# Consistency issues with Sage Smart Grinder Pro



## dovy (Oct 6, 2018)

Hello fellow coffee lovers,

I keep having trouble finding the best grind size for both filter and espressos. At first I thought maybe I'm just getting what I paid for (cheap grinder) but I thought I'd ask your opinions about whether it may be faulty.

First of all- checking with people who have the same grinder- do my settings sound reasonable:

to get a 25s espresso extraction from the first drop I set it to 3/60;

to get a 3min V60 300ml my setting is 52/60.

Other questions:

Is the grinder meant to make different noise when being spun with no coffee beans in at different settings? Mine seems to make a higher pitched noise when in my espresso setting compared to my V60 setting.

Link to photos of the grounds for V60, does it look about right?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iTpkm8Aawtadd6xh6

Dovy


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

How do these drinks taste? You can't brew either method consistently based on time alone, it's a very rough guide.

Time your espresso from engaging the pump, not first drip (shot is about a 3rd to a quarter of the way through at this point).

How are you pouring the V60, the speed at which you add water can be tuned to all sorts of grind sizes, for the same brew weight & brew ratio.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Grinders pump a certain amount of air when the burrs are close. I assume 3 / 60 means setting 3? The numbers from grinder to grinder don't mean much. All that matters is that some number can grind at a level suitable for espresso. They can be adjusted with care but all that would do is move setting 3 to somewhere else. There is a lot of garbage on youtube concerning adjusting them to grind finer.

There are a couple of things you must do when working with settings that far apart. For instance if you want to move from 52 to 3 run the grinder while you are doing it. When you get there waste a few grams of grinds. Always waste a few grams when a setting has been changed. Or when going from 52 to 3 empty the grinder, run until no grinds come out - even then it would be a good idea to pulse the grinder - they aren't designed to crush bits of bean only grind them.

Many grinder manuals will state run it while making any adjustment. In practice people don't when they are going coarser and only make small adjustments at a time when going finer - 1 step at a time on a sage. I found it was best to always finish off an adjustment by going a few counts finer. So going coarser means going too coarse and then finer. Again that sort of approach may be needed on many grinders.








None of this has much to do with how much they cost.

John

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## dovy (Oct 6, 2018)

Thank you for your replies!

The espressos I pull taste good though I struggle to get consistent times with the same settings. With current settings it's 5-6 seconds to the first drop, 25-35s total time for 60ml. (Gaggia Classic set to 9bar, 17g in the basket).

V60 has a bitter taste to it most of the time - something I never find when having filter at a cafe. My recipe is as follows: 18.7g of coffee grounds bloomed with 40g of water for 30s, then the rest 300g of water added continuously keeping water at about 3/4 of the way up V60.

Okay I'll need to start running the grinder when making adjustments (I would only do that when adjusting to finer setting) + wasting a few grams.

Thanks again for your time, Dovy


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## Nicknak (Aug 10, 2018)

It's is so light , I would take off the hopper tip the remaining beans into the hooper .. Grind out what is left .. Then adjust .. It is also so easy to take out the top burr and give it a quick brush out with minimal waste .. and then no left over coarse or fine grinds ..


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

dovy said:


> Thank you for your replies!
> 
> The espressos I pull taste good though I struggle to get consistent times with the same settings. With current settings it's 5-6 seconds to the first drop, 25-35s total time for 60ml. (Gaggia Classic set to 9bar, 17g in the basket).
> 
> ...


It's best to weigh the output as the shot pulls & kill it by weight, crema adds inconsistency by having varying amounts for the same weight. Time to 1st drop is almost irrelevant if you achieve the target weight you want & if the shot tastes good. It's the total time that tells us anything (even if it's not much). +/-5 sec could be just fine across a large enough sample of shots.

Even if you add the main brew water continuously, it's still added at a rate. Using the level in the brewer is tricky as with bloom/foam and the difficulty in judging the water in the cone, eyeballing is pretty much impossible. Try blooming 30g 40s, then pour 45g every 20s.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Nicknak said:


> It's is so light , I would take off the hopper tip the remaining beans into the hooper .. Grind out what is left .. Then adjust .. It is also so easy to take out the top burr and give it a quick brush out with minimal waste .. and then no left over coarse or fine grinds ..


