The Breville Dose Control Pro is one of the most divisive coffee grinders — here’s why I disagree with the haters

Very few coffee gear brands are as well known as Breville/Sage, and the Dose Control Pro grinder is one of the most famous (or infamous) grinders out there. But all discourse aside, I actually think the Dose Control Pro is one of the best coffee grinders out there.

Other users have reported issues like excessive clumping and retention, but I experienced none of that, as I’ll get into in the meat of this review. I love how easy the Dose Control Pro is to use, and I’ll gladly announce it as one of the best beginner-friendly coffee grinders.

If you’re a specialty coffee newbie, the Dose Control Pro could be the perfect grinder for you. It’s a one-touch, simple, and user-friendly grinder that won’t have you pulling your hair out over the instruction manual.

While $159 might seem like a large amount of money, this is a surprisingly low price for an espresso-capable coffee grinder. I’ll go through everything in detail in this Breville / Sage Dose Control Pro grinder review.

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Cheat sheet

• Who is it for? Coffee newbies, definitely
• What does it do well? It’s beyond easy to use and grinds with no sweat, tears, or rage
• What does it cost? Very cheap for a grinder: $159 / £169
• What are its weaknesses? It isn’t as uniform as other grinders

Breville Dose Control Pro: Specs

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Price & availability

Breville and Sage are the same brand: in the U.S., it’s called Breville, and in the U.K., it’s called Sage. So in the U.S., it’s Breville Dose Control Pro, available for $159 from Amazon U.S.. In the U.K., it’s Sage Dose Control Pro, available for £169 from Amazon U.K..

For a coffee grinder, this is a relatively low price. I’ve tested the Baratza Encore ESP, which is $199, and even that is classed as budget. Espresso-capable grinders can go for close to 2 grand, for example the Acaia Orbit which is priced from $1,450-$1,700.

Sage/Breville also makes the Smart Grinder Pro ($199), which has a customizable shot size button and an LCD screen. As the Smart Grinder Pro has more specific dosing time and a screen for easier use, it could be better for complete beginners. However, mechanically both Breville/Sage grinders are exactly the same.

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Design

As with most of Breville/Sage’s range, the Dose Control Pro is gorgeous. The silver exterior looks like stainless steel, but it’s mostly plastic. Regardless, the Dose Control Pro still looks pretty good and will make a fine companion to any Breville espresso machine, like the Breville Bambino Plus.

The grinder is too big to fit inside a kitchen cabinet, but it looks good on the counter, so what’s the problem?

My favorite design aspect of the Dose Control Pro is the removable tray for easy cleanup. Instead of trying to wipe out every grain of coffee, all I had to do was remove the tray and knock it into the trash to clean up after use. There’s also a distinct lack of static, which makes overall cleanup easier than ever.

The Dose Control Pro has a button to, well, control the dose. Turning this button increases/decreases the grinding time, which will in turn dose the desired amount of coffee (obviously you’ll need a rough idea of what that timing corresponds to in weight of ground coffee, which will vary based on bean, roast and grind level). This button lights up when the grinder is turned on, which I liked.

Above the grinding chute is the hopper, which you rotate to select your grind — but more on that in the ‘Grind adjustment’ section below. When you actually grind, there are two sets of portafilter collars that clip onto the underside of the chute, which is a really nice touch. You can customize the grinder to whatever brewing method you want. The collars are for 54mm (Sage/Breville espresso machines) and also 58mm (more common in higher-end machines), so the Dose Control Pro is compatible with non-Breville/Sage espresso machines.

Speaking of grinding, the Dose Control Pro has two stainless steel burrs. One is a stationary conical burr that sits in the bottom of the hopper, and the other is a burr ‘ring’ you can customize the grind size even further with. I'll discuss that more in the ‘Grind adjustment’ selection below, though.

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Grind adjustment

Grind adjustment on the Dose Control Pro grinder is definitely one of the easiest aspects of using this grinder. To change grind size, all you do is rotate the hopper until the triangle points at your desired grind number.

I think even first time coffee grinder users will be able to master this in seconds — there are even markings on the hopper telling you what size for what brewing method. In practice, this makes adjusting the grind size for different brewing methods and bean roasts blindingly easy. Other grinders I’ve used (the Eureka Mignon Specialita) have hidden rotations so you can’t easily change the grind. The Dose Control Pro is 100% visual and beginner friendly.

There are 60 ‘clicks’ on the hopper, ranging from espresso fine to coarse. The Dose Control Pro is a stepped grinder, which means it has a pre-defined amount of ‘clicks’ between burrs. Stepless grinders are a bit more complex, and they have an infinite amount of ‘clicks’ so you can get super specific grind sizes. However, this is unnecessary for most people.

There’s also an extra grind adjustment on the top burr. Out of the box, this top burr is set to ‘6’, but you can adjust this to ‘1’ (finest) or ‘10’ (coarsest). You have to take off the metal handle and twist the burr so a number aligns with the red mark.

As ‘6’ is default, I did all my testing on that setting. However, when I put the top burr to the finest, it still didn’t grind smaller than 300 microns. Turkish coffee requires no bigger than 220 microns.

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Performance

To analyze the efficiency of the Dose Control Pro, I evaluated it against a set of parameters: ease of use, static, clumping, uniformity, and retention. Here I’ll discuss all my results.

Ease of use

Where the Dose Control Pro truly excels is its ease of use. This would be the perfect first grinder: it’s completely hands-off, unlike more specialist equipment like the Comandante C40 MK4, which is definitely more reliant on previous knowledge.

Using the Dose Control Pro is as easy as this: simply put beans in the hopper, rotate the hopper to your desired grind size (which are handily labeled on the grinder itself), choose your grind time, and press go.

