I’ve had my DF83 for a few weeks now, and I’m liking it quite a lot. My old grinder was a Baratza Virtuoso+, and we get excellent results from it taste-wise for the most part. There were, however, three things about the Virtuoso+ that I was hoping to improve with a new grinder.
First and foremost, I wanted finer control over the grind than I could get with the Virtuoso+. The Virtuoso+ is a stepped grinder, and I found that adjusting the grind by one click often resulted in a larger change in the taste than I wanted. I could accommodate for this by adjusting the dose accordingly, but wanted more control over the grind overall.
Second, I can (believe it or not) single-dose with the Virtuoso+ by pulsing the grinder at the end and shaking it around. By doing that, I was at zero retention most of the time, and off by just 0.1 g the other times. But this was getting old.
Third, my typical grind time was 35 s, plus pulsing, plus shaking the grinder around. I figured the DF83 would be faster.
My first and most important take is that we’re getting really excellent espresso with the DF83. It’s hitting the richness and chocolatey taste that my wife and I like, and I’m starting to appreciate the clarity that is supposed to come with a flat burr grinder.
The DF83 is amazingly fast. For my current batch of beans I’m using 19.0 g, and it grinds that in about 15 seconds. I do use the bellows. I’ll let it do its thing until the coffee output starts to slow down, and then I’ll pump the bellows until nothing comes out anymore. WIth this method, I’m constantly getting everything out that I put in. The only time that changes is if I change the grinder setting. The next grind is sometimes off by 0.1-0.2 g, but then I’m back to as close to zero retention as my scale can measure with its 0.1 g resolution.
I took the top off recently to see how much coffee was retained after a few weeks’ use, and there’s not much on the burrs. Bottom burr:
Top burr:
I didn’t disassemble the grinder any further, but there’s no coffee stuck in the chute that I can see.
Other thoughts:
From looking around, the DF83 seems to be outfitted slightly differently depending on where you’re located. If you get a DF83 in Australia, the bellows is slightly different at the bottom and there’s an adapter that tilts the cup more towards the chute.
I’ve read reports that grinders with bellows look horrible, and that using the bellows at the end of grinding results in a workflow that is terrible. I have no idea what they are talking about.
I’ve also read reports that turning on the DF83 results in the grinder jumping around. I have no idea what that’s about either, unless they are really smashing the power button when turning it on, or have coated their countertops with wax.
Grinding without the dosing collar results in ground coffee escaping and making a little mess. Using the dosing collar eliminates that issue. Use the dosing collar just for that reason alone.
One of the things I’ll miss most about the Virtuoso+ is that the plastic bin that the coffee falls into does a great job releasing the coffee when I transfer it to the basket. The DF83 plastic dosing cup seems to hang onto the coffee a little more, but not enough to make a difference.
I’ve read concerns about how loud the DF83 is. Volume-wise, it’s no louder than the Virtuoso+. The DF83 makes a higher pitched sound than the Virtuoso+, which some may find more annoying, but the fact that the DF83 is so much faster makes the overall noise experience way better for me.
Calibrating so that the zero point is where the burrs just touch was trivially easy.
The DF83 can easily grind fine enough to choke off my 9Barista, and (I guess) any other espresso machine. After zeroing out the DF83, my first attempt was at 15, and the coffee that came out was so fine I didn’t even bother to try to make espresso with it. The second attempt was 18.0 g at 20, and that also looked too fine. I tried making espresso with that batch anyway, and the extraction was so slow that I stopped it early. The espresso that did come out was surprisingly pretty good. The third time was 18.0 g at 25, and the extraction time was right at 30 s, and very close to my ideal shot of espresso. After further tweaking, I’ve settled in at 19.0 g at 28.
Overall, I’m quite happy. The DF83 certainly addresses the issues I had with easier single dosing and being faster. The other grinder I was considering was the Niche, and I’m having a hard time seeing how that grinder could have been better. In addition, and I’m mentioning this only because there was a discussion about customer service in another thread, I had a better pre-sale interaction with the US distributor of the DF83 than I did with the Niche folks.
One last note — in discussions I’ve seen, it seems that a common comparison of single dose grinders is between the DF64 and the Niche. In the US (I know that most of the folks here are UK-based), the DF83 is $699 including shipping. A Niche grinder shipped to the US is a little over $700 at today’s exchange rates. For the US at least, it seems like the comparison really should be between the Niche and the DF83. It is probably different in other countries.
