martyyn:

 

We currently have a Breville Barista Express BES870. It does a pretty good job but the grind amount dial on the front is regularly moved when it's cleaned and after moving to an open bottomed portafilter, WDT and adjustable damper I can't for the life of me stop it from channeling. We buy the same beans every week and I've gone through the grind size, 18g, 19g, 20g, different damper heights, the lot, it's always a mess.

 

Just checking the above as you say ‘after moving’, which suggests the problems started after you moved to a bottomless portafilter; or did the problems exist prior and you hoped all the changes would solve them? The reason I ask is that I’ve found that different portafilters can result in different results - I mean I’ve got two identical OEM ones for my machine with the same Breville basket and one is always faster than the other! And the bottomless one I bought off AE hardly gets used as it’s 1. not a great fit into the group head, 2. Doesn’t provide enough space for a puck screen and 3. is a dog to get a good shot. 

So just wondering if it’s worth going back to the OEM portafilter and trying that? (I’ve totally been in the same space of fiddling with everything and nothing working, and found simplifying and going back to basics helped reset things.)

martyyn:

 

I'd like to keep it under $1000 and have ended up with the Breville Smart Grinder Pro ($320-ish) and a Bambino ($440-ish).

 

… just want to be sure with the grinder I can add beans to the hopper, set it 18g (or whatever I settle on), have the transfer from cup to portafilter be easy and mess free and never have to worry about someone messing about with it by "accident". 

 

Any thoughts or recommendations ?

 

I can respond directly to the use of an SGP for single dosing, as that’s what I use as my second grinder - usually kept at work, but with me right now while on holiday! I can report it works fine (I use it with my work/holiday machine, which is a Sunbeam Mini Barista) for single dosing, but there’s a pretty high degree of retention - this means while you’ll tend to get out a pretty similar quantity of what you put in, a meaningful amount of it will be beans from the previous grinds! (This is evidenced by the amount of grinds left when cleaning it out, and also the much lower amount on first grind after a clean.) 

TBH, this doesn’t worry me too much - the end result is still good enough for us. But I’m not sure (apart from the dial not moving) whether the grind itself of the SGP will be much superior to what your built-in grinder provides? (Unless there is a problem with the grinder itself.) I wonder if a s/h higher-quality grinder may be a better investment, or putting the total budget into a new grinder vs buying both grinder and new machine?

And, maybe whatever grinder you end up with, it could be worth just starting with that, trialing that with your existing machine (though I guess this depends on how frustrating you find the dial movement!). I initially did use the SGP with my main machine (the Breville Dual Boiler, which in NZ is sold as a package with the SGP), but when I moved to single dosing found it a bit frustrating so bought my current main grinder (a DF64 something, that allows for both single dosing and a large hopper).