Why single dose?

Mattybar7 I think accuracy is one reason ie you weigh out the exact dose. With most single dose grinders you pretty much get out the same amount as you put it. When you have a hopper, even with high end grinders they usually dose via a time button which is much more vague. Coffee shops use hoppers because they are selling coffee whereas at home, people become infatuated with process!

Mattybar7 Usually I use 250g of the same beans any use them within a week

I think a big reason is not having your coffee exposed to the air for a week.

You can also have more than one coffee on the go.

I personally can’t taste the difference between beans that have been in the hopper for a day vs beans that have been airtight stored until the moment they hit the burrs (which is unlikely anyway given the journey a bean goes on from roast to your door).

If we are talking 3+ days in a hopper then perhaps it’s a different story.

I single dose for filter but not for freshness reasons, just so I can rotate a few coffees at a time. I find single dosing for espresso, especially making 2 or 3 coffees at a time is just easier grinding on-demand.

I suspect the popularity of the Niche being recommended as the home grinder for a long time now has also helped boost the popularity of single dosing.

On your timed grind point, I tried extensively to find a reliable timer grinder and due to the variables involved - mainly weight in the hopper, I haven’t found a timer that consistently produces satisfactory results. Grind by weight would be ideal but you pay a huge premium for that privilege.

I might be totally wrong but I think we are going to see a shift away from single-dosing in espresso.

When you are making coffee for yourself at home, you can follow and shot preparation that you like, lending itself to single dosing which takes longer. In the old days when I often made 15 to 20 coffees a day for business callers, then a hopper system suited me far more. I was not bothered about the absolute accuracy as I always had a Mythos or similar but the workflow suited

I think it’s a personal preference thing again like taste.

For me, efficiency and a ‘decent’ coffee is adequate, knowing there are lengths I could go to to prepare a ‘better’ coffee, but choose not to in the interests of speeding it all up. It is espresso after all!

I do cringe a bit when I see these ‘my coffee routine’ videos and they treat pulling a shot of coffee like they’re unboxing a Fabergé egg. It’s a wonder they’re not wearing white gloves. All that effort for a drink that goes cold in half the time it took to make.

I am one of those Niche people, and I have to say, it is a game changer. The workflow is really simple. Weight out the dose, into the grinder, into the dosing cup, into the portafilter, quick shake, tamp, and go. The beauty of it is that the dose variable is taken out of the equation, so I get consistent results shot to shot. I usually make two drinks back to back, so it is nice to have a consistent shot. I suppose there can be issues with stale grounds etc, and stale coffee if sitting in a large hopper, which is not a problem for a café, but for home that could be a problem perhaps. There are some grinders, such as the Barraza Sette (spelling?) that you can get with a built in dosing scale, and that could solve the problem for some. Looks like a nice arrangement. Reviews have been pretty good. If you are changing coffees periodically, then a grinder with retention is a problem because you have to waste so much coffee purging it. No, I think single dose grinders for home use are here to stay.

Ernie1 I might be totally wrong but I think we are going to see a shift away from single-dosing in espresso.

Then all those Kafateks, Weber EG1 and Lagom grinders will be cheap in the used market, when the cognoscenti stop single dosing. 😁

I think single dosing will be here to stay, in fact I’m surprised how long it’s taking for most manufacturers to try and match the Niche.

For me, my partner has decaf but I don’t so I need to constantly change beans. I also get to switch around beans, I’ve got three different on the go at the moment.

I single dose all the time. Only grinder I didn’t was the Eureka specilta, but as you say they won’t stay fresh

Now I use the Weber bean cellars when I don’t want fresh beans 😂

MediumRoastSteam

I could be completely wrong and I think we’ll continue to see more single-dose grinders developed as it’s unquestionably the best way to get the freshest extraction.

I just wonder how many people new to espresso during lockdown bought the Niche based on its popularity or that, to an outsider, it arguably looks a lot sleeker in a modern kitchen than most enormous Italian/German grinders.

Those people have never known anything other than single dosing and might either give up espresso after the lockdown novelty wears off or find the convenience of on-demand suits them better.

As for me, I don’t purge or have a beastly zero-retention grinder, I just top the hopper up each morning from an Airscape and if there’s a few grams of yesterday’s last grind in my first coffee, it certainly isn’t noticeably affecting what tastes like fantastic coffee to me! My Mazzer doesn’t have a timer but I can rest the scales on the cup holder to get a budget grind by weight hack job.

Note that I almost exclusively drink flat whites, so perhaps the milk is masking the retained grinds.

I know personally I sacrifice some stability with the major being doserless, but you could argue swings and roundabouts over freshness of bean in a hopper

I actually went single dose because I was able to tell when my coffee was made with yesterday’s grinds. My grinder retained approx. 6g. Even if I purged 2g or 3g - problem is, there’s exchange retention, it’s not necessarily a FIFO system, there are definitely queue jumpers! - so it was a case of the second coffee always being the best.

But I agree with you - the convenience of a hopper fed grinder is yet to be matched if you use the same beans until the bag is finished AND you don’t mind the retention issue.

I’m very much in the camp of those that can’t tell staleness in coffee well over the “24 hours” limit. 2-3 days in the hopper and the coffee at the end is - to my taste - pretty much the same as the coffee at the beginning. Probably using darker roasts and very often cutting them with milk helps. Consistency in weight from my grinder’s timer is pretty good - +/- 0.3 grams over 10 ‘random’ grinds in a week, and I think the variance in product due to my less-than-perfect prepping, tamping and steaming is way bigger than what due to beans aging.

(On the other hand, having a decent setup and using freshly ground means that most shop-made coffee now tastes bad, though I don’t think I have been to any coffee shop that single-doses)

CoyoteOldMan I have never drunk less coffe than during my time in Naples 🙄

CoyoteOldMan I’m very much in the camp of those that can’t tell staleness in coffee well over the “24 hours” limit.

There is a difference between whole beans sitting in the hopper for a day, and ground beans sitting somewhere in the inside of a non-single-dose grinder for who knows how long until they are pushed out and end up in the portafilter. I bet you could taste those in your cup. I know I do.