Breville BCG800 Smart Grinder

[Andykay]

Hi. Quick question. Does anyone know if they're still sending out shim kits if you request them? I recently bought one of these for my girlfriend and like mine, it doesn't grind fine enough. If so, does anyone have the username of the Breville rep on here? It's not in my inbox for some reason.

Thanks

[mgmonty]

Strange behaviour after Xmas holidays – under dosing

Hi all,

I’ve had some strange behaviour from the BCG since coming back form holidays. Before going away 3 weeks ago, I cleaned the BCG with the brush, washed out the hopper and unplugged the power cord. Returning home 3 days ago, I reassembled the unit and turned it on. Just as johnsmith reported, the fineness indicator jumped around like crazy (no beans in) and took a good minute to stop. I put some older decaf WOW beans in to make coffee and heard an unusual noise and no grinds came out so I stopped it straight away. I moved the fineness knob left to make the grind coarser but beans only came out once I wound all the way left and then back to the start of the espresso range. Once the grinds were coming out I could not get the right dose. With the cup set to 2 and the amount set to +5 I still am about ½ a dose short. That is the ground beans (without tapping or tamping) are sitting below the top of the portafilter.

I’ve since received my new espresso WOW beans and have the same problem. I can make a nice coffee with those settings (coarseness is between the SP) but I then need to press the start button again for a few more seconds. It’s really annoying and I think something might be wrong. Before Xmas I had 2 cups set with amount +2 and I got a nice full basket.

Does anyone had any suggestions??

tia

[Barry_Duncan]

After pulling the grinder apart to clean, make shure the top burr is completely wound in to place as indicated by the red arrows, otherwise it will not grind properly.

Barry

[johnsmith]

Hi. Quick question. Does anyone know if they're still sending out shim kits if you request them? I recently bought one of these for my girlfriend and like mine, it doesn't grind fine enough. If so, does anyone have the username of the Breville rep on here? It's not in my inbox for some reason.

Thanks

i called breville on monday and received the shim kit on thursday.

the breville rep asked when i bought the grinder (December 2012), and he said one should have been included. nevertheless he arranged for one to be sent.

i've yet to take my grinder apart so not sure if shims were already in the grinder.

[browny141]

Hi Guys, Long time lurker first time poster here.

Just made the jump from pre-ground coffee, received a BCG800 for my birthday last week.

Now I have read the thread, but just wanted to clarify, my grinder is stamped 1238, so its a pretty new batch. The thing is that it just doesn't get it fine enough for my Sunbeam em4820, even on the finest setting my shots are coming out too fast - thats with a pretty hard tamping too.

Using fresh beans from a local roaster.

Now naturally I've emailed breville about having a shim kit sent out, but what concerns me is that my burrs already sound like they're touching from about 4 clicks from finest - so with that said, is a shim kit really going to improve things for me or just cause the burrs to wear quicker? My thought process is that if the burrs are already touching, how much finer is this going to grind? Do I have myself a dud grinder maybe?

Any thoughts?

[grindmobile]

How sure are you that the beans are "fresh" from your local roaster?

[browny141]

How sure are you that the beans are "fresh" from your local roaster?

Well they advertise they roast their beans daily, and because I only purchased a 250g bag they took it right out of the bigger bag that they were using in their machine (they run a fairly popular cafe where you can watch them roasting the beans throughout the day etc) - so I'm pretty sure they would be fresh due to their high turnover (alot of cafes around here use their beans).

In saying that, I'll be sure to try some beans from another local roaster who I know personally before I draw any final conclusions about the grinder. But still concerning, these beans are definitely reasonably fresh and I'm already at the finest setting, so it's only going to become more of a problem when they do age..

[johnsmith]

i shimmed my BCG800 on the weekend!

i opened it up and saw it had no original shims. i put two of the shims in, as recommended on the instruction sheet.

dialing it back a few notches to under the "r" in espresso, it choked my machine. after many trials with different dosage and fineness, i found the sweet spot to be one notch left of the "E".

i may have shimmed it too much, just one shim would have been sufficient. but seeing as it's giving me good results at the moment i'll leave it as it is until i take it apart to clean next time.

[browny141]

I ended up taking mine back to DJ's and exchanging it. The new one works perfectly! Well if I turn it to the finest setting it chokes the grinder (could be the beans)... But I've also got a sweet spot to the left of the 'e' much like yours johnsmith, although mine is like that right from factory this time around, no shims required .

