Conical Burr Coffee Grinder, ENZOO Electric Coffee Bean Grinder with Detachable Design for Easy Cleaning, 40 Precise Grind Setting for Espresso, Drip Coffee, French Press and…

I make espressos at home with a Wacaco Nanopresso – a marvelous little coffee making tool that I can’t say enough good things about – and I source my coffee from a local neighborhood cafe who actually knows how to properly dark roast the beans without creating a burnt and bitter mess. A couple of years ago, I bought a little hand-held crank grinder for around $30 that’s, well . . . OK. But it seems to constantly go out of tolerance with normal use, with the results being a grind that’s either too fine or too coarse. Make a minor adjustment on your own in an attempt to dial it back in and you’ll also likely end up with radically divergent results. To use a term associated with specialized home stereo equipment of years gone by, it’s “tweeky.” The novelty of hand grinding also gets old fairly quickly.

Also, those small cylindrical whirling blade electric grinders we all seemed to have purchased over the past couple of decades are basically worthless. They chop the beans instead of actually grinding them. You end up with an unusable mixture of coarse shards and almost microscopic coffee dust all at once every time. It’s so much simpler to get my local roaster to just grind up the 8 ounce bag of beans in their large storefront grinder as I purchase it. But when THEIR grinder went out of commission for a few days just before Christmas this past year, I decided it was time to finally get a real electric home burr grinder of my own.

You can spend ridiculous sums of money on fashionista-approved coffee gear and countertop grinders seem to be at the forefront of this trend. I’m not here to say that the Enzoo is going to come up to the performance level of countertop grinders that costs 5 times as much, simply because I have no personal experience with those high end machines. I can say with a reasonable amount authority, though, after using the Enzoo for a couple of weeks, is that it’s very simple to dial in the grind you need and the setting won’t change along with the phases of the Moon. After assembly, I clicked it to “2” (“1” to “10” are your range choices) to obtain a fine grind that works best with the Nanopresso and away I went. One assumes that “1” will get you closer to the even finer consistency required for more traditional espresso machines, or for making Turkish coffee, while the higher numbered settings are for pour-over and French press brewing methods. In time, I’ll experiment. For now, though, I’m pleased to report that I get the consistently good slightly-courser-than-trad-espresso results I need for my purposes on “2” and, so far, it doesn’t require constant adjustment to stay there.

I gave the Enzoo 4 stars instead of 5, because the written directions to get the machine assembled could certainly be better and the plastic parts on my light brown example are painted, instead of being molded-through in that color. The good news here is that internal surfaces that touch the beans aren’t painted and I have no worries that there will be any potential contamination issues with any of that. The plastic parts are molded black and I assume the black-finished Enzoo is simply unpainted. It would be nice to see Enzoo eventually start molding the plastic parts with a colorfast method and offer units in a playful assortment of hues, as well as basic black and white. Needless to say, the key parts that do the actual grinding are metal and the pebble finish anodized aluminum cylinder that houses the motor is a nice touch. The power cord also looks to be good quality and it’s terminated (at least on units sold in the US) with a standard 120V two-blade polarized plug.

I have no complaints on the overall design of the machine and the whole electronic business of turning things on/off and selecting the grinding duration is very straightforward. The potential issue with a preponderance of plastic parts is long term durability and I assume the far more expensive tabletop electric burr grinders crafted exclusively or largely from metal would be a better choice in a commercial setting, or in a large home where everyone is constantly dialing in different settings to their unique brewing requirements. My guess is that if this unit were to somehow fall off the kitchen counter onto the floor, that would also be the end of it. But for grinding up a day’s worth of beans at home under normal use, the Enzoo checks all the boxes and it simply works. It’s a bargain at under $100. If I have any long term issues or troubles with cleaning or maintaining it, I’ll log back in and note them accordingly in this review.