Breville smart grinder review

Posted by On July 14, 2015 0 Comment

If you’ve read our roundup of the best automatic grinders for pour over coffee, you’ll know that the Breville Smart Grinder topped our list for offering the best value for money. We love it not just for its many nifty features, but also for how the grinder works so well in daily life.

breville-smart-grinder-reviewProduct Features

  • Stainless steel conical burrs
  • 25 precise grind settings
  • Dosing IQ technology
  • Removable grinds catcher tray
  • Grind directly into portafilter, grinds container, gold tone filter basket or paper filter

What’s Dosing IQ? When making pour over coffee using different methods, or testing out different beans, you may want to try a finer or coarser grind. The Breville Smart Grinder Pro then automatically helps you calibrate the dose so that no matter the grind setting, you’ll get the right amount of grounds for brewing.

From our tests with the various grind settings, we found the grind to be suitably consistent for home use. Coarser-ground pour over coffee like Chemex came out cleaner and more flavourful.

 

Ease of Use

When you’re living in an apartment or have kids at home, noise level becomes a real consideration when purchasing home appliances. The Breville Smart Grinder is one of the quietest grinders we’ve used (others being Japanese brands that we got through our coffee contacts). While no grinder can be super-quiet, think of a blender filled with ice versus one filled with milkshake – we’re definitely talking the latter here.

Cleaning is easy too. For starters, it’s a very neat grinder and you don’t have to worry about grounds and coffee dust flying about and landing everywhere.

The hopper unlocks easily from the grinder without having to empty it, so you can swap your coffee beans easily. Grind retention is also very low, which means new coffee beans won’t get mixed with old grinds stuck in the grinder. Of course, you should still make sure to clean and adjust the grinder properly from time to time to maintain consistent performance.

 

While this popular US brand product has a high list price, Amazon frequently offers jaw-dropping discounts on the Breville grinder. It’s also much cheaper than commercial-use brands like Mazzer. If you’ve been drinking more coffee at home and plan to upgrade to an automatic grinder, check out the Breville Smart Grinder now.