cup first, rather than pulling it straight off, makes it easier to release the magnets holding it in place.

Cleaning

Bueno walked through the full cleaning process. Before opening the grinder, the setting should be moved to the coarsest position. From there, the catch cup and burr assembly both twist off. A separate part, which he called the coffee ground sweep, clears grounds that collect along the sides of the chamber during grinding and can also be removed for cleaning.

Getting to the burrs themselves involves an axle lock ring with a set of slots, shown in detail in the video. Turning the axle to an open slot releases it, while turning it to a specific corner locks it back in place, which is how the inner burr comes free for brushing. If the small washer inside is taken out during this process, it needs to go back in with its raised side facing up.

Calibration and Reassembly

Putting the grinder back together starts with the burr assembly and the inner burr, followed by the lock ring, which Bueno noted goes down in one orientation and locks in another. The adjustment ring can go on in any position, as long as it can be tightened down afterward.

To find his zero point, Bueno tightened the adjustment ring until the burrs could no longer be turned by hand, then loosened it slightly until they moved freely again. From there, he lined up a marker on the opposite side of the ring with his intended zero, using that as his calibration starting point. The grinder can be adjusted finer than zero, and at the first click past it, the burrs can still be moved by hand; at zero itself, they cannot. From there, the coffee ground sweep goes back in, the burr assembly turns into position to lock, and the catch cup goes back on last.

The zero point here is Bueno's own calibration reference rather than a fixed setting. Readers should treat it as a starting point to adjust for their own grinder and brewing preferences.

The overview above reflects what Bueno showed in the video; exact fit and steps can vary slightly by individual unit.

Daryl Bueno's Take

Bueno pointed to the small number of moving parts as the main reason he likes the A5. If something goes wrong while he is out at an event, he can take it apart and fix it himself. The same simplicity makes it easy to clean the grinder between different coffees, which keeps one bean from carrying over into the next.