SCG Crew’s Favorite Gear: Coffee Grinders
Whether you’re a pour over aficionado or an espresso maestro, selecting the right grinder for the job is one of the most important decisions you can make.
We asked the crew to share their opinions of which grinders they prefer in both the stepped and stepless grinder classes. Watch and learn what they dig and why!
| Stepped Coffee Grinders | Stepless Coffee Grinders |
Compare: Mazzer Mini vs. Rancilio Rocky
Next up in the grinder battle to the death (wait, what?!): The Mazzer Mini vs. the Rancilio Rocky. Now, these are fairly different grinders in terms of features and functionality, but when folks consider whether or not to go with the more budget-conscious Rocky or to upgrade to a Mazzer, the Mini is the entry level model that is often targeted.
Watch as we go through how these two grinders compare in specs and grind quality.
Compare: Mazzer Coffee Grinders
Mazzer’s suite of grinders offers something for everyone — from the small in stature and simplicity of the Mini all the way to the sophisticated conical burrs of the Robur E, you’d be hard pressed not to find one that meets your needs.
We’ve never had them all around at one time in order to compare them side by side, so when the opportunity presented itself, we had to jump on it! Watch as Gail takes us through all of their features and specs, shows off their burrs and then compares their performance.
Compare: Grinder Performance with Rocket Giotto Evoluzione
We often talk about the importance of grinders and how investing in a good burr grinder will positively impact your shot, so we thought we’d demonstrate it for you!
Watch Gail pull shots on the Rocket Giotto Evoluzione using the Baratza Preciso, Baratza Vario, Mazzer Mini E and Mahlkonig Pro M Espresso. We taste each shot and give our practical assessment and comparison of each of them. Yum!
Compare: Entry Level vs. Prosumer Coffee Gear
If you drop serious coin on your home espresso setup, will there be a practical performance difference? What if you spend more on your espresso machine than your grinder or vice versa?
We asked Gail to test out an entry level (Capresso Infinity) and a prosumer (Mazzer Mini E) grinder with an entry level (Krups XP5280) and prosumer (Rocket Giotto Evoluzione V2) espresso machine to see how they compare. Do you get a better shot using a high end grinder with an entry level machine? What about an entry level grinder with a high end machine?
Watch and find out!
Crew Review: Mazzer Robur E Coffee Grinder
If you’re grinding coffee for a few hundred shots a day, you mean business. And if you mean business, you mean Robur E! During our field trip to La Marzocco, Gail gave us the what for on this high powered, commercial-grade grinder designed for high capacity commercial environments or very, very committed home enthusiasts.
SCG’s Favorite Gear: Coffee Grinders
In our final installments of this series, our fearless crew gives their 2 cents on which stepped and which stepless coffee grinders they dig.
Espresso Machine Maintenance with Urnex
Keeping your equipment sparkling clean is just as important as the freshness of your coffee and dialing in your grind & tamp — in fact, without the former, the latter will be an exercise in futility. If we have to tell you that rancid coffee oils will adversely impact the quality of your shot, we’re sorry. But if we have to be the first, then we might as well do it right, right? So we asked Louie Poore, who specializes in educating professional baristas on proper equipment care for Urnex, to give us the rundown.
First, he introduces us to Urnex’s new Full Circle, sustainably-produced cleaning products — including a toe-to-toe comparison of Cafiza and Full Circle’s coffee equipment wash.
Next, he walks us through using tablets to backflush the La Marzocco GS/3.
Finally, Gail shows us the newly arrived 1, 2, Brew Kit for Espresso Machines, which features the goodies you need to keep your machine in tip-top shape (plus a bag of Velton’s Coffee of your choice!).
Playing with the La Marzocco GS/3
We’ve been having a ton of good, clean (we swear!) fun with the La Marzocco GS/3 lately. A few weeks back, Gail pulled such a phenomenal shot from this machine and we wondered if she could reproduce it again. Watch as she works through the basic variables of dialing in a shot: Grind, tamp and temperature.
And for those who just love little upgrades here and there, checkout La Marzocco’s version of the bottomless portafilter — our favorite so far!
Testing: Coffee Ground Attrition & Water Content in Frothed Milk
We had a few viewer requests lately around the weight of things, so we produced two videos covering the following questions: How much coffee is left in the grinder after grinding? How much water is injected into milk when frothing?
In this first video, we weighed out 20 grams of whole beans and then ground them in several different grinders, weighing the grounds afterward to see if any was retained in the grinder.
In the second video, we weighed out 200ml of milk (in most cases — the exception being the stand alone frothers), frothed them to the same temperature on several different machines and then weighed them afterward to see how much water was injected into the frothed milk.