Hi CS'ers,
Firstly thanks for such an informative and generally positive forum! I've done a lot of searching, reading and learning here and many of your posts have benefited me greatly.
I'm coming up to a year into a COVID-lockdown inspired coffee journey at home, prior there was zero coffee at home. No point having coffee if it wasn't great.
I was a cafe-only fiend, near every client I had a favorite cafe to get great coffee from no matter the town/city.
A few days into lockdown last year I realised I was having massive caffeine withdrawal headaches and needed to do something, fast.
After an hour or so of research, I dived into buying a Breville Dual Boiler and Smart Grinder Pro expecting to only use for a few months.
After what was a very steep learning curve, I was loving life trying different beans, doing bean swaps with friends interstate from local roastaries, refining my workflow and skills and was generally pretty happy until I borrowed a friends Eureka Specialita for a couple of weeks.
It quickly became evident I needed to upgrade the Smart Grinder Pro for a few reasons:
Noise and speed - Could probably live with one or the other, but not slow (17+ sec) and loud together.
Grind consistency - Fines that block some holes the basket most shots that don't wash out easily were annoying when grinding 18g for 40g out in 30 sec. Possibly fixed with a different basket?
Clumping - it seems regardless of beans or grind setting it turns out some 4-5mm boulders with each grind. Even with grind distribution channeling was common.
Cleaning - I might be borderline OCD, but cleaning the burrs and grind chamber properly seems almost impossible and there's a strange felt o-ring that lives under the bottom burr that already needed replacing and they're $20 each?! ?
Retention - It seems to hold several grams of coffee that would fall out into the grind tray whenever it was moved.
I'm not here bashing it, for the price it's given me some very good coffee and there's a lot I like about the design/ergonomics of the Smart Grinder Pro that other manufacturers could learn from, and but not so much about its ability to grind coffee:
Use of magnets to retain the portafilter holder and grind tray is great and will be missed.
The tinted hopper and the particularly the sealed lid.
The screen interface, especially that it shows current grind setting for different types of coffee.
I'd done countless hours of research and watched every youtube review considering many grinders: Eureka Specialita, Eureka XL (when available), Eureka Atom 65, Eureka Helios 65 (when/if available) Mazzer Super Jolly, DIP DKS-65 to finally come up with a decision:
Yesterday, it was out with the old and in with the new, the Eureka Atom Specialty 65:

Setup in it's place with the 'blow up' installed to help manage grind retention - not sure how effective it will be with beans in the hopper:

After a dozen or so shots last night and today, apart from being very well caffeinated, I'm seriously pleased with the choice of the Atom.
It feels incredibly well built.
It's very quiet, carrying on a conversation while grinding is no longer impossible.
It's fairly fast, still dialing in and experimenting with the blow up but currently 9 seconds gives 18.6 grams - I've read it may get faster over time?
Retention is easily managed with the 'blow up'.
Grinds are fluffy and almost clump free.
The grind path LED 'spotlight' is a really nice touch.
Fines appear to be less of an issue, reduced amount getting stuck in the basket holes.
There appears to be more crema produced from the same recipe/batch of beans with the Atom.
Perhaps most importantly, the taste is unquestionably improved.
Currently using a dosing ring on the stock breville basket which gets very full with 18g, but they form a nice easily distributed mound.
I'll be looking into and ordering IMS/Pullman etc. baskets I think.

My latte art skills still leave a lot to be desired! ?

The Dual Boiler seems to be holding its own for now, I'm certain an upgrade to a prettier machine will be coming at some point in the future though.

If you lasted this long, thanks for reading!
Firstly thanks for such an informative and generally positive forum! I've done a lot of searching, reading and learning here and many of your posts have benefited me greatly.
I'm coming up to a year into a COVID-lockdown inspired coffee journey at home, prior there was zero coffee at home. No point having coffee if it wasn't great.
I was a cafe-only fiend, near every client I had a favorite cafe to get great coffee from no matter the town/city.
A few days into lockdown last year I realised I was having massive caffeine withdrawal headaches and needed to do something, fast.
After an hour or so of research, I dived into buying a Breville Dual Boiler and Smart Grinder Pro expecting to only use for a few months.
After what was a very steep learning curve, I was loving life trying different beans, doing bean swaps with friends interstate from local roastaries, refining my workflow and skills and was generally pretty happy until I borrowed a friends Eureka Specialita for a couple of weeks.
It quickly became evident I needed to upgrade the Smart Grinder Pro for a few reasons:
Noise and speed - Could probably live with one or the other, but not slow (17+ sec) and loud together.
Grind consistency - Fines that block some holes the basket most shots that don't wash out easily were annoying when grinding 18g for 40g out in 30 sec. Possibly fixed with a different basket?
Clumping - it seems regardless of beans or grind setting it turns out some 4-5mm boulders with each grind. Even with grind distribution channeling was common.
Cleaning - I might be borderline OCD, but cleaning the burrs and grind chamber properly seems almost impossible and there's a strange felt o-ring that lives under the bottom burr that already needed replacing and they're $20 each?! ?
Retention - It seems to hold several grams of coffee that would fall out into the grind tray whenever it was moved.
I'm not here bashing it, for the price it's given me some very good coffee and there's a lot I like about the design/ergonomics of the Smart Grinder Pro that other manufacturers could learn from, and but not so much about its ability to grind coffee:
Use of magnets to retain the portafilter holder and grind tray is great and will be missed.
The tinted hopper and the particularly the sealed lid.
The screen interface, especially that it shows current grind setting for different types of coffee.
I'd done countless hours of research and watched every youtube review considering many grinders: Eureka Specialita, Eureka XL (when available), Eureka Atom 65, Eureka Helios 65 (when/if available) Mazzer Super Jolly, DIP DKS-65 to finally come up with a decision:
Yesterday, it was out with the old and in with the new, the Eureka Atom Specialty 65:
Setup in it's place with the 'blow up' installed to help manage grind retention - not sure how effective it will be with beans in the hopper:
After a dozen or so shots last night and today, apart from being very well caffeinated, I'm seriously pleased with the choice of the Atom.
It feels incredibly well built.
It's very quiet, carrying on a conversation while grinding is no longer impossible.
It's fairly fast, still dialing in and experimenting with the blow up but currently 9 seconds gives 18.6 grams - I've read it may get faster over time?
Retention is easily managed with the 'blow up'.
Grinds are fluffy and almost clump free.
The grind path LED 'spotlight' is a really nice touch.
Fines appear to be less of an issue, reduced amount getting stuck in the basket holes.
There appears to be more crema produced from the same recipe/batch of beans with the Atom.
Perhaps most importantly, the taste is unquestionably improved.
Currently using a dosing ring on the stock breville basket which gets very full with 18g, but they form a nice easily distributed mound.
I'll be looking into and ordering IMS/Pullman etc. baskets I think.
My latte art skills still leave a lot to be desired! ?
The Dual Boiler seems to be holding its own for now, I'm certain an upgrade to a prettier machine will be coming at some point in the future though.
If you lasted this long, thanks for reading!

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