Sculptor 078S Flat Burr Coffee Bean Grinder, Electric Espresso Grinder with Stepless Coarseness Adjustment, Suitable for Espresso, Pour over, French Press, Cold Brew - Black

This is such a good grinder and I love so many things about it. Looks great, makes great coffee, and has a good amount of weight to it. It is just so unfortunate the hopper is as bad as it is. I had heard bad things so even going in with low expectations, it was worse than I thought. From the poppcorning to sticking your fingers in just to push in the 8 beans that didn’t fall in, it is just disappointing. There are things you can buy to fix this issue which is nice, but you shouldn’t have to buy an extra thing for a $800 grinder. I still love so many things though and once that’s fixed it will be fantastic.

Considering the price of this grinder, I’m assuming you’ve already done your homework and are looking for honest feedback from real users rather than social media influencers. Here are some practical notes in no particular order: - If you try "seasoning" the grinder by grinding a few bags of inexpensive coffee beans, it's likely going to create a giant mess with grounds everywhere since you'll likely be catching the grounds in something other than the small included dosing cup. So place the grinder in a location where making a bit of a mess will be okay and keep your vacuum nearby to clean up as you go. While I did season mine, I'd recommend skipping this if you don't have the highly exquisite palate all of the social media influencers claim to have. - As for cleaning the grinder, it's pretty mess-free. A lot of fines collect in the hopper over time (due to static perhaps) and will collect where the ground coffee is extracted. To include the fines in your ground coffee, turn the knocker several times (I turn it five times) and nearly all of the fines/debris fall out. And this could be used to your benefit if you're trying to keep more fines out of your ground coffee. You can go back later and knock the fines out when you're cleaning up. - To keep the grinder clean, I take a wet paper towel and run it around the base of the knocker and along the bottom if any grounds have fallen there. This is simply to keep it clean and ready to use for my next grind. - I tried several types of beans so far and have no trouble getting the beans to slide down the hopper and into the grinder. If you're using beans that are wet/oily (like some very dark espresso beans), then I could see how this might be an issue. Then again, I don't recommend anyone place any kind of wet/oily beans into this grinder (or any electric grinder) as it will likely create a lot of retention and lead to the stories other low-star reviewers left here about the grinder being too hard to clean. - The workflow is simple and easy. Tap the power button to start the grinder, slide the hopper cover half-way back, pour in the beans, slide the hopper cover closed, and let the grinder run until it auto shuts off after 60 seconds. Running the full 60 seconds will ensure all of the beans are ground, as you'll sometimes hear a bean or two grind up several seconds after the bulk of the beans have been ground. Once the grinder stops, turn the knocker several times and you're done. - Depending on where you live, you might find static inside of the dosing cup causes some grounds to stick to the sides of the dosing cup. After grinding, I take my WDT tool and swirl it around the inside of the dosing cup a few times and that frees up most all of the stuck grounds. And then you can do that once more, or tap the bottom of the dosing cup if you still find some grounds are sticking after dumping out the ground coffee. - I doubt a zero-retention coffee grinder exists. With that said, this grinder produces a consistent output and I don't see much of any retention in the locations I can see with my eyes, assuming you're using the knocker to clear out the fines after grinding. - While the 064 probably has enough power to do the job, I decided to buy the 078 instead since I was already spending a large amount of money on a grinder. I figured there's no harm in going with the more powerful model, just in case. I cannot comment on whether one or the other makes tastier espresso (or whatever you drink), and I doubt the average person would be able to tell even if they had both models side-by-side. - Everything on this grinder seems really well-built. A lot of people complain about the sub-par quality of the power button on the side and the hopper on the top. Neither seem low quality to me. - The RPM dial is impossible to see on the back of the grinder, but it's another non-issue unless you find yourself needing to constantly adjust it, which seems like a highly unlikely workflow. I set the RPM to 1,000 and never touched it again. - It is indeed tough to line up the red marker with the tick marks on the front of the grinder. With that said, I doubt you'll be using the exact same dial position even when purchasing the same bag of coffee beans again. Every bag of coffee beans is a bit different, so you will likely have to make fine adjustments to the dial after opening each new bag of beans. Assuming this is what you're going to be doing too, you will quickly find this ease of lining up the red marker isn't really important in the grand scheme of things. You just need to be close and then start making fine adjustments to the dial, at which point I'm not even looking at the red marker. - I think it's kind of comical that one reviewer here was emailing China and waiting a week for each reply. This grinder is so well known that there's a wealth of tutorials and reviews online that explain everything clearly. If you've watched any YouTube reviews about it, you should know how everything works before it even gets to your doorstep. Overall, the grinder is well-built, easy to use, and produces consistent results with a straightforward workflow. I feel the price is worth the investment and expect it to last for many years.

Why did you pick this product vs others?: This item was returned for a refund. It is very difficult to get support on this product. The documentation/manual is a joke. You have to email China for help and frequently wait a week to get an email answer back. I kept questioning about why there was .5 to 1.8g of my dose that was held in the knocker and did not make it to the grinds cup on each 18g dose. I never received a straight answer. The advertising is that it has a very low retention rate with .1 to .3g. I was not getting that, and so I had to return the unit because it was not working as promised. Furthermore, this grinder is not easy to clean, and the dial wheel is difficult to reassemble. To perform a deep cleaning and access the flat burrs, you must undo six screws with an Allen wrench. The red mark on the side designating your dial-in setting is difficult to see from the front, which makes it challenging to line up and change the dial-in settings. This unit has a RPM knob and the manual does not give any mention of how to adjust it or how it affects the grind. The workflow is cumbersome and the unit shuts off after one minute. The grind speed is slower than I expected too.

Love my grinder! I look forward to grinding fresh coffee from it every morning.

Built like a tank and nice design. But requires a lot of seasoning time. Will update review once seasoning is actually done.