Eureka Mignon Specialita review

The Eureka Mignon Specialita is a hopper-fed, all-purpose (at least technically) grinder from Italian manufacturer Eureka. It’s designed with home enthusiasts and even small-scale commercial brewers in mind and, as such, comes with a range of handy features to suit, from a touchscreen dose timer, to low retention and 55mm flat burrs for consistent grinding within and across shots. 

The Mignon Specialita is just one model in the expansive Mignon lineup, alongside other variants tailored to different brewers and methods. While it’s touted as all-purpose by Eureka, though, the Specialita is much happier for those predominantly brewing via a single method.

To find out why, and whether this could be the best coffee grinder for you, read my full Eureka Mignon Specialita review.

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Price & availability

The Eureka Mignon costs a whopping $649 at Amazon in the U.S., reflecting the fact that these grinders are shipped in small quantities from Italy. If you’re in the U.K. or Europe, this is priced as a mid-range grinder, costing £499 from Amazon although available for significantly cheaper from third parties — you can easily pick one up for around £369. 

Eureka makes numerous other Mignon varieties, however, including single-dose, silent and all-purpose-brew varieties. There’s even the Eureka Mignon Libra ($799), which doses by weight — very handy for commercial ventures grinding high volumes of the same beans. The Specialita counts as an all-purpose grinder, which it technically is. However, it’s heavily geared towards espresso, as we’ll cover later, and is aimed more towards the home enthusiast market.

The Specialita is available in a huge variety of standard and special colors, from subtle and subdued to bold and vibrant, so you can tailor your grinder to your coffee station’s surroundings.

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Design

The Mignon lineup all feature the same striking and characteristically Italian design: an elegant tall box with a Lois Griffin nose protruding out of the front, which houses the control touchscreen and ground chute. Certain colorways feature chrome accents running down the corners, although I prefer the sleek matte black of our test model. At the top of the Specilita sits a square hopper for storing beans, although in the single dose versions, this is replaced by a dosing funnel and bellows.

Build quality is fantastic — the grinder is clearly intended to serve you faithfully for many years. All removable elements such as the hopper and top panel covering the burrs are screwed into place, with the latter being stowed under a removable Eureka logo on the rear of the grinder so as not to disturb the body’s elegant profile with an ugly screw head.

The exterior is full metal, which I much prefer over the plastic finish of the KitchenAid Burr Coffee Grinder. This also gives the Specialita a distinct heft, while adding a welcome amount of stability given the Mignon’s tall profile. That same lankiness, however, ensures that the grinder takes up relatively little counter space, so it should fit easily into even compact coffee stations.

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Grind adjustment

The Specialita is stepless, and its adjustment dial has a long throw (distance between upper and lower points) which will turn fully three times. This gives you a huge amount of control over grind consistency, which is great for finely tuning your dial-in.

The adjustment dial has 6 grind-level markations (0-5), with half-stops also denoted, to help you keep track of where you’re dialed into. However, the fact that the dial can turn more than once means the markations don’t really mean much unless you know roughly how far away you are from the highest or lowest burr settings. If you’re grinding for one brew type only, your adjustment will rarely change radically enough for this to be a problem — usually only when swapping between beans with wildly different processing/washing/roasting methods. The long dial throw will make it rather tricky, though, to regularly swap between different preparation methods, such as filter and espresso — you’ll need to keep a note of how many turns you need to get back and forth between different methods.

If you want a grinder for switching back and forth between various preparation methods, the Mignon Perfetto’s adjustment dial has a shorter throw, allowing every single grind increment between open and closed to be achieved within a single 360-degree turn, with respective notations on the dial. This allows you to quickly shift between grinds for various preparation methods, at the sacrifice of fine control.

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Performance

Underneath the top plate of the grinder sit a set of 55mm hardened steel flat burrs, which produce very little static and clumping. Oilier beans are naturally still susceptible to some minor clumping, but nothing serious, and I haven’t needed to perform any anti-clumping rituals in the portafilter during long term testing.

Grounds are very even intra-dose, with a decent level of uniformity, and the grinder is highly consistent between doses, with only marginal adjustments to grind necessary throughout a batch of beans to account for the various factors that naturally affect beans as they age.

The Specialita is a very low retention grinder, so while it holds back a small amount of grounds in the burrs and chute, it isn’t enough to affect your next dose after a grind adjustment — at least for a double shot. This means changes to your grind are effectively instantaneous and dialling in with the Specialita is exceedingly easy. That said, low retention isn’t no retention, and single dosers will definitely want to look instead at Eureka’s below version of the Mignon, the Eureka Zero.

One of my main issues with the Specialita’s performance is its chute, which delivers grounds at quite a high angle. This is easily fixable with a portafilter dosing funnel, but that’s an extra spend, so it’d have been nice to see a lower delivery angle to prevent messy worktops.

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Extra features

Front and center of the Specialita is a touchscreen display, which allows you to set the timing for both single and double shot doses. You’ll need a set of scales to ensure your timed doses are delivering your desired quantity of grounds, but once you’re dialed in, the dose timing allows plenty of fine tuning thanks to 0.1 second adjustment increments. You can also lock the screen with a double finger tap on the lower buttons, which is handy for stopping accidental changes to your dosage. Continuous dispensing is also possible, if you need to grind a large volume.

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There’s also a removable fork that sits below the dose button, for hands-free grinding, although this doesn’t fit my relatively tall Sage/Breville 54mm portafilter and seems designed for wider 58mm commercial portafilters. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue, though: anyone using a Breville machine, like myself, almost certainly isn’t in enough of a rush that they can’t hold the portafilter for 10 seconds; anyone who is in a rush using the grinder commercially use will likely be using a flatter portafilter anyway.

At the base of the bean hopper is a plastic tongue, which can be slid into place to stop beans entering the burrs, which is super useful when changing beans.

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Maintenance

The Eureka Mignon Specialita is relatively easy to keep maintained. As a low retention grinder, minor servicing will get you through long spells, and all you’ll really need to do is remove the top panel via a single screw, dust off the burrs with a brush, then blow some air through the burrs and chute.

Every so often, a major service will be required, which is also relatively easy. The top burr comes away with a couple more screws, giving you access to the open burrs for cleaning or replacement. 

Eureka Mignon Specialita review: Verdict

The Eureka Mignon Specialita is a fantastic coffee grinder, particularly if you only stick to a single preparation type. Its long-throw stepless adjustment dial and 0.1-second dose timing allow for a high level of control. Meanwhile, 55mm flat burrs, negligible clumping and low retention allow for a consistent grind both within and between dosing. It’s built like a tank, too, yet small enough to fit easily into already cramped worktops.

It isn’t without its issues, though, albeit all relatively minor. The Mignon Specialita’s chute is angled quite high and easily causes mess, so you’ll want to add a dosing funnel to your wishlist, too. If you want to switch between multiple brew types, you’ll also want to look for a grinder with a shorter adjustment throw, such as the Mignon Perfetto, and if you single dose, definitely look into Eurela’s bellow model, the Eureka Zero. Finally, if you’re in the U.S., you might find the Mignon Specialita difficult to buy and rather expensive. All that said, if you can get your hands on one, I highly doubt you’ll regret it: for most, the Mignon Specialita will be the only grinder you’ll ever need.