The reason for this is that the environment, whether it's in your kitchen or in your office, isn't the best place for coffee beans – and if the beans are in your hopper, they're in your environment. The hopper doesn't give any protection from oxygen or from fluctuations in temperature and humidity. These things will mess with your beans, and you don't want things messing with your beans. If I've just confused you re baskets, pressurized baskets come with the most entry-level domestic espresso machines, They're easy & convenient, but they don't give the user the ability to tweak things towards perfection, which is known as “dialing in”. If you want that level of control, you'll need standard, traditional baskets, and working with this kind of basket requires more of the grinder.

If spending a few hundred pounds on a coffee grinder is a bit over the top for your budget, there are some lower-cost options that will produce a good cup of espresso and will combine well with any machine that doesn't have an integrated grinder. This article explains more in detail: 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!? 😉 This is something else that I think is fairly important, most of us are grinding coffee early in the morning, so a grinder that sounds like a Boeing 747 probably isn't the best idea. Sage grinders use this same kind of technology to limit the torque the motor can apply to the grinder so that if a foreign object ends up in the burrs, a pebble for instance, the motor isn't called upon to deliver maximum torque, which may cause damage, not just damage to the burrs, but more importantly, damage to the motor such as stripped gears. It comes pre-set to 6, and theoretically, this is the optimum setting, and the idea of being able to adjust is mainly so that over the years as the burrs wear you can take it finer to keep grinding at the same fineness. In reality, though, I find that at the factory pre-set 6, there's a bit more fine grinding range to be had by dropping it to grind size 5 if you find you need it. Just keep in mind, though, that if you go finer than that you're not actually achieving anything.DOSING IQ Precision Digital Time allows you to adjust and program grind time in 0.2 second increments giving you total control and a perfect dose every time. So my opinion with hoppers is to use them as temporary storage only and keep your beans in air-tight storage, preferably in a cool and relatively dark location (such as a cupboard, or on the moon, whichever is easiest). Don't do what most people do, which is to open your beans and empty them into the hopper as soon as you get them, and leave them in there until you run out. If you're doing this, you may as well leave them in the bag and just leave the bag open, as the hopper (any hopper, not just the hopper on the Sage grinders) doesn't protect against the environment. Anyway, this question is ringing in my ears as it's asked so often, and there is no right answer. The optimum grind size will depend on the beans you're using, the brew method you're using, the particular espresso machine you're using for example, and even specifically what baskets you're using. This is my “warts ‘n all” user review of the hugely popular Sage Smart Grinder Pro, and given that you're here reading this, you're probably wondering whether you should buy this grinder, and my answer is, probably, but just hold fire at least until you've read my “nutshell” version of the review, and keep an eye out for the bit where I mention discount codes… A Review Almost Seven Years in The Making

So if you don't need the espresso capability, it's fair to say that purely talking about grinding performance, you're probably not going to experience a great deal of difference in the cup from your extra spend. What you will benefit from, however, is the amazing user-friendliness, ease of use, and lots of features that you won't find on most other options. We're not talking about bells and whistles, either. A couple of the features could possibly be referred to as unnecessary I suppose, although I can't think of any that I don't think are useful, but some of them are genius, one of them in particular, which is the internal burr adjustment, which I'll talk about shortly.In these cases, these beans being so hard that the grinder treats them as if they were stones, means that if this failsafe wasn't there, there's a good chance that the grinder would be damaged, possibly irreversibly. Some other entry-level grinders (and some not so entry level grinders) are known for stripping gears for example when they try to grind beans that are too hard for that grinder. Don't make the mistake I did, initially, by the way, by thinking that you need to just choose whatever dose the machine wants to give you. You'll see a default grind time come up on the display, you can simply adjust this with the grind amount knob, to get your desired dose.

FREE YOUR GRIND The Smart Grinder™ Pro lets you grind directly into the portafilter, an airtight container, gold tone filter basket or paper filter. The choice is yours. But for the relatively low price, I'm very happy with the quality of the particle uniformity of the Sage Smart Grinder Pro. You will also find that making the coffee grind finer will decrease the weight and volume of your coffee grounds. Sage Coffee Grinder Problems?It's worth pointing out that they didn't have a clue who I was, I didn't even bother saying on the phone “I run coffeeblog.co.uk” etc., even if I did, coffeeblog probably had three readers at the time, and one of them was my mum, so I doubt it would have made much of a difference ;-). At the time, the cheapest budget grinders on the market were the De'Longhi KG79 & Krups Expert, and I mainly swerved them because it appeared to me at the time that they weren't as user-friendly as the Sage grinders, and that the grind performance wasn't the best. If you weigh the coffee and it is heavier than your desired dose in your recipe then decrease the time of the grind. 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. Anyway, my search stopped at the Smart Grinder Pro. It was more than I was looking to spend (as the amount I was looking to spend was closer to zero), but at the time (and it's more or less the same now really) there wasn't really anything that appeared to be as good across the board, including ease of use, reliability, and compatibility with most brew methods including espresso, for this kind of price.