Actually if some one wants the Sage grinders to dose accurately with time it's best to leave the stuff in the grind chamber under the burrs alone otherwise it will take a number of shots to settle down again. Switching between settings like 50 and 3 probably will mess that up though anyway.

Once the grinder has settled down in the same area the SGP is rather good when doses of beans are weighed in and ground until the grinder runs empty. I found that what went in usually came out. The rest were correct to +/- 0.1g. Like most things there can be a catch though. Some beans may cause the exit from the grind chamber to clog up so eventually the lot needs a good clean. It can be used like this from clean too. Say 14g is needed, grind 14g and weigh what comes out. It will be short so grind a few more and add those etc. After a while what goes in will come out. Did for me over several kg of beans Actually that's how I usually used my SGP when I had it.

I used the hopper and the timer on my Barista Express for the bean I drink most of. There are differences between it and the SGP but the same sort of thing probably happens. Assuming the grinder has settled down a new bean might need time adjustments several times over the first week at say 3 to 5 shots a day. Then less often maybe finishing up at once a week. With the bean I used the time always needed increasing initially and might go either way eventually but only needing really tiny twitches of the timer knob. Tiny as the output is only being changed by tiny fractions of a gram. On a Sage machine it makes sense to use the razor tool when tuning a bean to save having to keep adjusting either the dose or the timer. Some might be surprised by how much weight it leaves as different beans and roasts are used. It can vary. Once things are right the weight can be used or maybe adjusted a bit.

John

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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

ajohn said:


> Once the grinder has settled down in the same area the SGP is rather good when doses of beans are weighed in and ground until the grinder runs empty. I found that what went in usually came out. The rest were correct to +/- 0.1g.


This simply won't happen. Sorry to rain on your parade, but finding a grinder that is repeatable to less than +/-0.1g is a very rare thing, if it exists at all. Your dose going in will be around +/-0.1g, so to keep doses in that region your grinder would need to somehow compensate the heavy wholebean dose with a lighter ground dose, the lighter wholebean dose with a heavier ground dose. Or, in other words have some kind of logic driving corrections. Which it doesn't.


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## Nicknak (Aug 10, 2018)

@ajohn my point was made for when changing from coarse to fine or fine to coarse ..I think it would make it easier ..

Also I have been using the sage for decaf for about eight months .. I was single dosing and would run the grinder until nothing was coming out , tap it shake it .. Measure 18 in for the next one and get 19 out .. This is after the grinder had been used for a while after cleaning . So I guess not accurate to 0.01 or what ever .. Also when you take the top burr out there is also coffee ground within the burr and a ring of compacted coffee in the path of where the new grinds must pass through which I believe will come out with the new ground ..

However it is a much maligned grinder which I think for the money does a reasonable job ..

Night night


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Nicknak said:


> @ajohn my point was made for when changing from coarse to fine or fine to coarse ..I think it would make it easier ..
> 
> Also I have been using the sage for decaf for about eight months .. I was single dosing and would run the grinder until nothing was coming out , tap it shake it .. Measure 18 in for the next one and get 19 out .. This is after the grinder had been used for a while after cleaning . So I guess not accurate to 0.01 or what ever .. Also when you take the top burr out there is also coffee ground within the burr and a ring of compacted coffee in the path of where the new grinds must pass through which I believe will come out with the new ground ..
> 
> ...


I was just pointing out the problems with working the way you suggested not arguing with it as going back and forth from 50 to 3 etc will upset the grinder as it wont settle down.

@MWJB is into telepathic scale reading. I know what mine did and that's that as far as I am concerned.

Sage grinders compact a certain amount of grinds in the grind chamber. Some under the item that sweeps the grinds out and some around the rim of grind chamber. It needs to compact these grinds thoroughly before it has settled down as I refer to it and once it has they are best left there. For me it then behaved as I mentioned +/- 0.1g with all sorts of beans as I used the SGP for beans that I wanted to try. The error went over that when ever the setting was changed and often when the bean was changed as well but soon settled down again. What's left in is mostly permanent retention - a lot more than Niche but still not that much in terms of grams. When a the bean is changed there is some carry over but mostly on the first shot. Generally I couldn't find any taste change after that with one exception. Some beans flavoured with vanilla went through it. Those needed more but it's a very noticeable flavour in coffee and they were strongly flavoured. Horrible stuff but some one bought them. Xmas present so some went through the grinder = 40g to be precise.

