Sage BCG820BSSUK the Smart Grinder Pro Coffee Grinder - Silver

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Some grinders are specialists, there are some grinders that are made specifically for manual brew methods, and many that are made specifically for espresso, but this is an all-rounder. For me, the Smart Grinder Pro is the best all-rounder grinder for the money, overall, especially if you also want to be able to grind for espresso, with standard baskets. Anyway, this question is ringing in my ears as it's asked so often, and there is no right answer. The optimum grind size will depend on the beans you're using, the brew method you're using, the particular espresso machine you're using for example, and even specifically what baskets you're using.

This is a low-cost grinder, the burrs alone in some commercial grade grinders cost more than this grinder, and some of the grinders at around the one to two thousand pounds mark, or above, will usually, hopefully, produce more consistent particle size. With the Smart Grinder Pro (and the dose control pro, and all of the integrated grinder machines from Sage) the outer burr has a thread, which enables you to shim it by simply adjusting it to one of the numbered settings, from 1-10.

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Anyway, my search stopped at the Smart Grinder Pro. It was more than I was looking to spend (as the amount I was looking to spend was closer to zero), but at the time (and it's more or less the same now really) there wasn't really anything that appeared to be as good across the board, including ease of use, reliability, and compatibility with most brew methods including espresso, for this kind of price. It's worth pointing out that they didn't have a clue who I was, I didn't even bother saying on the phone “I run coffeeblog.co.uk” etc., even if I did, coffeeblog probably had three readers at the time, and one of them was my mum, so I doubt it would have made much of a difference ;-).

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: It'll do a decent job of grinding for the majority of brew methods, and it'll pair well for espresso with most entry-level espresso machines, including the Sage Bambino, Bambino Plus & Gaggia Classic Pro. I didn't want an espresso specialist grinder, because I did quite a bit of manual brewing too and I couldn't afford to buy a second grinder for brew, I wanted an all-rounder. I'd ruled out blade grinders, my coffee knowledge definitely wasn't what it is now, but I knew enough by that point to know that while blade grinders are better than nothing, it was a burr grinder I needed. Dialing in is about bringing out the best flavours that your coffee beans have to give. Older supermarket beans, in my humble opinion, lose lots of their flavour by being roasted to a crisp (as these kinds of beans are usually roasted particularly dark) and any delicate flavour notes remaining are likely to be given up to the oxidation process over the period of time that passes before they're used. 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.It has a pair of 40mm stainless steel conical burrs, as do most of the other cheaper grinders on the market. So if you're looking at the Wilfa Svart, Gaggia MD15, Baratza Encore, etc., when it comes to particle uniformity in the medium to coarse grind sizes, it's unlikely that we're going to find much of a difference by going for the Smart Grinder Pro instead of the Wilfa Svart, which is just under half of the price.