In the Fall of 2018, Cleve Oines seasoned 4 steaks with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
It took 73 cranks of the pepper mill.
- At crank 10, Cleve wondered if there was a better way. Pre ground pepper degrades rapidly once ground, so it isn't an ideal option.
- At crank 20, he adjusted his pepper mill to the "COARSE" setting in order to increase the output. The difference was imperceptible.
- At crank 30, he wondered why there was such wide variation in grind size, with huge chunks of pepper popping ponderously from the pepper mill preceding particulates of petite pepper powder. Preposterous.
- At crank 40, he wondered if pepper mills hadn't been updated since the 5th century when peppercorns were used as currency, or perhaps since they were used to embalm Pharaoh Ramses II in 1213 BC. It certainly seemed like the pepper mill was designed to conserve its precious spice...
- At crank 50, he considered the possibility of pepper mills as home fitness devices, then he remembered that cranking pepper mills is boring. More pepper with less cranks was the answer.
- At crank 73 he stopped grinding, and resolved to build a better pepper mill.
786 days, 54 revisions, 11 prototypes, 82 tests, and 4,673 sneezes later, the MÄNNKITCHEN Pepper Cannon was born.
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7. Problems Solved:
1. Speed: The MÄNNKITCHEN Pepper cannon possesses coarse settings that produce obscene quantities of ground pepper. Up to 10x the output of standard pepper mills. You'll say: "that's too much pepper" for the first time in your life. You may briefly consider writing a review containing the words "too much pepper", but you'll remember that you willingly purchased an item called the Pepper Cannon. Then you'll decrease the coarseness until the output is merely excessive. You'll pepper your eggs with 1/2 crank instead of 5, and with your extra time you'll cure cancer and give your partner proper lovin'. You're welcome, World.
2. Grind Quality: Too many pepper mills use wobbly drive shafts that turn an undersized self-dulling burr set. The male and female burrs grind against each other (which is way less fun than it sounds) resulting in dull, chipped burr teeth and allowing larger than desired pepper particles to pass. The Pepper Cannon from MÄNNKITCHEN uses a heavy gauge, double-bearing supported, rigid drive shaft, powering wicked-sharp burrs made of high-carbon stainless steel, hardened in the fires of Mount You-get-the-point. You can grind everything from pixie-dust fine powder up to 1/4 cracked pepper, and thanks to precision engineering it only grinds black pepper-not its own teeth.
3. Adjustment Creep: "Let's put the grind adjuster on a threaded shaft in direct contact with the rotating top!" said no good designer ever. A rotating grind adjuster in direct contact with a rotating top is a recipe for wildly inconsistent ground pepper. The grind adjuster on the Pepper Cannon is on the bottom where adjusters belong, and it won't move unless you move it. Consistent grinds, all the times.
4. Cumbersome Filling: "I've got it!" said the same bad designer, "Let's make it so the grind adjuster ALSO holds the top on-that way it has to be removed completely in order to refill the mill!" No. Just... no. The Pepper grinder from MÄNNKITCHEN features a top that pops off with the push of a button for easy filling, then presses back into place with a satisfying metallic "Click". No need to RE-move, RE-place, and RE-calibrate your grind adjuster just to RE-fill a pepper mill, because that's RE-dundant.
5. The Bloody Hand Conundrum: You've seasoned meat on one side, now what? You've got to flip it over and season the other side, which means you'll either have to wash your hands mid-seasoning OR handle your pepper mill with a bloody hand. We've all been there. The MÄNNKITCHEN pepper mill features a removable base cup. You can use it without the cup in normal operation, or you can grind a pile of pepper into the cup then sprinkle it directly from the cup when one-handed peppering is preferable.
6. Durability: The MÄNNKITCHEN Pepper Cannon is milled from a solid chunk of Aerospace Grade Aluminum. Not plastic. Not wood. Not glass. It's metal. Machining it from metal allows us to achieve the very strict tolerances required for precision parts to produce exceptional results while adding strength and durability. It's not the cheapest way to build a pepper mill, because that's already been tried. A lot.
7. Sustainability: Aluminum is the most abundant metal on planet Earth, is 100% recyclable and can be recycled indefinitely.
33 comments
I just got my Pepper Cannon and I love it so much!! I’ve already ground about a quarter cup of pepper FOR NO REASON – just because I love it so much. And a quarter cup of pepper sounds like a lot but grinding that much pepper took hardly any time at all. I seriously keep hugging the thing. It’s so well made and all the pepper comes out the same size! I’ve never experienced this size uniformity before. I can’t wait to actually use my Pepper Cannon while cooking.
Hi, can the cannon grind black cumin?
Thx
I LOVE pepper. On a separate but related note, I have been withdrawing from interactions on Facebook for awhile now, overwhelmed with the stupidity of my fellow Americans. But, I randomly randomly happened to open it the other day and, first thing that pops up in my newsfeed was an ad that introduced me to you, your funny video and the Pepper Cannon. Serendipitous discovery! It must be destiny, right? I step into the World Wide Web to dig deeper… find a deal to purchase TWO Pepper Cannons for $69.99 with free shipping! One for me and one I can give to my best friend of 35 years! Visions of fresh pepper fill my imagination… days go by. Like a kid staring at presents under the tree in the days leading up to Christmas, anticipation killing me, I check to see if I can track my order. I check my PayPal account. Dread fill my heart as I see a payment to someone/something with all Chinese characters… Says the order was shipped, but no company or link to track the progress… I wait a couple more days and yesterday 8 days after my exciting purchase, my two Pepper Cannons arrive! I tear into the box and find a risky-dink plastic piece of sh*t. It says “Pepper Cannon” on the bottom, but it should say “Chinese Knock-Off for Stupid Americans” on it instead…. Hoping I can get some resolution from PayPal. Lessons learned: 1) I am a stupid American; 2) Buy the Pepper Cannon direct from MannKitchen.
Do you plan on selling a bare aluminium version please? The one in the pictures looks great and really shows off the engineering.