Breville BCG800 Smart Grinder

[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]

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..

[grindmobile]

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

[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?

[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.