De'Longhi, Coffee Grinder KG79, Black & DLSC058 Coffee Tamper, Stainless Steel

Product Information

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This is the slightly more budget sibling to the Sage Smart Grinder Pro which I'll talk about shortly, and the main differences are that it has a slightly lower-powered motor (130W vs 165W) and that you adjust the grind via the hopper while on the smart grinder pro, there's an LCD screen and a grind adjustment dial, oh and the hopper is slightly smaller and holds fewer beans too, 240g capacity vs 450g.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. Grinding coffee involves burrs that have sharp “teeth”, for want of a better word, and the beans are relatively (depending on the grinder) precisely ground up into uniform-sized chunks. OK, you always have some fines and some bigger grinds, but with really blunt wheels like this, you're going get quite a bit of exploding coffee beans, leading to all manner of particle sizes.

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.At the time of writing, for example, the Molino is available for a price cheaper than even the blade grinders above, and it's quite a bit cheaper than the other two in this category, so I'd grab this if I was wanting a really cheap grinder and I wasn't too fussed about getting a better cup quality by investing in a grinder with proper burrs. Best entry-level burr grinders

The only thing I think is a bit of a pain, is that you really need four hands to operate this grinder, if you're to do it properly. You really should have the grinder running when adjusting the grind, at least while adjusting it finer, and this is true with any grinder, but you have to push a little paddle down while turning the hopper to adjust the grind. If you're doing that, that's your two hands busy, how are you going to hold the portafilter, and how are you going to press the grind button? I think this little grinder is OK when it comes to looks. I don't think it's going to win any design awards but it's certainly not offensive in any way, and it has a nice small footprint at 13cm wide, 16cm deep, and 26cm tall. Noise Levels So this is basically the Baratza Sette 270 but with built-in scales and Acaia technology. What this means is that you can create and store doses actually by weight, not by time, thanks to the integrated scales. Features: This grinder and the Krups below are very, very similar. In fact with the two units I have, it's difficult to tell them apart, they even have the exact same brand of plug, so whether they're made by the same factory, I'm not sure, but they look and perform very similar, and the burrs look spookily similar. The D40, sometimes sold as the SD40 is a conical grinder, with similar 40mm conical stainless steel burrs that you'll find on most of the cheaper conical grinders on the market, but with a finer range than most aimed at covering espresso with standard baskets, and with the same inclined stature and single dosing nature as the DF grinders, and with more grind settings than most other low-cost conical burr grinders.

This is mainly down to the blunt burrs or “grinding wheel” which crushes the beans causing them to break more randomly than they would with sharp burrs. If you have the DeLonghi Dedica, you might be drawn to this because the design fits in so well with that machine. Honestly, my opinion of this machine is that it's overly expensive for what it is. It's fine, but for me, it's just another 40mm conical burr grinder with not much going for vs the generic brand versions, other than the DeLonghi brand name and the style that matches the Delonghi Dedica, in my humble opinion. This is done to reduce heat generation, as a faster spinning burr creates heat, and heat can mess with the flavour. Reducing the spinning speed also reduces static, and can lead to generally better quality coffee grinding.

Having said that, though, the burrs on the DeLonghi KG79, and on the other, two very similarly priced and very similar grinders, the Krups Expert and Melitta Molino aren't quite the same as most of the more expensive burr grinders.The sizable hopper has room for up to 120 grams of coffee beans. As a result, you can grind enough beans to make multiple cups of coffee before having to refill the hopper. I did an experiment using a bag of whole bean coffee and a bag of the exact same coffee pre-ground, both supplied by Blue Coffee Box. These baskets produce a foam that looks like espresso crema, but it's not true espresso crema (in my humble opinion) and you have almost no control over the extraction with these kinds of machines. The Melitta Calibra is a relative newcomer when it comes to coffee grinders, but they're not a newcomer to coffee in general, in fact Melitta invented filter coffee! You don’t need to guess how well ground your coffee beans are. You can take a look inside the compartment and grind it further if you need to. Same goes for the coffee beans. You’ll know when you’re running low and need to refill. I, for one, don’t like to find that mid-grind there are no beans left. Cons