If you're someone who's not used coffee grinders in the past, you'll probably find there's a shorter learning curve when it comes to getting used to grinding your own coffee with the Smart Grinder Pro vs many similarly or lower-priced grinders. If spending a few hundred pounds on a coffee grinder is a bit over the top for your budget, there are some lower-cost options that will produce a good cup of espresso and will combine well with any machine that doesn't have an integrated grinder. This article explains more in detail: With 60 unique settings, this programmable conical burr coffee bean grinder maximizes the potential of any brew. Choose between 'cups' for French Press or Filter and 'shots' for Espresso to get the right dose for the coffee you're brewing. Grind coffee beans directly into a portafilter or an air-tight container. GRIND SETTINGS With so many intuitive grind settings to choose from, you can create perfection from Espresso to French Press. I'd previously made the assumption (as this has happened to me many times with integrated grinder machines) that it was an issue to do with the humidity in the hopper changing in integrated grinder machines like the Barista Express or the Oracle when the machine is turned on, but I found that the changes in humidity in my studio, which is a fairly normal environment, changed by as much as about 12% during a period of about an hour, both outside the hopper, and inside the hopper.

You will have to have change the grind as you make the first espresso and alter it either finer or coarser to brew the perfect espresso. You will also find that making the coffee grind finer will decrease the weight and volume of your coffee grounds. Sage Coffee Grinder Problems? This is the aforementioned internal burr adjustment, and it's such a clever, and useful feature, and one I very rarely hear anyone talking about. It's just ridiculously user-friendly, and that's the main thing I have to say about most Sage machines, really, they seem to think of just about everything to make them as idiot-proof as possible, although to be fair even Sage couldn't do quite a good enough job of that with this idiot, as I couldn't figure out to start with how to get the Gaggia classic portafilter to rest in the portafilter cradle. Remember, at this time I knew nothing about grinders, and I knew very little about espresso making in general at that point, I'd mainly brewed manually up until not long before getting the Smart Grinder Pro as an upgrade to my manual (Hario Skerton) grinder and cordless drill setup. But I was up and running instantly, without even bothering to look at the instructions.For example, I’m usually looking for 18g for a double shot, and I usually start out with a grind size of about 12, and a timing of about 17.5 seconds, which will usually get me close to 18g, and I’ll weight it, and then either take a bit out or grind a bit more. The timing will change from bean to bean, which is why you can’t purely rely on timing. So if you don't need the espresso capability, it's fair to say that purely talking about grinding performance, you're probably not going to experience a great deal of difference in the cup from your extra spend. What you will benefit from, however, is the amazing user-friendliness, ease of use, and lots of features that you won't find on most other options. I don't think it's possible to grind hard coffee beans silently, but the sound of the smart grinder pro grinding is not at all a deafening noise, in fact, I don't find it to be loud at all, and the aforementioned hopper lid gasket I think is partly to thank for that.

I remember being impressed with the attention to detail not only where features are concerned, but also with the bits it comes with. For example, you get two sizes of portafilter cradle, one for the standard 58mm portafilter size, and one for the Sage 54mm portafilters that you'll find on the Sage Bambino and Bambino Plus for example. If you do want to work with light roasts, by the way, just keep in mind that you'll need a more commercial-grade grinder for that. Grinders that can cope with much harder beans often have a much higher powered motor, and a gearing system that transforms the motor power into torque, and all of the componentry would usually (hopefully) be sturdy enough to cope with grinding much lighter roasted beans. How Good is The Smart Grinder Pro for Manual Brew Methods? In these cases, these beans being so hard that the grinder treats them as if they were stones, means that if this failsafe wasn't there, there's a good chance that the grinder would be damaged, possibly irreversibly. Some other entry-level grinders (and some not so entry level grinders) are known for stripping gears for example when they try to grind beans that are too hard for that grinder.

The verdict: Sage smart grinder pro

This is why blade grinders and also the cheapest burr grinders I mentioned earlier that have these flat “grinding wheels” aren't ideal, as both of these options will (from my experience) create a wild range of particle sizes. If you obliterate a bean by crushing it with flat, mainly blunt wheels, the bean will break into much fewer uniform pieces than with specifically designed burr geometry created to ensure a smaller range of particle sizes. I'd seen the Dose Control Pro from Sage, the slightly cheaper sibling of the Smart Grinder Pro, which was tempting, but I just really liked the look of the Smart Grinder Pro, and I'd seen that the power of the motor was slightly smaller on the Dose Control Pro (130W Vs 165W). The other thing I wasn't quite sure about was grind time or grind amount. What this relates to is dose, which means the amount of coffee we “dose” into our espresso basket, Aeropress, or V60 filter, for example. What I mean by this, is that the hopper on the Smart grinder pro is great as hoppers go, in fact overall it's probably one of the best hoppers I've seen, but hoppers should in my opinion be used as temporary storage only, and not as permanent storage solutions.

We're not talking about bells and whistles, either. A couple of the features could possibly be referred to as unnecessary I suppose, although I can't think of any that I don't think are useful, but some of them are genius, one of them in particular, which is the internal burr adjustment, which I'll talk about shortly. A much fairer comparison would be the Sage Smart Grinder Pro vs the Baratza Virtuoso +, as the Virtuoso Plus is only slightly more expensive, and is sold as being mainly a brew grinder. I've used both (and the forte, and most other Baratza grinders), and again, the SGP has a lot of pros vs the Virtuoso, mainly where features and ease of use are concerned, and I think they're incredibly evenly matched where cup quality is concerned, in fact, this more scientific comparison resulted in the Smart Grinder Pro being awarded the title for the best particle uniformity. Automated Shimming TWO FREE BAGS OF COFFEE BEANS. You'll receive a 250g bag of each of our ever popular Breakfast Favourite and Everyday Espresso coffee bean blends. Whilst these two blends work well for all brewing methods, they make an amazing espresso with super rich crema when used with any of the sage barista machines. It's true that the hopper lid on the Smart Grinder Pro has a gasket, and this is good mainly because it keeps some of the decibels of the grinding from escaping from the top of the hopper, so it dulls the sound slightly, but what it doesn't do is stop air getting in. Don't forget, coffee grounds can get out of the bottom, and the air is infinitely smaller than the smallest particle of ground coffee ;-). It's not just about letting your beans go stale, it can mess with your shots too. PRE-PROGRAMMED SETTINGS Intelligent settings help your grinder achieve perfect results regardless of how fine or coarse you require your beans.I bought this grinder for pairing with my Gaggia Classic, which was a used 2003 model, but also for Aeropress, cafetiere, and V60, and this is the main reason I was looking at the Sage grinders in the first place, as they appeared to be perfect for varied use. It does depend on how fine or coarse you're grinding, the finer you grind the longer it'll take, but you'll usually find for espresso that it grinds at around 1.2 – 1.5 grams per second, and for pourover roughly 2 – 2.5 grams per second. Fresh is best. The quality and precise dose of freshly ground beans is key to creating great tasting third wave specialty coffee. When you hear people talking about “performance” where grinding is concerned, what we're mainly going on about is the consistency of the grind or the size of the range of particles at one grind size. This is actually quite complex, and it's a hotly debated subject, but most experts agree that the most important element of coffee grinding is the consistency of particle sizes.