Gaggia RI8123/01 MD15 Coffee Grinder, ABS, Black, Stainless Steel

Product Information

An important note on this grinder is that as with the other grinders at this kind of price point, it won't grind fine enough for espresso if you use standard, non-pressured baskets. As I mentioned earlier, if you're using a budget espresso machine with dual walled baskets, then you'll be able to work with a grinder like this, however, if you're using standard, traditional baskets, it's unlikely you're going to be able to grind fine enough with any of these grinders, and you also don't have the fine-tuning adjustment you'd want for dialing in the grind with traditional baskets. It's not a Teflon coating, by the way, it's a coating called Exelia 3010-B242, a very dense and durable coating chosen for its ability to bond and remain bonded to the inside of the Aluminium boiler, its ability to stand up to extremely high temperatures and its anti-scale properties (meaning it's very difficult for minerals to latch on to). This coating is commonly used in commercial cookware and bakeware, I'm told.

Yes there are one or two issues, with qualms about the doser being the most prevalent, but like anything else, it can be gotten used to and worked around. We always say that the quality of your coffee grinder, in terms of overall importance to the coffee-making process, is more important than your actual coffee maker, and many a barista would agree with this statement. The reason they've done it, I think it's because they want to move away from electroplating as one of the processes they've marked as being not great for their staff or the environment, but I think having a solid brass group is going to be something that most users would prefer, from the potentially flaky (in the long term) chrome plated groups. So if you're looking for the cheapest grinder on the market with actual burrs, this is probably it. Personally, I'd usually try to avoid the very cheapest option with whatever I'm looking at buying, if I can help it. I've found that generally speaking, the best real value tends to be somewhere towards the middle. Martin Nicholson who designed this grinder, was very experienced when it came to designing products, after working as a product designer for a few decades for some of the UK's most well-known brands, but thankfully, he wasn't particularly experienced where coffee grinders were concerned.Thoroughly clean the grinding chamber. This includes all of the threads, both on the top burr plate and the matching threads on the wall of the grinding chamber. Clean the burrs as well. A group brush does a good job cleaning the parts and threads in the grinding chamber. Be sure to clear the chute between the grinding chamber and the ground coffee dispenser. A vacuum really helps to get into the tight corners and avoids a lot of mess. This is not a professional grinder, to call it a professional grinder would indicate it's for professional use, which would make it a commercial grinder that a Barista may use, and, no… definitely not! Commercial grinders cost thousands of pounds, I'm sure no one expects a coffee grinder costing literally a few tenners, is going to be a commercial coffee grinder.

The timer options seem like a good idea actually, instead of having to remember how long you ground for to achieve a particular grind size, you can just adjust the timer wheel, so once you find a grind size that works (well, a grind time, which should result in a similar overall grind size) you can just leave it at that setting. Best Grinding Wheel Grinders If you have a lower cost domestic espresso machine such as the Swan Retro, Gran Gaggia or DeLonghi Dedica EC685 with pressurised baskets, the Encore should be fine for you.The only thing that was slightly controversial about the 2019 model internally, was the change in the OPV, and the fact that it can't be adjusted. This was soon fixed with the OPV mod kit from Shades of Coffee, it's about a tenner, and it takes minutes to fit, to change the OPV to 9 or 6 bars. If you're wanting a grinder for brew, rather than for espresso, with a built in scaled, though, this is the cheapest option you'll find at the time of writing, and overall it's quite a nice grinder to use. The reason I mentioned earlier that this grinder is good for espresso and small batch pourover, is because, with a grinding range of 230–950 μm, it's mainly geared up towards finer grinding. It'll work well for small-batch pourover brewing with Kalita Wave, Hario V60 & Chemex, but if you're wanting to go more coarse than this for cafetiere and/or bigger batch filter brewing, you may find this doesn't quite have the required range on the more coarse side of things. The first thing to say about the DF64 is that it's a flat burr grinder, vs the conical burrs in the Niche Zero. The Zero has 63mm conical burrs, the DF64 has flat 64mm burrs. If you're someone who has a particular preference for flat burrs, then this may be something that draws you towards this grinder. I can't tell the difference in the cup between flat and conical, so it's not something that would make a huge difference to me personally.

I went from “I shouldn’t buy an espresso machine” to “maybe I’ll look at the cheaper end of the market” to then wondering about the Gaggia Classic Pro 🙂 We had a bad experience with a Dualit espresso machine 12 years ago that broke after about a year (leaking hot water from the top), then shortly after paying Dualit to fix it a piece of metal shot off the portafilter quite dramatically while pulling a shot. It didn’t hurt anyone thankfully, but it’s made us extra cautious! We had a Krups Nespresso in the meantime, but I was pretty disappointed with it. Try some of my coffee from The Coffeeworks, if you spend more than a tenner delivery is free within mainland UK, and here's a discount for you, too: Why? Because it is at this stage where you truly can make or break the quality of your cup of coffee or espresso shot.Overall, we personally think that some of these gripes are rather unfounded, but people are entitled to their opinions. Out of the box without installing the spacers, this isn't made for traditional basket espresso. You usually have to spend a bit more money for an espresso capable grinder, if we're talking about traditional baskets and not pressurized baskets. Any grinder that is intended to be used for espresso and/or for brew methods really needs the ability to make macro and micro adjustments, and I'm surprised, if I'm honest, that all of the other grinder brands haven't followed suit here, as it just makes sense.