One thing I have wondered about is if the bean that is compacted matters mainly down to what I was doing with the grinder on the BE - maintaining a dose to better than 0.2g via the timer. I had to clean it out when the grinder broke. One thing I noticed on that was that initially it looked like it needed a certain level of beans in the hopper. Turned out to be a coating of bean oil on the hopper so had to wash it. The SGP is more likely to have that sort of problem on the exit from the grind chamber as well. Grinds build up and it eventually chokes. It took about 30 weighed in shots of my usual bean to do that which is why I sold it. I mentioned the problem to the buyer. It would have just clumped more than usual with the hopper on. The BE grinder didn't clump over many kg of the same bean but from a different roaster. My new supplier may be worse in this respect but I'd be inclined to say not.

MWJB's comment. Well I have weighed in several kg's of beans into a mazzer mini since. New burrs so some clumping for a while but dose accuracy better than the SGP. Eventually I only checked the output from the grinder if the shot output changed. Turned out that the grind had. My son check weighed one dose shortly before I switched to the Niche and found the dose 0.1g short. I showed him how to get that out. He then switched to doing exactly what I do. What I do isn't as simple as this video shows on a Jolly but that can work fairly well anyway, people might just find they need to use the brush more and spin the grinder up more than once especially when puffing but other improvements can help as well.






Adding something like the flap shown may be a good idea on mazzers timer grinders. Static may been why my timer failed.







Eventually I removed a lot of that by discharging some of it through me into the body of the grinder.

Going back to the OP posts I found that when using the mini I could get 1g variation in shot size. I use a button that sets the time to 30 sec and weigh every shot I make. Eventually usually towards the end of a can of beans or the next can from the same batch the shot size would drift down. I'd leave things as they were and extend the shot time by up to 5 secs as I had a feeling that taste was changing. Then adjust the grinder to get it back to what it was. If one shot especially first one of the day drifted down I'd take no notice and wait and see what the next one did. Weather can play a part as well. I only bother doing this sort of thing when I am drinking my usual bean. The only reason I do it is the challenge. My other beans come in lots of 4oz and a fair amount gets used looking at variations. One recent lot came as a 1kg. Interesting taste and not fresh roasted. I weigh every dose of that one out of a different grinder with the hopper on set via a timer. Next change for my usual bean is different storage cans.







Only problem the mini is in the cupboard now and I'm use the Niche. I have had shots recently that have varied by 2g at 30sec. All have needed circa 33 sec to achieve what I usually go for.

One thing I would add is that other than the challenge there is no point in trying to get 1g of shot variation in 30 sec or what ever evert time as some variation wont make much if any difference. How much variation is acceptable depends on who is drinking it. All have the gear they use to make coffee and it's not exactly rocket science to find out. What can happen though if some one sticks to a particular bean long enough they'll get far more sensitive to taste variations. I still make significant changes to the one I have used for most of the time I have had an espresso machine just to see what happens.








Couple hours maybe to make this post - I wasn't at the keyboard for a lot of the time. Other things to do even eating lunch. However that may increase my typo rate.

John

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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

@ajohn no, I'm not telepathic, just like you, we are all bound by the inescapable laws of physics. You're using an inch rule to measure cm, you don't have the readability with those scales to determine +/-0.1g repeatability.

If you did ever tell us what you did in terms of results, this would all be clear, but you conceal these things then make close to magical claims that all your grinders are +/-0.1g dosers. Maybe they are, maybe you have all of the ones that exist.


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## ashcroc (Oct 28, 2016)

ajohn said:


> I was just pointing out the problems with working the way you suggested not arguing with it as going back and forth from 50 to 3 etc will upset the grinder as it wont settle down.
> 
> @MWJB is into telepathic scale reading. I know what mine did and that's that as far as I am concerned.
> 
> ...


You may have somehow been getting only a 0.1g difference between what you put in & what came out but your experiance of the vanila beans points to what you get out not fully being from the same dose you just put in. While there may be permanent retention, there's also obviously exchange retention going on too.


