Brioso Grind X review: grind quality you can taste, retention you cannot ignore

The grinder matters more than the machine. This is the least popular true statement in home espresso, because grinders are expensive and boring and a machine looks like something.

8.2%

Fines below 100 micron

Class average: 12.4%

1.4g

Retention per dose

11s

To grind 18 g

Particle distribution

We sieve a 50 g sample through a five-stage stack and weigh each fraction. Fines — the material below 100 micron — are what cause channelling and bitterness; a narrow distribution with few fines is the entire reason to spend money on a grinder.

Test	Result	Class average
Fines below 100 micron	8.2%	12.4%
Peak particle size	340 micron	355 micron
Mass within 100 micron of peak	71%	58%
Dose consistency, 10 pulls	0.3 g	0.6 g
Retention per dose	1.4 g	0.9 g

50 g of medium roast at espresso setting, five-stage sieve stack, three samples averaged. Reference is the mean of four 58-64 mm grinders between $250 and $400.

Seventy-one per cent of the mass falling within 100 micron of the peak is a very good result, and it is audible in the cup: extractions are more even, and the range of grind settings that produce a drinkable shot is noticeably wider. On a Piccolo E1 the pairing is excellent.

Retention, and who it hurts

One point four grams stays in the chute after every dose. That coffee is not lost — it comes out at the start of the next grind — but it means the first 1.4 g of your morning espresso is yesterday’s coffee.

If you drink one roast, week in and week out, this is invisible. If you buy 250 g bags of different coffees and taste through them, it is a constant, small contamination, and the only fix is to purge a few grams every time you change.

Brioso does not ship a bellows or a blind tumbler, either of which would help. A third-party bellows costs about $15 and drops retention to roughly 0.6 g in our testing, which is the first thing we would buy alongside it.

Everything else

Eleven seconds for an 18 g dose at 72 dBA — fast and loud, roughly in line with the class. The stepless collar has about 90 degrees of usable range across espresso, which is enough resolution to dial in without hunting.

Static is the one build complaint beyond retention: with light roasts in a dry kitchen, grounds cling to everything. A drop of water on the beans before grinding solves it entirely and is what we did for the last six weeks.

The verdict

At $299 the burr performance is unmatched, and the retention is the price of it. Budget another $15 for a bellows and this becomes very hard to argue with.