Pepper, peppermills & sea salt

Interesting site: http://www.pepper-passion.com

[Jenise]

What beautiful mills. I might trash my ugly little German mill for one of those if I could be sure of the inner workings. The one I have has brass internals, it's guaranteed for life, and it works great but it's ugly; until I bought this, I used more stylish William Bounds models which were also guaranteed for like forever but whose plastic parts nonetheless dulled with time and lost their ability to produce the very-coarse grind I prefer.

I am the owner of Pepper-Passion and I make all of the mills featured on this site so please allow me to respond to your question.

Our mills are made using American made mechanisms from Chefs Specialties. (Most other custom mfrs also use this same mechanism.) I offer a lifetime warranty on my mills. One of the virtues of this mechanism is its broad adjustment range for very fine to coarse (a feature found lacking on many European mills).

I receive many complaints from people about the mills they presently own. Before trying to interest them in one of my own, I always mention that if a mill from a reputable mfr is not working well is probably just needs a good cleaning to remove gummy residue from the grinding rings. This normally will require dis-assembly of the mill.

I have also found that larger and more flavorful peppercorns are much more prone to plug mills than less flavorful ones (the same is true for grinding coffee beans). I can almost tell which of my peppers I am grinding from the feel and output from the mill. Our Talamanca pepper for instance will not even grind in some cheap mills and might require that a mill be cleaned as often as monthly if used heavily. The price you pay for using good pepper.

Lastly, we do do very well when around a wine loving crowd. It is not difficult to sell the idea that different peppercorns have subtle differences in flavors and that it can be a lot of fun exploring these differences. I do most of my tasting with my nose and can easily distinguish the six different black peppercorns we sell by smell alone.

I also sometimes make the simile that you would not drink a Chateau Lafite from a paper cup when explaining why you might want a pepper mill costing $120 or more. A crystal wine glass does not make the wine taste better but it sure does enhance the experience. Same goes for us pepper lovers.

Time to go back in the shop and get covered with exotic wood sawdust. Hope this information is interesting and useful.

Bruce Morgan

Hi Bruce, Those sure are some beautifully crafted mills. I'd love to have any of those in my house.

Some of the mills are billed as salt and/or pepper mills. Do you have different mechanisms for the salt mills or is it some non-corrosive material that is good for both salt and pepper?

thanks.

Welcome, Bruce! Those are beautiful mills, and you do a good job discussing their virtues. You'll find that a lot of us here are familiar with different types of pepper and the different flavors they have.

Hope you'll stick around!

Mike

I have been looking with lust at some new mills myself, both pepper and salt. The ones that I have lusted for can be found here:

http://home.texoma.net/~u2plt/products.htm

Not sure what the cost would be, but the grinding mechanisms are ceramic and the wood is all hand cut, polished and assembled. Price is not cheap, but they are sure pretty. If I could only find a couple hundred dollars that I could spend.

I am the owner of Pepper-Passion and I make all of the mills featured on this site so please allow me to respond to your question. Bruce Morgan

Please spell my name correctly on my finder's fee check.

Thank you for the warm welcome. To answer the first question, our mechanisms are tempered stainless steel for the pepper and Lexan for the salt.

I think all the hype about ceramic mechanisms, especially the "crush grind" variety is a bunch of bug dust. Most people do not need a mill that can be used for both salt and pepper. Ceramic is also very brittle and liable to break if dropped. A dedicated salt mechanism can speciallize grind a soft substance into a fine powder while the pepper mechanism needs to be able to grind a hard substance with a wide range of particle sizes. Two different tasks entirely. All of the best pepper mills out there use steel for their mechanisms.

I checked out the other site mentioned by Bob Henrick. I had not seen this one before. I personally do not like segmented or laminated mills but that guy is doing a real nice job if that style appeals to you. Witht highly fogured woods that Iuse I think it would degrade the value to laminate or segment them, but then I designed mil that appeal to my taste so I am hardly impartial about this. I respect all the guys out there working to produce functional art that can be enjoyed every day.

Bruce