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

MWJB said:


> @ajohn no, I'm not telepathic, just like you, we are all bound by the inescapable laws of physics. You're using an inch rule to measure cm, you don't have the readability with those scales to determine +/-0.1g repeatability.
> 
> If you did ever tell us what you did in terms of results, this would all be clear, but you conceal these things then make close to magical claims that all your grinders are +/-0.1g dosers. Maybe they are, maybe you have all of the ones that exist.


Is that another way of saying numbers and shite ?


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

FWIW I just tried out 4 different sets of '0.1g' scales with some Ethiopian beans. Individual beans weigh 1.1 to 1.6g on my 0.01g scales. None of the 0.1g scales could actually detect one bean's difference, it took 3 beans minimum (3.6g) to change the reading. One set took 10 beans.

None of this really has any bearing on the OP's post though. @dovy your grinder is 'consistent', in that it does pretty much the same thing each time at the same grind setting. You can better control the amount produced at each grind by careful weighing, you can eliminate overlap between settings by grinding a little between changes in settings to purge what's left in the grinder, but consistency is really in your hands when it comes to weights & brewing.


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## Nicknak (Aug 10, 2018)

@ajohn ...I suppose we all look at the same thing from a different perspective .. Enjoy what you do ..

I will look forward to the next episode in the New Year







.. Have a good one


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Nicknak said:


> @ajohn ...I suppose we all look at the same thing from a different perspective .. Enjoy what you do ..
> 
> I will look forward to the next episode in the New Year
> 
> ...


Thanks I am having one. Good Xmas too. I'm essentially or was a design and development engineer. Some things have been around for donkeys years or may even have been done by myself. Either way there is a need to take note of what has been done before and why but also find out for yourself while keeping an open mind. Perhaps that explains my perspective plus I see it as who is going to win, it what ever it is or me.

So same to you by the way.

John

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## dovy (Oct 6, 2018)

Thank you all for your answers, I've learned a few things.

The main problem seems to have been me switching between filter and espresso grinds every other day without wasting a few grams to get rid of the different size grinds stuck in the grinder. I've been getting significantly better results since I started doing that.

Cheers


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

dovy said:


> Thank you all for your answers, I've learned a few things.
> 
> The main problem seems to have been me switching between filter and espresso grinds every other day without wasting a few grams to get rid of the different size grinds stuck in the grinder. I've been getting significantly better results since I started doing that.
> 
> Cheers


LOL thought you might. Getting rid of what the settings produced before a change is often not mentioned at all. It might not matter much on say a BE when settings are changed by one each time as the retention is rather low.

I believe there are several relatively cheap grinders that can be used for filter etc. They probably look like these but you would need to ask

https://www.solis.com/com_en/solis-kaffeemahlwerk-scala

They wont really cover the entire espresso range. They make a newer version now but suspect that will be the same. I have the older one. Curiosity, some people modify them to go 1 step finer. They still wont go as fine as espresso might need. I found it was possible to weigh beans in on them. Newer model - pass.

Some one has explained permanent retention against carry over after a fashion. I'd suggest people just try it if they want. What I found with different normal fresh roasted beans is that I couldn't detect any after a single 10g grind and taste changes on that one were rather small - if any at all at times.

If some one wants to check their scales for accuracy it's currently pretty easy. The new £ coin weighs 8.75g. Tare out say a mug or a portafilter and add them one at a time. Do it several times also when due to room temperature changes they are either hotter or colder than usual. Accuracy really for coffee doesn't matter. Repeatability is more important. Calibrating them can help especially if over time they show more error. Mine were showing a bit of error after long term use when tested with £1. Recalibration bought them back to how they were.

John

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## 4085 (Nov 23, 2012)

ajohn said:


> Thanks I am having one. Good Xmas too. I'm essentially or was a design and development engineer. Some things have been around for donkeys years or may even have been done by myself. Either way there is a need to take note of what has been done before and why but also find out for yourself while keeping an open mind. Perhaps that explains my perspective plus I see it as who is going to win, it what ever it is or me.
> 
> So same to you by the way.
> 
> ...


Please tell me what you have designed in case by accident I pick one up with a view to purchase (gentle leg pull intended)


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