Click Zero is the point where the burrs have closed just far enough to stop the crank turning freely. You never actually grind there. It exists so that every grind setting you find has a fixed number attached to it — and can be found again exactly.
What Click Zero is, and what it isn't
Most grinders ask you to trust a printed number on a dial. Ours doesn't have one, and that's deliberate. Instead you get a click mechanism you can feel and count, and a zero point you can find by hand in a few seconds — on any Comandante, of any age, anywhere in the world.
That matters more than it sounds. It means your setting isn't tied to a factory calibration that drifts, or to a dial that only makes sense on your particular grinder. It's tied to a physical position you can always return to. Two people on opposite sides of the planet can share a recipe as a click count and both land in the same place.
What Click Zero is not is a grind setting. At zero the burrs are effectively closed. It's a reference, nothing more.
How to find Click Zero on a C40
The trick is to let gravity tell you. Hold the grinder horizontally, so the crank is free to swing.
1. With the burrs open, the crank will fall under its own weight down to the six o'clock position.
2. Turn the grind setting dial to gradually close the burrs, a click at a time.
3. Keep testing: lift the crank to nine o'clock and let go.
4. Click Zero is the first setting at which the crank stops falling. The burrs are now holding it in place.
That's it. From here, every click you open the burrs is one click up from zero — and that number is your grind setting.
Finding Click Zero on a C60 Baracuda®
Identical method, and the same reassuring click quality. The C60 is a larger grinder with a longer crank, so the falling-handle test is if anything a little easier to read. Close gradually, test, and stop the moment the crank holds.
Counting up: turning zero into a number you can repeat
Find zero, then open the burrs and count the clicks out loud as you go. Twenty-four clicks is twenty-four clicks — write it down, put it in your notes app, tape it to the bag. Next time you change coffee and lose your way, you have a known-good setting to come back to rather than a guess.
Two habits make this painless. First, only ever re-zero when you genuinely need to; if you know your last setting, adjust from there. Second, note the coffee alongside the number. A washed Kenyan and a natural Brazilian rarely want the same click count, even on the same brewer.
Starting points for different brewing methods
These are clicks up from zero, and they are starting points rather than answers. Dose, brewer, water and roast all move the target, so treat these as somewhere to begin and then trust your tastebuds.
With everything else held steady, grinding finer increases extraction and grinding coarser reduces it. If a brew tastes thin and sour, go finer. If it tastes harsh and drying, go coarser.
Will closing to zero damage the burrs?
No. Closing to the point where the crank stops is exactly what the mechanism is designed to allow. You can technically keep going past it — into what you might call minus one, minus two — but there's no reason to. It won't help, and it makes for a less precise starting point. Stop at the first click where the crank holds and open from there.
Red Clix: the same method, finer steps
If you've fitted an RX35 Red Clix Drivetrain, nothing about finding zero changes. What changes is resolution: the finer thread gives you roughly twice as many clicks across the same grind range, so each click moves the burrs a smaller distance. Your old click numbers won't translate directly — expect to roughly double them — so it's worth re-finding zero and re-recording your settings after fitting.
The short version
Hold the grinder horizontally. Close the burrs until the crank stops falling. That's zero. Count up from there, write the number down, and you never have to guess again.
Good tools should give you repeatable results, decade after decade. This is the small piece of engineering that makes that possible.
