After my debacle of buying the Kitchenaid Coffee Mill (it did not work right out of the box as I wrote about in a previous review,) I went back to researching grinders and narrowed my choices down to the Bunn home grinder and the Kitchenaid Proline grinder. Eventually, Amazon ran a sale on the latter and I made the purchase.

When you open the box, the manual is sitting on the top. In the manual and other paper work included, there are very detailed instructions ranging from how to remove the grinder from the box, grinding the coffee and maintenance. This is probably one of the best written instruction booklets I have ever read. The instructions are easy to understand, frank, honest and informative. For instance, for coffee afficionados, the booklet gives grind sizes, in microns, for some of the settings, depending on the brewing method. Other topics include operation, cleaning, and safety.

Once out of the box and ready for assembly, you first notice the weight of the unit. It weighs a few pounds and feels quite solid. Assembly is easy. You just need to rise out the bean hopper and grind catcher and put them into place. Both are made of glass, and in the case of the catcher, the glass cuts down on static, which on other plastic grinders will causes mess when you go to get the grinds out. The hopper holds up to seven ounces of beans which is a bit small but in terms of aesthetics, it fits well with the unit. A huge hopper would look awkward. A press on lid seals well to keep air away from your beans.

After assembling the unit I added beans. The grinder has fifteen levels of fineness (or coarseness) you can set depending on the brewing method. The dial for setting this is marked 1-8 with hash marks for 1/2 steps. Finer for espresso and coarser for french press. If you need to make the grinds finer or coarser than the unit will initially allow, the instruction booklet shows you how to open the front of the machine and adjust the burrs to make an overall adjustment for finer or coarser grinds. I do not know why Kitchenaid did not just make the range of grind size greater, but this allows you to make near dust out of the beans, as you would use for, say, Turkish coffee.

There is a large on/off switch on the right side of the grinder. Compared to my blade grinder, this unit is pretty quiet. If your family sleeps lightly, you might want to grind the beans the night before. The grinds fall directly into the catcher, which is held into place by a spring loaded ring at the top. When you remove the catcher, however, some grinds may fall onto the base, but not too much and it is easy to clean since there are no real crevices in the unit for grinds to get stuck in.

The first few pots of coffee I made were pretty good. It took a little time to get the grind setting right, but now that I have it, the coffee tastes great. The Kitchenaid Grinder uses a low RPM motor which keeps the burrs cool and will not burn the beans, which will make your coffee bitter.

Included in the box is a cleaning brush. Accessing the burrs for cleaning is as simple as removing the two screws in the front of the grinder and removing the attached part. Kitchenaid recommend cleaning every few weeks. As the burrs are used they may dull and eventually wear out. According to Kitchenaid they will last between 600-800 pounds worth of grinding. After that, burrs can be purchased directly from Kitchenaid for replacing.

The machine comes with a two year replacement warranty. If the unit breaks in the first two years, you can send the whole unit back and they will send you a new one. I have never had to deal with their customer service so I cannot comment on it, however many other reviews I have read suggest that Kitchenaid is very responsive to their customers problems.





Recommended: Yes