Braun Aromatic KMM30 Espresso Machine & Coffee Maker

If you have been reading reviews on this grinder, then you have probably noted that there is a "love it or hate it" kind of attitude about it. I'm not sure it's quite that simple, though. Braun's long running grinder is, if anything, misunderstood. Many folks buy it with the expectation that it will perform as well as the high end conical grinders, and those people will surely be disappointed. This grinder is not, I repeat, not to be compared with such heavy weights as Baratza's Virtuoso. It is a class unto itself.

What makes the KMM30 unique, and perhaps special, in its standing among budget end electric burr grinders is that its design is essentially identical to many high end espresso grinders. Huh? No way (yeah, way!). Don't believe me? Remove the grounds receptacle, turn the grinder so that the chute opening faces you, an dimagine a small downspout on the front of the chute. Of course, most cheap flat burr grinders are based in part on espresso grinders; they have flat burrs. But, the Braun is different from its counterparts.

The "precision milling system" actually does work pretty well on this grinder. Yeah, all these cheap grinders say that they use a "precision milling system", but the Braun really works. Unfortunately, and for some odd reason I cannot quite determine, it produces a lot of dust. The ground coffee is made up of very uniform, evenly sized particles, and dust. Dang! Well, not to fret; there's a built in fix for this. Yes, being made with a sturdy ABS plastic housing produces static. And this static causes the majority of fines to cling to the inside of the grounds receptacle just opposite the output chute. So all you have to do is carefully scrape this mound of dust into the wastebin. But, sometimes there will be so much static that when you remove the lid, grounds will literally fly out, swirling around like a cloud of gnats.

The only real negative I find with this product is the amount of noise it produces. The static and the fines are easy to get around; the noise not so. It's loud; really, really loud. Actually, it's not quite as noisy as Cuisinart's newest introduction to the market, the CBM-18. And I'm not just talking about decibel levels here. This grinder makes a high pitched whirry, crunchy kind of sound; almost as though the coffee beans were alive, and screaming in agony. So plan on lots of complaints from your better half if you wake up an hour earlier and make the coffee.

Many users have commented on the difficulty cleaning this grinder. If you go to http://www.coffeecrew.com/gear/294-a-years-worth-of-grime and you can see a pretty detailed instructional on disassembling the KMM30. It can be done. But, the first one of these I ever had, I used for several years without any such cleaning. Eventually, the coffee tasted pretty bad, but years of daily use with no cleaning didn't seem to effect the operation.

And that's the real plus with this grinder; its durability. It's noisy, static laden, and kind of a pain to clean. But, it will outlast many of the higher priced grinders. Actually, I have one that I always had to pull out to use when ever one of my high priced concical burr grinders bit it. So, I finally began just using the Braun full time again. For forty bucks, it's really hard to beat this thing.