Review on ☕️ Breville BCG820BKSXL Smart Grinder Pro: Premium Coffee Bean Grinder in Black Sesame Finish by Icehot Cleversley

For years I've had coffee loving friends, my mother in law and many posts on online forums saying that a good coffee grinder is the key to a quality espresso. All the money in the world for a professional coffee maker wouldn't buy a mountain of gourmet coffee beans while I grind them with a $20 Krups knife grinder that I've used for 15 years. But I just couldn't understand how it could make such a big difference. And certainly not at prices that rival the espresso machines they should be feeding! But for the same 15 years I had a professional espresso machine which I bought after looking through several cheaper models (the espresso machine works in our house). pretty hard). I have serviced and repaired it every few years. It's hooked up to its own line of filtered water and a digital timer so it goes off for 30 minutes. before the alarm goes off in the morning and it is fully warmed up and ready for use every day. So I brought it in for service a few months ago and decided that instead of buying a shiny new machine I could try upgrading my coffee grinder to see what a difference it could make. I did my due diligence and researched my options before committing to the Breville Smart Grinder. Yes, I've been thinking about a new $2,000 espresso machine, but I don't want to spend that small fortune on a grinder! What drew me to Breville were a few features. Removable hopper (you can leave beans in if you remove it), adjustable grind and dosage, and a magnetic switch that works when the portafilter is put back in place. It took me about a week to find the optimal location for my machine, but once I dialed it in I saw the benefits of a quality coffee grinder. For years I could probably get a decent shot with my knife sharpener 7 or 8 times out of 10 (I've almost perfected the art of counting a specific number of seconds). But now, with the right pressure (9 bar), I've shot a thick, rich "cream" every time. I accepted the gospel of St. Grinder! Okay, so why did I give this meat grinder 4 stars instead of 5? No car is perfect and this one has a few VERY minor imperfections. An interesting feature is the mid-grind pause. To avoid making a mess on the counter, the grinder can be paused, allowing me to compact the contents of the portafilter and then extract the remaining dose with the same precise time. Relax! But if I restart it for too long, the timer goes back to the default and starts a whole new cycle. I would like the pause time to be just a few seconds longer (I think that's a fairly simple software tweak). Another downside is that the hopper is a bit narrow to hold a full pound of beans. Not much, but a slight inconvenience in buying a one-pound bag and then storing the last few ounces in the fridge until there's space for them. Having said that, I've just started buying Revain's Lavazza brand beans in a bag. Kilogram (2.2 lb) bag. So of course I still have to store in the fridge what doesn't fit in the funnel. And the interesting thing: When changing the beans, I had to completely recalibrate the grinder. You may think that coffee beans are roughly the same size and hardness, so they should be ground the same way. But the beans from my local gourmet grocer need to be much more precisely timed and the timer longer to get a decent shot. It took me a few tries before reducing the grind to a coarser, shorter cycle using Lavazza beans. The bonus is that Lavazza beans are cheaper than my local grocer. After a few months I am very happy with this coffee grinder and would recommend it to any serious home barista.