It’s truly as simple as that. Obviously personal tastes differ, so I still had to experiment with exact grind numbers to find my perfect grind for each bean and brewing method. However, thanks to the easy stepped burr adjustment, this was simple to do.

The Dose Control Pro also has portafilter holders ranging from 50-58mm, which hold your portafilter in place during dosage for mess-free use. For those grinding for French Press or pour-overs, the removable tray fits a range of containers, or you could even grind straight into the filter itself. I ground into a small glass jar and a normal bowl during testing.

Speaking of the removable tray, this is ideal for easy cleanup. I cleaned up by removing the tray and angling it over the bin. This removable tray is definitely one of the best parts of the Dose Control Pro grinder, and sets it apart from the Baratza Encore ESP ($199) I tested recently.

Static & clumping

Although lots of the discourse around Breville/Sage’s grinders criticizes its excessive retention, I actually experienced none of that. Obviously clumping will depend on how humid your house is or how oily your coffee is, but my dark roast coffee and U.K. springtime weather resulted in little clumping.

There was also very little static and clumping while I was testing the Dose Control Pro.

As you can see, there’s very little static coffee stuck to the sides of the grinder. Thanks to the removable tray, I was able to clean up in seconds. While the Baratza Encore ESP grinder might have better uniformity, it generated a lot of static and required a decent amount of post-use cleaning.

In terms of clumping, there was also very little.

This picture shows a jar full of coffee immediately after grinding. There are very few clumps, which I love to see on a budget grinder. Obviously true espresso aficionados will see this photo and say a WDT (the needle distribution tool used to create an even espresso texture) is mandatory, but for the everyday person, this clumping is fine.

Static and clumping (or lack of) gets a big thumbs up from me here.

Uniformity

Arguably the most important aspect of any coffee grinder is uniformity. This basically means, how consistent are the sizes of ground coffee? If I am grinding for espresso (fine grind), are there any anomalies in grind size?

If you’re brewing pour-over or high-quality espresso, you need a consistent grind to achieve the best flavor profile. Smaller grounds will hold onto water and become over extracted, leaving a bitter, unpleasant taste. Conversely, larger grounds will let water pass through without extracting the coffee’s goodness and result in a weak drink.

Therefore, you’re looking for a very uniform grind that has big jumps from fine to coarse — I’m looking for something akin to 0% 300μm and then 95% 500μm for optimum uniformity.

As you can see, the ‘0’ and ‘10’ results are utterly bizarre. I repeated the ‘0’ grind tests three times because I was so baffled. Even so, I got similar results every single time. Why? Why is the finest setting not as fine as setting 10?

I put this down to particularly brittle or stiff beans, but even when I repeated with new beans, I still got the same results. I’d put this strange result down to there’s such a thing as the burrs being too close, and I’d recommend settling on 5 or 10 for fine espresso.

The uniformity isn’t majorly impressive here: the Comandante C40 managed to jump from 1% to 99% on multiple occasions. While the uniformity isn’t the best of the bunch, for just $159, a little inconsistency can be forgiven.

Retention

One of the most important aspects of a coffee grinder is its retention. Usually, the more premium a coffee grinder, the less it will retain between uses.

To test the Dose Control Pro’s retention, I weighed out 20g of coffee on my Acaia Lunar scale. Then I ground the coffee medium-fine and weighed how much the Dose Control Pro ground. I repeated this three times, cleaning out the burrs each time.

I was expecting much more retention: the Dose Control Pro is infamous in the coffee world for excess retention. Comparatively, the Baratza Encore ESP’s average retention was 1.55%, and the Wacaco Exagrind hand grinder retained 2.5%.

In the grand scheme of things, 2.15% retention isn’t that bad, and as you can see, two of my test processes only retained 0.1g — an infinitesimally small amount.

However, I will note that when I was cleaning out the burrs after my initial uniformity tests, there were a few chunks of half-ground coffee beans spat on the upper side of the top burr. This means that there’s a bit of movement during grinding, and some beans don’t make it through the burrs at all.

Even so, this didn’t happen enough to actually negatively affect any of my brewing processes.

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Storage & maintenance

At 13 inches tall, the Dose Control Pro isn’t exactly the most compact kitchen appliance on the market. Even so, it’s still relatively easy to keep on a kitchen countertop.

If, like me, you’ve got a really small kitchen, I’d recommend getting a bean to cup espresso machine (if it’s within your budget, of course) to save space. I personally use and love my De’Longhi La Specialista Opera, which has a built-in grinder.

Breville offers a 1-or-2 year warranty in the U.S. and Sage offers 2 year warranty in the U.K.. Breville also sells a range of replacement parts on its U.S. site and Sage sells the same variety of replacement parts on Sage U.K., although there don’t seem to be any majorly important parts like screws, replacement conical burrs, or the like.

Breville Dose Control Pro review: Verdict

The Breville/Sage Dose Control Pro is a simple, foolproof grinder that will impress newbies right out of the box. That’s not to say it’s a dumbed-down grinder — not at all. It has minimal retention and very low clumping in my tests (regardless of what espresso enthusiasts claim), and to top it all off, it’s just so darn easy to use.

The uniformity isn’t as good as something like a Comandante or a Eureka Mignon Specialita, however, for beginners, I think it’s absolutely fine. If you’re a specialty coffee enthusiast, I’d recommend something a little more sophisticated like a Comandante C40.

Pour-over aficionados might want to skip this, as delicate brews like a Hario V60 need complete uniform grounds, but for espresso, French Press, and AeroPress drinkers, I think the Dose Control Pro is a winner for beginners. And it’s just $159? Breville knows what it’s doing with this grinder.