Sage BCG820BSSUK the Smart Grinder Pro Coffee Grinder - Silver

Product Information

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. I was using the double shot basket, so it was obvious to me that I needed to press the 2 shots button. By the way, the reason the text “shots/cups” appears under this button, if you're grinding for espresso the digital screen will display “shots” allowing you to toggle between 1 and 2 cups, for the single or double shot baskets, and if you're grinding for manual brew methods this will change on the screen to “cups”. Have I mentioned how smart this grinder is!? 😉 So if you have one grinder which creates a huge range of particle sizes at one grind setting, and another grinder that creates a much more uniform range, meaning more of the particles are a similar size, you're going to get better cup quality. 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.

If you do want to work with light roasts, by the way, just keep in mind that you'll need a more commercial-grade grinder for that. Grinders that can cope with much harder beans often have a much higher powered motor, and a gearing system that transforms the motor power into torque, and all of the componentry would usually (hopefully) be sturdy enough to cope with grinding much lighter roasted beans. How Good is The Smart Grinder Pro for Manual Brew Methods?

How we tested

If you're looking for a more in-depth review, though, carry on reading :-). Sage Smart Grinder Pro Review – 7 Years Later

If you've not used a grinder before, you might be slightly intimidated when you first get any coffee grinder out of the box, as grinding coffee beans seems like quite a geeky & complex thing to do, to the uninitiated. Looking at all the dials and buttons on the SGP I must admit did set the alarm bells going, to begin with, but I soon discovered how simple it is. I'd seen the Dose Control Pro from Sage, the slightly cheaper sibling of the Smart Grinder Pro, which was tempting, but I just really liked the look of the Smart Grinder Pro, and I'd seen that the power of the motor was slightly smaller on the Dose Control Pro (130W Vs 165W). Most of us are familiar with cordless drills, which usually give you a numbered selection to decide how much torque you want the motor to be able to apply. If you're drilling a hole you'll have the torque limit (via the slipper clutch, although most of us probably don't realize this is what it's called, I certainly didn't) much higher than you would if you were using it in screwdriver mode. As I've said, this grinder is one of the cheapest grinders that is capable of espresso, with standard baskets, and it's a great all rounder grinder, but a question I get quite often, is how is it for manual brew methods. Most of the time this question is related to pourover (V60/Chemex/Kalita/Clever Dripper), stovetop, or cafetiere.

James Bellis | Founder, CEO & Coffee Writer.

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. So all I actually needed to do in this situation was to take the grind more coarse and use these beans either via the dual walled baskets or for manual brew methods. Remember, at this time I knew nothing about grinders, and I knew very little about espresso making in general at that point, I'd mainly brewed manually up until not long before getting the Smart Grinder Pro as an upgrade to my manual (Hario Skerton) grinder and cordless drill setup. But I was up and running instantly, without even bothering to look at the instructions. It's been more than a few years now ;-), and my opinion now is that this is one of the most reliable grinders you're likely to get at this price point. My Smart Grinder Pro is still fine, I actually lent it to someone recently but up to that point it was still going strong, and I was still using it mainly for manual brew. There are actually some areas where I think the Smart Grinder pro actually wipes the floor with its much more powerful cousin (Baratza is owned by Sage, well – by Breville Worldwide, which is kind of the same thing, Sage is the brand name they're sold under in Europe because they sold the brand name here in the 80s), but that's one for another post.