It's as if the marketing department of some of these brands have been given one brief, and the manufacturing team has been given another, leading to other machines being sold as if to provide the same kind of cup quality and experience of the immensely popular Sage coffee machines, but they just don't come anywhere close. On emptying though, a nice little touch from Dreamfarm is that you get a little booklet which details how to use coffee grinds as a natural fertiliser – it’s nothing that you couldn’t find on the internet, but it’s handy to have there. I'd strongly advise against spraying your beans in the bag, or your hopper, or wherever you store your beans, because wetting your beans and leaving them wet, will in (theoretically at least) increase the aging process. If you do store your beans in the hopper, by the way, I'd advise against that too, hoppers aren't intended for storage. See:

The Weiss Distribution Technique (WDT) reduces the chance of channeling by breaking up coffee clumps and evenly distributing the coffee in the basket. It's particularly useful if your grinder produces clumps, however, it's really not as big a deal as most people make out. In my opinion, from testing, the actual difference in cup quality with or without WDT is really splitting hairs. I know from personal experience (I first fell down the home barista rabbit hole only a handful of years ago), that you start off just thinking you're buying a coffee machine capable of making espresso for Americano, cappuccino, latte, maybe flat white – and then next thing you know, you're confronted with a myriad of tools, gadgets & accessories that you apparently need, since everyone else appears to be buying them.Similarly to the above, this will depend on whether you can get decent replacement shower screens for your particular machine, you can for most, but whether you'll actually find much of an improvement in the shot is unlikely, I'd say. You may find a difference, but whether it's necessarily an improvement, is hard to say. You may think you don't need it because your grinder has a timer and the espresso machine has an automated shot button, you still need scales, 100%. You'll get a different weight of coffee from the same grind time at a different grind size, or even at the same grind size with a different bean. Also, you'll get a different volume of espresso with the exact same pre-programmed shot button even at factory settings, when the grind is different and/or when the beans are different. OK so now we're probably getting into the stuff most people came here to find out, thinking “Do I really need a WDT tool, an RDT spray bottle, an OEM leveler” and so on, and the answer for most of these is not necessarily.

The Ross Droplet Technique (RDT) involves wetting your beans before grinding to minimize static. It works, so if you have a grinder that does suffer from a lot of static, then you might want to do it, but if you do, I would highly recommend only doing this when single dosing, and using the SPN tool instead. That being said, you're not obliged to use the Sage milk jug, obviously, and there are loads of different milk jugs on the market. They need it to wake up (or at least think they do) and don't really care all that much about how it tastes. This category of coffee machine users are what I refer to as “normal” coffee drinkers, and I'm not having a go at this kind of coffee drinker, not at all, in fact, I think this kind of person has a perfectly normal relationship with coffee, it's geeks like me that are weird! 😉 If you are using a spray bottle, I would recommend being very sparing with the mist. Also, definitely only do this for single dosing.Obviously, someone can move from one category to the other. I certainly did, I was a very normal coffee drinker up until about 2014/2015 when I started to dip my toes in the proverbial rabbit hole, which is what prompted me to start this blog, almost straight away, just as a hobby for the first few years. If you're happy with the hands-off approach, you don't “need” brew scales as such, but the fact you're using a coffee machine of this type would indicate that you're wanting great cup quality, and in my humble opinion, you can't really get great cup quality without brew scales. If you get into pouring latte art (or at least learning to, as it's a skill that takes a lot of practice to develop) then you might want to try other milk jugs. Brew Scales We have put this at the top of our list because it is a great base for you to begin your search – compare all the others to this one and you won’t go far wrong. As a lower-to-mid range in terms of price, this is an excellent option.