Video Overview | Baratza Sette 270 Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

Transcript

Hey, folks. It's Steve with Prima Coffee here, and today I've got the Baratza Sette 270. This is one of Baratza's newest entries to their grinder lineup. It's a complete rethinking of how they do grinders that's got a lot of really exciting features, so we're just going to dive right in here. Now, the first thing you'll probably notice is that the overall silhouette and shape of the grinder's very different from previous Baratza grinders. We have this whole 7 thing going on and now we actually have a straight path from the hopper down into your grinds bin or portafilter, whatever you want to catch your grinds in. And that's really important for a couple of reasons that we'll get to just a little bit later. Up top, I've got a 10-ounce shutoff hopper. If you've seen the shutoff hoppers, it's basically the same thing as the previous ones. You've got a little open and close key mechanism here, really convenient if you switch coffees often. You can just close it up, take it right off. You can clean out the inside, you can switch your coffees and save the beans without having a bunch of waste or having to grind a whole lot. It's just to clear out your hopper. It'll lock right back in. You can switch that over to open.

Baratza Sette 270 Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

Check it out!

Over 270 grind settings: 30 stepped macro settings plus a stepless micro adjustment range

Featured Product

Now, up front we have a control panel. Now, the Sette 270 is a time-based grinder. It has three presets. From factory, they're 10, 20 and 30 seconds, but you can set them to whatever you like. Under 10 seconds, you'll see it's actually got a resolution in 100ths of a second, but once you hit 10 seconds and you get to those double-digit numbers, you're going to have 10ths of a second increments, which is just fine, certainly, for grinding for drip coffee. We have a couple of different buttons down here. You saw me using the grind time up and down, very, very easy and obvious to use. We have play/pause that allows you to start and pause a grinding dose and then resume it or the stop, which actually resets the timer back to the original origin. If I want to, for example, change a dose, all I have to do is change the values, hold my preset button until the screen blinks, and now it's saved.

Now, we also have a brand new grindage estimate mechanism in here. We have 30 macro settings from espresso fine to somewhere near medium-coarse strip, and then down below we also have a first ever stepless micro adjustment. So it's hard to say exactly how many settings this has, Baratza estimates about 300, but because this is stepless, it's kind of near infinite in terms of the fine range. So you get a lot of adjustment, really great for espresso or even V60s or AeroPress brews, any time you're using those finer grind settings for your coffee. Down below we've got a BPA-free and anti-static grinds catch. This comes with the grinder, and we have an adjustable fork which allows you to use a portafilter and grind directly into it. So we have these two arms. All you have to do is push in on the right one and rotate it up or down. We have these adjustable little rubber pads. So if you have a smaller portafilter, it's really nice to have these. It'll accommodate 49 to up to 58 or 60 millimeter portafilters. So if you have a smaller one, like an older lever machine, you can actually grind directly into your portafilter. That's really convenient to have.

We also have this center fork. You just push it down to get it out of the way or get it actually where you need it for a portafilter, and you'll see it holds onto a portafilter quite nicely. And this center fork is adjustable. You actually get a wrench with the grinder. You can adjust it up or down, depending on where you need it. Obviously, every portafilter's going to be slightly different, so you can make sure there's a nice snug hold right on your portafilter. You'll also notice this is setup so the ejection cone is pretty much centered with that portafilter, so you're going to get a nice, even fluffy mound of grinds directly into the center of the basket, where you need it. Now, let's take a look at this burr set. I'm going to take out the whole burr carrier here. We have a 40 millimeter steel conical burr made by Etzinger, so it's a Swiss burr set. You'll notice, however, I just took out the center burr, which is not usually what happens with Baratza grinders or even most conical burr grinders in general, and that is because it is in fact the outer ring burr that spins in this grinder. That's very unique, brand new feature for Baratza grinders, and really exciting. So this center burr actually stays in place. It gets raised up and down, depending on what your grind setting is, and that actually means the Sette's going to grind a lot faster than most conical burr grinders and you're going to have a lot less retention.

That outer burr is very actively spinning coffee down and through the burrs. We have seen pretty much always less than two grams of retention for espresso. And for drip coffee, we see almost no retention whatsoever. It's pretty hard to detect anything at all. So you have this great, phenomenal, 40 millimeter burr set, a brand new grinding drive mechanism, a decent range of settings, mainly from espresso to those smaller drip coffees. Really phenomenal product here, although we would not really recommend it for French press, and even something like a Chemex might be a little iffy, depending on the coffee that you're using. It's probably going to be okay for smaller brews like 300 to 500 milliliters. Again, depending on the coffee that you're using, these burrs do produce a little bit of fines once they start getting coarser, so it might affect your drawdown times and cause a little bit of over-extraction. However, Baratza have begun to test out this, which is a new coarse burr. If you look at these, you can see there's a little bit of a difference in terms of the burr geometry. This one's just a little bit chunkier and, in fact, produces a little bit more even in the coarse grind settings.

Also included with the grinder, you'll find a wrench like this, which allows you to take off the burr just by giving a little twist. You can loosen it up, pop the burr off, and you'll see here I have two shims in place. You get two shims with the grinder and that allows you to grind a little bit coarser if you need it for espresso. The Sette does not actually have a calibration mechanism like previous grinders. So the way to calibrate your grind range is mainly by using these shims to buy you a little bit extra on your fine range if you need it. Out of the factory, you should be able to grind espresso decently well. But should you need a finer grind for certain machines, like a Slayer or something, chooses a lower flow rate or a lower pressure to extract, and you need a little bit more fineness in your range, you can add one or two shims, if you like, underneath the burr. So these coarse burrs do not come with a grinder. They're not currently released by Baratza. However, they're possibly on the way and we'll update you when we know a little bit more about those. Now, let's take a quick look at grinding. Again, because of that grind mechanism where the outer burr spins rather than the inner burr, we do get a lot of extra speed out of it. So I'm going to get this setup for espresso really quick here, just get my portafilter in place, and I'm going to set my grinder a bit finer, where I need it. I got a small dose of beans here. I'm not going to grind a full dose. I'm just going to give you a little example. So I'm going to hit play.

Now, a warning, this is a little bit louder than most of their other grinders, so I'm not going to talk while it's running. I'm going to hit the play, open up the chute, and you can see just what that grind looks like as it's coming out of the chute. All right, so if I take this off... I think I got it stuck on the back here. It's my fault, I think I stuck it on that rubber pad. Anyway, you can see you got a nice, fluffy, even grind, really no clumps at all. If I were to fill this back up to the proper 15 or 16 gram dose, it would be a nice readily tampable with minimal distribution kind of dose. Really, really great, we've been so impressed with the performance for espresso. It's just a phenomenal home grinder. It makes such a difference. Now, you'll also notice that that was really fast. I've probably got about maybe 10 to 12 grams in there. We found that even at espresso you can grind three, four, maybe five seconds for your whole dose, depending on how much coffee you're using. For an 18 to 20 gram dose, you're probably more on that five second side of things. And for drip, again, yeah, you're also looking at maybe 10 to 15 seconds for a dose for V60, so really, really fast. It is a little bit noisier but that noise is cut down just because of the grinding speed. Again, just so many new features, so much new going on, so many exciting developments in this Sette series. We're so impressed with where they've come, where Baratza has taken this series and can't wait to see more from them. So that is the Sette 270. Thank you for watching.