Rancilio Rocky Espresso Coffee Grinder

You're frustrated! Disillusioned! Stymied! All I want is a "Perfect Expresso" in my own kitchen. How difficult can this be? Want the answer? Read on.... 1. Ok, this Rocky simply blows my mind. What a fabulous & quiet coffee grinder. 2. First, I have to laugh at those who "complain" that their grinder isn't clean. There are coffee grinds in my machine they exclaim! Malarkey. Yes, there are fine remnants of ground beans on both the inside, the outside & the hopper. This is like complaining to a flood victim that your faucet is dripping...ha. As you go through the process of disking in your machine, you WILL get coffee grinds on your table, on your floor and on your hands...there will be coffee grinds everywhere. Good, you have been inoculated, read on. 3. Thank you Seattle Coffee Gear for FedExing my grinder with tons of Styrofoam fingerlings that protected my precious cargo. It arrived in a big box which the FedEx agent said, "there's a whole lot of something in this big box and a whole lot of nothing". Great packing job Seattle Coffee Gear. Kudos to you. Hat tip! 4. Do not fill up the hopper! The fine grain size can only be adjusted when the hopper & grinder are empty. You will thank me for this advice. 5. The two grinding surfaces have to be rezero'd when changing setting, relocating to someone else's house or having been sitting in storage. On an empty grinder, simply turn the setting back to zero then over to your desired setting number. 6. Do not change settings unless you empty your grinder of all loose beans AND have emptied the beans in the grinding chamber itself. Yes, that means after you lift and invert the entire machine, then you MUST run the machine to grind any beans located at the grinding heads. 7. Finally, a left handed coffee grinder! Woohoo! After decades of abuse for being left handed, Rancilio finally decided to make a machine to frustrate right handed people so that they can appreciate the plight of lefties. The grind button on at the bottom left face that can only be accessed with your left hand. Thank you Rancilio, thank you. So far there's two left handed only devices: the Rocky and the 1911! 8. The portafilter holder get in the way. Beats me how this is supposed to work. Holds the portafilter too high such that your mountain peak of grinds backs up inside of the elephant nozzolla that funnels the grinds from the machine to your portafilter. I hold the portafilter stationary with my right hand. 9. In my photo, please strain to see the finest setting of grounds adjacent to a brand new nickel (that's $0.05 cents to those outside the USA). Oh my god, the grinds feel like talcum powder. I'd never known that coffee could be ground this fine. I guess this is for Greek style coffee. Haven't got a clue what's Greek style coffee. I valiantly tried to take a photo to show you how microscopic the particles are as they sit on the face of a nickel. I'd be the first to admit that the talcum-like coffee clumps so it's really difficult to make out a single grind particle. If you strain your eyes to NOT look at the particles but rather at the empty spaces...look for dust! That's the ground size. Truly amazing. This is why the Rocky is such a fine instrument. Yes, I just compared a coffee grinder to a laser surgical tool! 10. I bought (and highly recommend) The Brim Expresso Machine. The reason that I bring this up is because it automatically sets the time an extraction. I previously did not have that feature on my machine. If you are not a PRO, then I will strongly suggest that you will be better off buying The Brim or similar Expresso Machine prior to buying a Rocky. Why? Because you need to reduce the number of adjustable variable...or you will drop to your knees in a puddle of tears when your heartfelt journey for the coffee chalis turns to total frustration. 11. Buy a stainless steel tamper. Again,to reduce variables, you must find ways to have seamless, easy consistency. Tricks like this are what it takes. 12. Buy a big bag of coffee beans...er, buy two bags. You will need them. A quick trick is to survey all of the dozen different types of beans in the grocery store hopper. Yes, do not buy prepackaged... You will see one or two that look glossy. That's oil. That's good. That's flavor. That's usually French or Italian roast. Buy it. 13. Another big, Big, BIG TIP! You need to reduce variables, so hunt for expresso machines that have a PRESSURE GAUGE. The Brim has two ranges on the gauge, one for beginners and one for you. :-) The beginner's range is a low range to be used for beginners who use the portafilter that only has a single needle sized hole at the exit where the extracted coffee flows out of the portafilter into your cup. The tiny single hole allows a neophyte to "automatically" pressurized the portafilter. This required BIGGER grind sizes and thus it is more forgiving for the beginner. What is the beginner looking for? The beginner is looking for a grain size: too big a grain and the expresso is watery without flavor and complexity; too small a grain size and the expresso is underextracted with the portafilter behaving as if it was a solid block of coffee with no interstitial spaces for the water to flow. 14. Bitter expresso. Bad. You know that you've done it. We ALL have. You want to be able to recognize bitterness. Bitterness is NOT a lack of sweetness or sugar. Train your taste buds to clearly recognize bitterness. 15. Perfect Expresso. Until you actually pull your FIRST PERFECT SHOT, you will think that all expresso is bitter. No, a perfect shot is actually sweet tasting...no really. Wax on...wax off! 16. Just to review, tamp at the same force, look at the pressure gauge, have an automatic timer built into your machine. Ok, now...let's go! Time to pull shots. This is when you are going to get grinds on the floor, grinds on your table, and grinds on your shoes. (Remember the complaints about a dusting of grinds on a new machine...ha, ha) 17. Goldilocks & the 3 Bears. One bed too hard and one bed too soft. Remember, you cannot change the grind number setting u less the beans have been emptied from not only the hopper(visible), but also the grinding plates(not visible). So, after emptying, you must run the machine (the left-handed machine if you've forgotten). 18. At first, I would save the "bad samples" because that was real money that bought those beans. Now, I throw it down the drain. So, will you...eventually. 19. If you haven't figured it out yet, that wonderful talcum powder feel of the coffee grounds will be too fine for "a perfect extraction". Sad but true. 20. I hope that you found this helpful as I learned it the hard way...perhaps, that's how learning is supposed to be? But it has been a 3 year random-walk journey through a game of thrones. Certainly, Rocky is an amazingly accurate tool with the power of a Samurai sword honed by a master swordssmith, refined through decades of use. Rocky is AMAZINGLY QUIET...stunningly so. I put this last so that you'd leave feeling the peaceful Zen of "the perfect expresso shot". Rocky is the best. Buy it! Buy it now! UPDATE: June 10, 2019 I never knew that the simple pleasure of extracting "The Perfect Expresso" would be as satisfying as discovering "The Holy Grail". I adjusted the grind size as follows: 8, 10, 20, 15, 12, 13. For my beans, 13 created a gorgeous crema...unlike any that I had previously ever seen in my kitchen. A truly momentous experience akin to reaching out and touching the face of God. Unbelievable...I am truly stunned! UPDATE: June 14, 2019 1. It just gets better and better. I believe that this is "The Best Italian Import" brought to the US. 2. Just when you think that you have mastered the perfect pull, you will find that you will want to make finely tuned adjustments to "the rate at which the pressure increases to optimal peak pressures". So, this is what I did and what you:re likely to do. Read on. You will change the grind setting by 1. Great so you do the expresso pull. It's good. So, you make another and it's "Too Fine" which makes the pressure rise too quickly and ultimately go much higher in peak pressure. You will also note that your expresso shot glass isn't as full because there was less total flow because the pressure was too high because the grind was too small. Why? Because you did not empty the grinder and there was a shots worth of grinds in the 90 degree plastic necked hopper and in between the 2 grinding surfaces. Correction: empty, then run the "left-handed" machine until completely empty. 2. As you may have gleaned from my sneaking it into my above comments, I highly recommend buying a glass expresso shot glass. It will be a visible alarm system for when things are subtlety changing but would have otherwise gone unnoticed. 2b. There are a number of glass expresso shot glasses on the market. All of mine just happen to be the insulating double walled type. In my humble opinion, your experience may differ, is that double walled insulating glasses DO NOT WORK. That is to say that the shot does not stay warmer any longer than without a double wall. 2c. These double walled insulating expresso shot glasses actually vary in capacity even if to my eye, they all more or less look the same. This morning, I poured water from one full shot into another and it was only 2/3rds full. 2d. So, if you are going for a pull based on X number of seconds, then your shot glass could mislead you into thinking you were either there or not there depending... Furthermore, if you have a self timed expresso machine that you (like me) haven't made any adjustments to the time because you were "wisely reducing variables", as on my wonderful Brim machine, then you would be "carefully calibrating your eyes" to how full the glass is when the pull is over. But if one glass varies from another by 2/3rds, then you have self created a misleading step in your repertoire. Consistency requires minimizing your variables. 2e. First, I cannot believe I got to 2e when referring to just a simple shot glass. But here is more for you to assimilate into your "wax on, wax off" practice. "Crema"! Crema will look different for each of the Goldilocks Cases. But if you use a non-transparent cup, then you'll be clueless. So, start using a glass expresso shot glass and watch how your skill improves. Really! 2f. If you are making expresso for yourself, then you can do this. Otherwise, you can figure a way. If you are making Americanos or Cappucinos or whatever...take a sip from your shot glass. Teach yourself to recognize the bitterness from an overkill. Again, your skills will improve greatly. 2g. Occasionally, just appreciate a perfect expresso...straight. You deserve it. You earned it. You are worth it. Enjoy.

