Hi all,

Pretty new here and quickly becoming addicted to coffee discussion as much as making coffee! I currently have a Sage BE, so a pretty average set up, however feel I’m now outgrowing it and want to start building my ideal coffee corner. After days of hints to the Mrs, I convinced her to agree (or frown less) to me investing by letting her put carpet in the living room (all about compromise). Anyway, I just missed out on a local ACS Minima that was in the classifieds as those discussions took too long last night and got beaten to the punch, but that got me thinking I should get a decent grinder first and I’m now here for advice 😁 plus I can take my time now and not rush into a grinder purchase because I need one.

At present we only drink 1 - 2 cappuccinos a day on average, however I’m really wanting to give an espresso a go seeing as I’ll soon have a new baby coming along and giving me endless sleepless nights. Not sure it’s going to be to my liking as I’m masking the taste of it at the moment with milk and dare I say it, flavour syrups or sweetener in my capps. For background I’ve come a long way from being totally against coffee so small steps and all lol.

Since the weekend, I’ve been trialing single dosing the SBE to see how I get on and it’s not as much of a pain as I thought so open to a single dose grinder. I do however only ever use the same beans, from the same roaster as we settled on this Columbian after trialing what my local has on offer and found this the tastiest of them all. This for me I think would open me up to using a hopper fed grinder if there’s one highly recommended, as retention isn’t a huge concern.

I’m happy to spend up to Niche level, so £500, I’m also open to second hand to bring the cost down if it’s well-spec’d and loved. The requirements of the Mrs would be that it fits nicely into the kitchen (currently cream but she wants a new one so who knows what it’ll be) and not too big. My end game machine is likely going to be stainless finish but black or white for the grinder wouldn’t look out of place with the rest of the appliances.

So…what are your recommendations for someone like me? Single, hopper, hit me with your best advice 😊

Thanks for reading! Once this is sorted, I’ll probably be back for machine advice haha.

Alex