Could not get a consistent shot out of my new hand grinder no matter what I did, turns out the burrs just needed about 3 ounces through them to settle in. A guy at the shop on 5th in Portland laughed and said the same thing happened to him. Did anyone else have to season their grinder before it stopped tasting like paper?
Sounds about right. My first hand grinder took a good 4 or 5 ounces before the paper taste went away. I just ran cheap beans through it on a coarse setting, maybe 10 grams at a time, and tossed them. Took a few days of doing that here and there. The burrs have tiny bits from the machining process and until those wear off you get that weird cardboard thing in the cup. Once it settled in my shots got way more even too. Give it another couple ounces and you should notice it fading fast.