I love coffee. Its a several times a day thing for me. I appreciate good beans and have learned that next to that the grinder is the item that brings out all that a bean can be. Most under $150 grinders cannot produce espresso grinds, and certainly cannot cover Turkish. Well welcome to the Rocky, a solid built tank of a grinder that delivers a knock out punch to any kind of coffee you want to make. From french press to Turkish, this grinder has you covered. Its solid built and will seeming last a lifetime. The pros: * Its built like a brick house, solid sturdy, and with high quality. You wont be buying another one again so consider it a good investment. * Low rpm motor wont heat the beans when grinding * Easy to access grind chamber for cleaning * its adjustable for any kind of grind you can think of (I don't agree with others that say no french press, its very capable of a course grind) * Fits under the counter, big but not unruly Cons: * You shell out $350 bucks to get this beast. * Some coffee remains in the grind chamber, so waste a little at the beginning of each grind to clean (discard) or tap the back of the unit at the end of the grind cycle to clear out old grinds. * Takes some experimentation to figure out the right setting for your machine, and that setting will change when you change beans to some degree. * Beans can get stuck in the screw holes inside the bean hopper. Silly but can be annoying. Remedied by flipping upside down or stuffing the holes with something. Id like to see Rancillo provide caps for this instead. If you are sick of replacing grinders every few years due to short lifespan, and want a machine that can make any type of grind, this is the one for you. And for the money, its best in class, some other Italian makers put you into the 500 price range and up.

