Despite the fact that I do it every day, I don’t really like grinding coffee. It’s loud, it’s messy, and even though it’s absolutely just as important as whatever brewing ritual I choose to engage in on any particular morning, I find the whole rigmarole a little annoying. Unfortunately for me, a well-measured, freshly ground dose of beans is the difference between something delicious and something that tastes like airplane coffee. So I take my grinding seriously. And I’ve found no better partner for my daily grind than Mazzer’s Philos.
Make no mistake: This is not a normal home coffee grinder. It’s a quasi-commercial piece that looks and feels like something you’d find at a small coffee shop.
What is the Mazzer Philos and how does it work?
The Philos is the first single-dose grinder from the storied, more-than-75-year-old Italian company. For those unfamiliar with high-end coffee grinders, single-dose grinders require you to put in exactly the amount of coffee you intend to use—typically measured by weight (somewhere between 18 and 21 grams for a double shot of espresso). It sounds like extra work, but using a single-dose grinder is actually the best way to keep your coffee fresh, because you can keep all the coffee you haven’t used yet under seal and protected from oxygen that can ruin its flavor.
The Philos is remarkably versatile, capable of grinding for every brewing method you might want to use, which is not always the case. Some higher-end home espresso grinders are calibrated specifically for espresso and produce mediocre results for pour-over or French press. The Philos has 130 settings that make six-micron adjustments, meaning the distance between the burrs moves six microns at a time. (For context, less expensive, mass-market grinders often have adjustment settings that are anywhere from two to five times as large.)
Most of my espresso brewing happened between settings 30 and 36, though online coffee forums are full of users going much finer, and the Philos manual recommends anywhere from 10 to 40. The massive number of settings allows for subtle adjustments to extraction and flavor based on different types of coffee beans, different roasts, and different tastes. And those settings span the entire brewing spectrum, from espresso to cold brew.
How does it compare to other coffee grinders?
When I’ve tested and covered coffee grinders for BA over the years, I generally set a price cap of $400 for what I’d recommend to a typical coffee drinker. That’s because most people will get everything they need from a moderately priced grinder, and you’d need to be particularly intense about your coffee drinking to justify paying three times as much. But those people absolutely exist. And for them, a grinder like the Philos represents a difference in kind, not just degree, from cheap and mid-priced burr grinders.
First, compared to grinders like Fellow’s Opus and Baratza’s Encore ESP, the Philos uses bigger, better burrs. Because of their large surface area, the 64mm flat burr sets can produce a quicker, more even grind, which serves as the base for better flavor extraction. Not everyone will notice a substantial difference, but in several rounds of side-by-side tasting using the same dose of the same beans, I consistently got fuller-bodied, sweeter shots of espresso from the Philos than from the Opus.
The Philos also has that “buy it for life” quality that anything this pricey ought to have. The motor and body are more durable than what you can get in a less expensive grinder. And in a home kitchen where the grinder only gets used a few times a day, it has the feel of something that will run cleanly for more than a decade.
What I liked
The Philos is a beast of a machine; at 28 pounds, it weighs almost as much as my four-year-old. But for such a big, powerful grinder, it’s shockingly quiet. Think automatic pencil sharpener instead of a wood chipper.
The other standout feature is its grind retention, which refers to how much coffee gets caught in the burrs or chute and left behind. Low grind retention is impressive, but in my weeks using the Philos, I found it has zero grind retention. Dose after dose, I’d put 18.8 grams in, and 18.8 grams would come out. 20.0 grams in, 20.0 grams out. I made the grind coarser for drip coffee, and even with as much as 51 grams of coffee in it, the Philos spit out exactly 51 grams. Consistent, low grind retention is key for a single-dose grinder because it ensures that every dose is the same. And, brewing espresso is an activity in which there’s a meaningful difference between using 17.5 grams of coffee and 18.7 grams of coffee. So if you lose even a gram of coffee in your grinder, you can get a very different shot of espresso.
The Philos’ versatility is also important. Unless you own a coffee shop, a grinder this expensive should be the only coffee grinder you own. The fact that it works just as well for pour-over as it does for espresso, and it only takes three seconds to twist a dial to switch between those modes, is a huge plus.
Finally, this is one of the easiest grinders to clean I’ve tried. The burrs slide right out the front to brush out, which also makes them easy to swap should you want to. Mazzer makes two sets of burrs for the Philos, designed to produce different flavor profiles: the 200D (which I use) is better for lighter roast coffees, and the 189D is better for darker roasts.
What I didn’t like
The Philos produces sublime ground coffee, but you will have to give up significant counter space to use it. It will fit under a typical kitchen cabinet but takes up almost the whole counter from back to front. If you aren’t willing to devote serious real estate to your coffee setup, you’ll have issues with this grinder. Then again, if you aren’t willing to give over serious real estate to your coffee setup, you may not be the sort of person who should invest in a Philos anyway.
Should you buy a Philos?
The Mazzer Philos is not for every coffee drinker. It’s not even for every person who owns an espresso machine. This is a $1,400 piece of equipment for someone who has spent time with whatever coffee brewing ritual they like best and is ready to take it to the next level. And if that describes you, the Philos might be the best upgrade you’ve made to your coffee cabinet in years. It has been for me.
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Originally published at Bon Appetit
