Gyls Premium Salt and Pepper Mill Set

Cost At the Time of Writing the Review: $22.90
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Out of the box, I was impressed with these shakers. They’re stainless steel, with a plastic portion for fullness detection, and a ceramic grinder inside. They have a decent heft to them, and feel well made. They each have a dual-coarseness option by grinding left or right. Flexibility is always a good thing.

There were no instructions, so I took a stab at how they worked (I’ve owned pepper mills, I knew how they worked, I’m just being sarcastic). I did, and do, think it’s strange that the shakers are different sizes. I know that’s a fairly typical design choice, but these are drastically different. The little one is so little it barely holds any salt/pepper. We use a lot of seasoning in our household, and would have to fill that one far too frequently for it to be convenient.

I filled the tall one with peppercorns, and the small one with salt. Again, there were no instructions, so I used my best judgment, which was basically, “I use more pepper than salt.” Then, it was time to season my salad. A couple cranks on the salt shaker gave me some ground up salt. A couple cranks the other way and I had some ground up, but slightly different sized salt. Just as advertised, perfect.

Then the pepper.

A couple cranks to the right…and no pepper. A couple cranks to the left…still no pepper. A couple of confused bangs on the counter to try and clear the blockage, then some more cranks, and I remained to have a bland salad. The shaker had blocked up. Not a huge deal, but I didn’t get any use out of it, so it was disappointing.

So, I opened it up and realized that there is no way to easily access the ceramic grinder. It’s a  closed part. Not good. I hit it with a kitchen hose, but the pressure wasn’t strong enough to clear the blockage. I jammed a knife inside, but it wasn’t small enough to clear the blockage. My grinder was S.O.L., and so was my salad.

I don’t know if I just got unlucky, but the peppercorns I used, I use in all of my grinders, and they are just fine for milling. The salt shaker did work well, so I assume that the pepper grinder was just a defective one. However, at over twenty dollars, is it worth the gamble?

I received this product discounted for purpose of review.