Suffice to say i'm now 100% happy with the grinder.

[richard_m_h]

i shimmed my BCG800 on the weekend!

i opened it up and saw it had no original shims. i put two of the shims in, as recommended on the instruction sheet.

dialing it back a few notches to under the "r" in espresso, it choked my machine. after many trials with different dosage and fineness, i found the sweet spot to be one notch left of the "E".

i may have shimmed it too much, just one shim would have been sufficient. but seeing as it's giving me good results at the moment i'll leave it as it is until i take it apart to clean next time.

did something similar with mine. also the e or to the left, depending on beans. it works for espresso so I don't change it.

[seananderson]

I've had my BCG800 for a few months now. I ordered the shim kit from Breville (very painless process, arrived quickly) because as the beans aged, the finest setting would not grind fine enough to get a 30 second shot on the double basket of my Breville dual boiler machine.

I pulled the grinder apart, put in a shim, put it back together. Then without beans I ran the grinder from coarse down to fine to see where/if the burrs would touch, what kind of noise it would make. They do touch, but it is not a regular noise - i.e. it sounds as if the burrs are either not perfectly circular (looking from above) or the axis of rotation is not central to the bottom burr.

I am still working through the various dosage/fineness settings to find a good shot (it can take a while I know) but at the moment it is grinding too coarse - and the dose is larger than before too, I've had to dial that down or it would overfill.

I am concerned that perhaps because the burrs are touching unevenly, it cannot go fine enough - there will be a portion of the grinding surfaces where the gap is larger, so it will let through larger coffee particles no matter how fine I go. I also noticed that the bottom burr can actually be fitted in two ways - there are two holes in the bottom of the burr which match the peg on the motor. You can position it two ways, 180 degrees apart. I've tried both positions - seems to not make that much difference in my case. I guess I am also concerned there may be metal particles in my coffee.

I am interested to know what other people hear when running an empty grinder and dialing it down to the finest setting. I think I'll make a youtube video of it on the weekend - so you can hear exactly what I am talking about.

Do you think it might be a grinder fault, should I return it?

And have a good Australia Day.

[AtomicGrog]

Breville BCG800 Smart Grinder

Imo your pushing the grinder beyond it's original limits as can be demonstrated by the need to fit a shim kit to get a finer grind. As such your likely to have issues like you're experiencing.

[WiredArabica]

...I am concerned that perhaps because the burrs are touching unevenly, it cannot go fine enough - there will be a portion of the grinding surfaces where the gap is larger, so it will let through larger coffee particles no matter how fine I go. I also noticed that the bottom burr can actually be fitted in two ways - there are two holes in the bottom of the burr which match the peg on the motor. You can position it two ways, 180 degrees apart. I've tried both positions - seems to not make that much difference in my case. I guess I am also concerned there may be metal particles in my coffee.

Mine makes the same noise and I suspect you'll find that it will work just fine. Because it's not under constant tension (as in a higher end grinder) the lower burr carrier has a little bit of play and there may be contact when grinding empty. When it's actually grinding, the beans effectively force the burrs apart.

Remember to hold the amount of coffee you dose constant (metal part of tamper should be flush with the top of the basket after tamping - [starting point: overdose the basket, tap on the bench twice to level, tamp]), and then adjust the grind. If you intend to use the dosing feature of the grinder note that it's time based and hence the amount it doses for a given setting will change with grind size. So you need to get the amount and grind right first, before setting up the automatic dose timer. Oh and remember to purge some coffee through when changing grind size and after more than a few minutes of inactivity to get rid of stale grinds...

Have fun!

[mgmonty]

After pulling the grinder apart to clean, make shure the top burr is completely wound in to place as indicated by the red arrows, otherwise it will not grind properly.

Barry

Barry, thanks for the advice. I neglected to mention that I had originally checked that and it all looked good. Strange thing is the problem seems to have rectified itself. Slowly over the course of 3-4 days the dose increased and now I have the grinder set to +4 and it's just right. Very strange!

[boots]

Hi all
Are the mid 2012 onward smart grinder models ok for grinding for espresso? I have an ECM Technika 4 and my second grinder just died. Would this suffice as a backup? Is the burr / shim factor still an issue or has it been resolved with the new models?
Cheers
B