I'vr had the Ranchilio Rocky grinder for a few months now; I researched all grinders within the same category/ price range and I believe this was the best choice overall. This model has been around a very long time and has been found to be reliable and sturdy. It does have its down falls but every product in this range does and the good outweighs the bad: It takes a little work to shift the grind to finer grade as there are two levers to be pressed simultaneously while also turning the hopper to adjust grind, one lever keeps the machine grinding at the bottom, front left side and the other is on the font top right side of hopper that releases the hopper for movement to adjust the grind so it's a little tricky; but it's doable, you don't need a another person's help as some state. You just hold down the top lever with the right lower palm of hand/ wrist area while grasping the hopper firmly with your fingers and move to desired location while having your left hand pressing the grind button below. I have small hands, petite and I can do it fine. Secondly, there are three hole with screws in the hopper burr cover that get filled with beans,making it a little more difficult to unscrew during maintenance; however I took care of this problem by simply covering the the holes with tape, just change tape when cleaning. It's a little loud as well but not annoying and it has not clogged on me yet which is of most importance; I use it daily, with different beans from oily to dry ones and it has been handling everything perfect. I do clean it all out about every 2-3 weeks.

No! I am definitely in love! I cannot express enough how much I love this grinder. I've owned a Krups grinder for the past year that I purchased from Starbucks for approx $180 and have worked it mercilessly - we prepare at minimum 5 pots of coffee per day and often more. As a result it is now of a past nature. While it was serviceable and did grind consistently in size and quantity, it definitely had its drawbacks the most irritating being the mess, mess, and more mess when emptying the ground coffee as the grounds reservoir is plastic and statically charged causing the grounds to cling to the edges/top/sides as well as fly around when emptying. It was also loud (loud enough to wake the house) and had a fairly small capacity resulting in the need to grind multiple batches if I needed to prepare a sufficient quantity for multiple pots of coffee. Finally, it had limited choices for grind levels (12). The combination of these factors resulted in my husband refusing to grind coffee unless it was an emergency (I wasn't available and coffee was needed, stat). Got my Rancilio today and I am already in love and then some. For those who care, it was delivered by FedEx 8 days after order including the Canada Day holiday, so probably will arrive in 7 days. It was carefully/securely packaged - interior cardboard box, packing peanuts, exterior cardboard box. The peanuts are the bio-degradable type made from vegetable starch. The unit is completely encased in a plastic bag within the interior box and well secured by cardboard baffles. It is ready for use once you've set the grind level (follow the simple instructions) and placement of bottom grounds plate that easily snaps in place. The portafilter can be readily removed to allow for larger canisters or your cone filter (or whatever you want to use to capture the ground beans) as it is a pressure fit. The hopper is a good size and stores sufficient beans such that you aren't having to decant them every time you want coffee. The unit is pleasing to the eye, fits readily onto any counter as it has a slim profile and will compliment any decor as it is smart/sleek in appearance. Rancilio calibrates the grinding burrs in the factory before sending to the customer so do know you will find coffee grounds in the bag surrounding the unit so you'll have to wipe the unit down with a damp cloth and brush to get all the grounds out of the crevices/seams (open on a counter that can be easily cleaned or put a tea towel or other catch cloth under it when opening the box). All of the prior is important and shows Rancilio manufactures a nice looking and cared-for product; but, the real factor of importance is how it works and boy, does it work! It is a quick, efficient, easy-to-use, and reasonably quiet unit that produces grounds of a uniform size. 40 settings are surely sufficient for even the most discerning of coffee-drinkers. I've spent the day refining the precise grind I prefer and after trying three settings I think I've found the sweet spot for my taste. I'll come back in a year and let you all know how the unit is holding up but have full confidence that, barring any unforeseen accident/household catastrophe, it will be happily fulfilling the family's coffee drinking needs for years to come. I cannot stress enough how much I'm in love with this grinder and, at this point, I'm sold on the unit's quality and even the price. Given my Krups only gave me a year's service at a cost of $180, all the Rancilio has to beat is two and a half years to work out the same. Based on the quality of manufacture/materials, I have every confidence it will be much more economical than the Krups over the longterm. Bottom line/TL;DR - if you're a coffee-drinking fiend, buy it, you'll love it.

