OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder with Scale

Appears to be good quality. Grinds are consistent and makes good coffee but find it has too many features and instruction book is too hard to follow in areas. Going to see if there’s a YouTube video on operating it. I would have liked to see a sealer lid came with the bottom jar so I could store the coffee in it since I make my coffee for one person at a time.

My girlfriend and I are a couple of coffee snobs — we prefer to buy quality beans and grind them ourselves. For anyone who truly enjoys “real” coffee, grinding your own beans is the only way to go. However, not all grinders are equal.

Most will agree that the main feature in a quality coffee grinder is employing a burr mill rather than a blade, as blades simply cannot deliver a consistent grind. However, while researching the various grinders (to replace a failed 

Cuisinart DBM-8

), I learned that having a burr mill isn’t the whole story — having one with a conical burr (rather than a flat or wheel burr), along with a low speed motor, makes for the best of the best. This OXO grinder is one of the few that meet both criteria, but what totally sets it apart is the integrated scale.

The high-torque/low-speed feature is important, and not one that all burr grinders have. I don’t know how much of a problem heat build-up was for our old Cuisinart DBM-8, much less for any other grinder, but it does seem like a sensible point anyway. I can say that our old grinder blasted the grounds out with so much force that it caused a clump to form on the side of the container, so having a machine with a reduced, more controlled speed seems like the right way to design a grinder.

With this machine being low speed, the grounds aren’t being shot out of it, but it’s not slow at all — suffice it to say that the grounds simply “pour” out of it. It’ll make a lot of coffee in a hurry! And is it loud? Well, it’s not quiet, that’s for sure. It’s certainly not as loud and rough as our old Cuisinart DBM-8. With the apparent efficiency of the conical burr, the noise seems smoother and more like a small vacuum than a grinding machine. To me, it just sounds like how a solid, high-end machine ought to.

The conical burr was a new concept to me, but when compared to the design of a flat or wheel burr, it becomes obvious which one will last longer. Plus, I can say that this grinder produces FAR more consistent grounds, almost on-par with the commercial grade grinders at the grocery store. I thought our old Cuisinart DBM-8 did just fine, until I saw what this OXO produced! And let’s not forget: the burr components are very easily removed for cleaning, but also look and feel like they’ll last forever.

There are a handful of competing grinders that match what I’ve just described, but there’s one feature that completely sets this OXO apart from the crowd: the integrated scale.

Most (all?) grinders have a selector for the number of cups’ worth of coffee you want to grind, but they’re actually just timers, so you actually end up with an approximate amount. Because I never really knew how much variance there was, I couldn’t trust any of it, so I’d just grind a pile and use a measuring spoon to scoop out what I needed. That often meant that I would grind more than I needed right then, and if you’re not going to immediately brew what you’ve just ground, then why use beans in the first place, right?

Having the integrated scale solves that problem. I just LOVE being able to dial in how many cups I want, press the button, and then dump the entire container into the filter without a second thought. No measuring, no counting scoops, and no more leaving fresh grounds in the container! Plus, the way the scale works is quite clever: it always shows you how many cups’ worth are in the container. So, if you want more than what’s in the container, just dial it in a go, and it’ll never make more than what you selected.

I read several reviews where folks described this grinder as producing a lot of dust during grinding, as the chute and the container are not sealed together, leaving an air gap. Some of those reviews even included pictures, all of which appeared to have one thing in common: the dust looked more like tiny flakes rather than coffee grounds. Then I pondered the anatomy of a coffee bean, and guessed that what we were really looking as was maybe bits of the hull or outer skin, more specifically from a bean that might be a little on the dry side.

I’ve found that as long as we use fresh, high quality beans, we don’t have any dust at all. A couple of times, though, we found ourselves in a pinch and had to buy some mass-produced stuff off the shelf that had been there for who-knows-how-long, and that’s the stuff that caused the dust. Could this grinder have been designed a little better to prevent that? Absolutely. But the enjoyment I get from my coffee after using this machine, even with sub-par beans, far outweighs any such inconvenience.

One of the last features that I really appreciate is the trap-door hopper. With our old Cuisinart DBM-8, we had to remove the grounds container, then turn the entire machine upside-down to empty the beans before removing the hopper. Granted, it’s not very often that we’d even need to remove the hopper with it full of beans, so it wasn’t that big of an issue. But what makes having a trap door truly useful is that you can buy 

additional hoppers

 individually (for surprisingly cheap!) and store different beans in each one, making it easy to suit whatever you or your significant other might have a taste for.

However, I found that it’s possible for one silly little bean to get bound up in the spring-loaded trap and hold it open, causing the beans to spill out everywhere. And once you start to remove the hopper, should this situation occur, you can’t stop it! That’s only happened once, and we just laughed while scooping up the beans.

I have only one bone to pick with this machine: as well-designed and well-built as it is, I’m quite surprised that it came with a plastic container for the grounds rather than a glass one, which would have been great for reducing static buildup. However, this hasn’t been a big problem. If it does become a problem, it’s simple to swap out the plastic container with something else from the cupboard.

Overall, I’m extremely pleased with this machine (as with nearly every other OXO branded item I’ve ever owned), and I highly recommend it to all of my fellow coffee snobs!

Not sure what brought me back to this page (probably because I was checking out the Moccamaster) but I realize that I’ve had this grinder now for over 6 years and it’s still going strong. It definitely requires a thorough cleaning about once a year to keep it going. The build up of coffee oils can cause the bean hopper opening to become sticky and cause the beans to not drop into the grinder. This is usually an indicator that it needs to be cleaned. The entire hopper can be unscrewed and removed for cleaning. There is usually quite a bit of coffee ground residue stuck to the inside of the grind chamber as well at this point. I’ve used a chopstick to poke loose the, now packed, coffee grounds from the grinding chamber and pour them into the sink. This is a job best done over the sink or the loosened coffee will go everywhere.

I’ve never experienced the ‘chaff going everywhere’ issue that others have mentioned so I’ll consider myself luck on that front.

Things I like:
Built in scale and ability to dial in the number of cups of coffee and get the exact amount ground.
Easy adjustment of grind settings with visual indicators showing the type of grind (espresso, drip, french press)
Not quiet by any means by less noisy than my previous grinder
Wife approved

I previously had a Cuisinart burr grinder and this one beats it hands down. If and when this one dies, I’ll most likely get another.

Had an old blade grinder that died. Almost needed hearing protection when using. This is so much better. Very quiet. Easy to set up and use. Has option of grinding by weight. I am not that precise and grind by cups but that is a neat feature.