I moved to single dosing six months ago using my "old school" Macap M4 doser model. I changed to single dosing mainly to reduce waste and mess. Also with covid, not much need for more than a few shots in a row anymore🙁. Since then I've been considering single dose grinders and reading and watching plenty of reviews. I will readily acknowledge that a single dose grinder will have an easier and simpler workflow. However, beyond that, I haven't been convinced of the benefits. In particular there are three areas that I'm sceptical about:
- Retention - Opening up my Macap I was surprised to find little coffee grounds inside. I always sweep out the doser and "spout" but its actually got a very short (though horizontal) grind path. I see many reviews that state a retention number that seems to be very difficult to justify. 'Grinds in' versus 'grinds out' just isn't an accurate measure and the only way I can see of accurately measuring retention is to open up the grinder and clean it out, weighing the grounds found inside. I think a lot of non-single dose grinders may achieve fairly low retention.
- Popcorning - I haven't seen evidence to support this but the theory is that if there is no weight on the beans (as would occur if the hopper was kept at least partially full), then the grind distribution will be less uniform as the beans bounce about before being dragged into the burrs. The solutions I have seen for this on single dose grinders do not seem to fix this problem, they just cover it up. This does prevent the breans from jumping out of the machine but if there is a real impact on grind distribution then that is a continuing issue.
- Value / Features - Single dosing requires less features, ie. small or no hopper, no timer or fancy electronic dosing, so they should be cheaper and yet they tend to cost more. A good examplle is the Eureka Mignon XL 65 versus the Oro. You lose flexibility and features whilst paying the same or more, hence my suggestion that this is a marketing scam.

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