Consistent and finely adjustable. Build quality is really high. Comes covered in coffee grinds, but that's noble dust. ^_^ When my current espresso machine craps out (and they do every couple of years), I will certainly be looking into getting Rancilio espresso machine. Color me impressed.

I bought this grinder as a replacement for my Baratza Virtuoso, which stopped working for the second time (after getting the first one replaced under warranty). The Rancilio Rocky is also a deeply flawed machine, and once I finally got past the sunk-cost fallacy I was finally able to admit to myself that it was time to let it go and get a new grinder. I lived with the constant frustration of this machine for about three years, but like any bad relationship I’m finally ready to part ways. Problem number one: the opening from the burr set to the coffee chute is so small that ground coffee will inevitably clog the machine and you’ll have to invert it or smack your hand against the side of the machine. This happens EVERY SINGLE %#*#! TIME you grind coffee. It’s too much aggravation to face first thing in the morning. Secondly, when you want to clean the burrs, the top burr is threaded so finely it’s incredibly easy to cross thread it. In fact, it seems to want to cross thread more readily than to thread properly. This was ultimately what made me give up on the grinder altogether. I simply couldn’t get the burr to thread properly and ended up slicing open my finger on the sharp edges of the machine.

I've had this thing for a bit over a year now. Overall for the money I think this machine is worth it because of the build quality and overall grind consistency. I'd still choose it given what I know now. This thing is heavy duty and all the important parts are made of metal. I've noticed that other brands around this price range still have major plastic parts like plastic gears that wear out a lot faster. The company provides a lot of support as well and you can get replacement parts relatively easily if you do need it. However the machine isn't without its gripes and does have at least one glaring con. If the cons are what you care about then I wouldn't recommend this to you. Overall it grinds well and is well built so if those are important to you then I'd definitely recommend it. Cons: 1. The biggest gripe with this machine is it retains a TON of coffee in the chute and grinding chamber. I've been able to remedy this by using a "silicone stretch lid" over the hopper. I just push the stretch lid and the air pressure pushes all the remaining coffee out. This is an issue ALL burr style coffee grinders but not to this degree. 2. The process of removing the burrs is quite annoying. Keep in mind every type of burr grinder needs to be cleaned every so often. In this grinder you need to remove the hopper and the screw placement/design is a bit poor which makes it harder than necessary. The screw holes are the perfect size for coffee beans to get stuck in which make it difficult to take apart. Other burr grinders just have an easier mechanism for getting to the burrs. 3. No special features. At this price point a lot of even cheaper grinders have more features like timers or even scales built in. 4. Grind setting is stepped and hopper must be empty to change settings. For me this is not a big deal because I've found a good grind setting and I don't leave the hopper full when I use it. Some people who really want to spend time to fine tune a specific grind size may not like this. Pros: 1. The grind itself is quite consistent and it grinds at a very good pace. It does a good job of what it is intended to do. 2. All internal components are built to last forever. This price point may seem like a lot but it was the cheapest grinder I could find in my area that has this level of all metal build quality. All the other grinders that I saw even in this price range had plastic gears. Most grinders I saw with similar build quality were almost double in price. 3. The machine is simple with no interface. This is also on the cons but it also means that there's nothing to break. It's has a grind button and an on/off switch meaning there's no complicated interface to learn. Note: I feel like I should mention this fact as it happened to me but I doubt it is a regular thing. I actually had to buy this coffee grinder twice. The first one I got looked like someone at the factory dropped it from the second floor window. The box it came in was undamaged which is why I say it was from the factory. There are heavy duty thick metal clips for the front plate (looks like forged steel) and they were completely cracked. However, I'd also like to mention that I was able to get a full refund from the company once I provided some pictures. So their customer service did have me covered which is great.

I love this machine so much, i bought it because of all the positive reviews on the internet and wanted something in my house with quality grind capable of handling corse and even go up to expresso (and everything in between). The machine itself is beautiful and is heavy because of the strong motor inside. Burs can be switched if ever.. this company is also very well known, no noobie here. Highly recommended. Some friend asked me about the price, i think it is okay. I asked him how much his bread maker or mixer costed and it's pretty comparable for something similar quality. A+