Today we’re looking at the All Ground coffee grinder by Fiorenzato made in collaboration with Sanremo. It’s a 64mm flat burr grinder that promises great espresso and filter coffee. It currently retails from £739 up to £899 on our website. So, let’s dive into the grinder, all of it’s features and quirks, to help you decide if it’s the right grinder for you.
Before we get started, make sure to check out our review of the Mahlkonig X54 we posted last week. We’ll be putting these two grinders up against each other in a head-to-head video, so make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss out on our latest videos.
The Grinder’s History
So Fiorenzato are an Italian company that have been going since 1936 making coffee grinders for both commercial and domestic use. As far as I am aware the All Ground was first released in 2021, and they have since partnered up with Sanremo to release a new range of colours that perfectly match the sanremo cube espresso machines.
Other than the differences in colours, the Sanremo and Fiorenzato grinders are in all other ways identical to eachother.
Technical Specifications
The All ground features 64mm steel flat burrs with a titanium coating made in house by Fiorenzato themselves. They have stated that the burrs are able to produce a bimodal grind distribution, with a good amount of fines at the espresso range for syrupy and complex shots, whilst having a more uniform grind size at the coarser end for improved clarity and acidity in filter coffees. We’ll dive into how the coffees have been tasting towards the end of the review.
The grinder is rated for 1.4 tonnes of coffee, or 1.4 million grams, making it perfectly capable for having in the home even with larger families, and could even work very nicely in a café as the secondary decaf, guest espresso or filter grinder, or even in a small business that just wants to offer their guests a great coffee.
All Ground Design and Build
Starting at around £700 and up to £900 depending on the design you go for, you should absolutely expect a well-built grinder with tight tolerances, heavy duty materials and precise machining. The All Ground certainly doesn’t disappoint in that aspect.
It comes in at 9 kilos and for the most part everything feels very solid to the touch. The adjustment ring is very satisfying to turn and click into place, the main body is solid and doesn’t rock back and forth when grinding, and the portafilter is kept perfectly locked in during the grinding. There’s a large knurled on and off button which is very satisfying to use when you twist to get the grinder started, and a large touch screen that hosts the main functions and grinding options.
The grinder is built to be very easy to clean with the burrs being very easy to access. All you have to do is remove the hopper, twist the dial all the way coarse, press the button and lift up the dial, then you can remove the top burr carrier and get direct access to the burr chamber. There’s no way to calibrate your grind settings, but the tolerances mean that your grind setting will be perfectly positioned every time you reassemble the burrs, and you don’t need to worry about turning the dial too fine and having the burrs grind against eachother.
The grounds shoot is also very easy to clean being held on with magnets, so you can just pop it out of the grind chamber and give it a wipe down. The grinder is pretty quiet especially when running on empty, and the grinding sound isn’t too loud or offensive in any way. The hopper can hold up to 500 grams of coffee and we haven’t had any issues with beans getting stuck on the edges.
There are a few nitpicks in terms of the build quality and design. Firstly is that neither the hopper nor the bean gate lock into place and can be accidentally removed quite easily. You’ll just need to be a little bit careful when moving the hopper around if there’s beans in there so you don’t accidentally let the flood gates open. On our particular model we also found that the soft rubber ring was coming away from the dial in places, but it could be popped back in with a bit of fiddling.
Screen, UX and Workflow
The main area you’ll interact with the grinder on a day-to-day basis is the touch screen, so it’s great that this is very bright and clear with no complicated menu system or user interface.
Initially I thought I was having issues with the touch screen being often quite slow to respond. This was pretty frustrating but eventually I got the hang of it, it just turns out that when you’re in espresso mode, the manual button responds instantly to your touch whereas the single and double shot buttons only activate once your finger has left the screen. Probably to help it identify between a short press for grinding, and a longer press for changing the dose. I also saw a video by The Wired Gourmet where he noticed an occasional issue where he would press a button on the screen and the action would occasionally cancel out. He found that it was caused by his finger going past the edge of the button, so you might need to use a delicate touch if you have large fingers.
The grinder is quite slow to turn on which is a little frustrating, having to wait around 13 seconds for the system to load. I don’t really understand why this would be the case, but in reality you just need to adopt this into your workflow and by the time you’ve switched on your espresso machine or grabbed your brewer and boiled the kettle, your grinder will be good to go.
So there are three different grinding modes depending on where your grind is set on the dial, either in the espresso, moka or filter grinding range.
In espresso mode you have the option of a single or double shot, which are both timed doses that can be fine tuned with a long press on the screen. And there’s also a manual shot button to purge or top up your dose as needed.
In the moka pot range you just get one manual button which you hold down for continuos grinding. Obvsiouly the idea here is that you’ll place your moka basket under the shoot and grind until it’s full, and simply use the size of the basket as your dosing mechanism.
Finally you have the filter mode which again just has one button, but is pressed to start and stop the grinder rather than holding it down for continuous grinding. This in my opinion lends itself better for single dosing and weighing out the beans before grinding, rather than having a full hopper and judging the correct dose by eyeballing it.
The All Ground’s Grind Adjustments
So the All Ground comes with a stepped grinding system going from zero up to 80 clicks, all falling either under espresso, moka or filter sizes. These equate to 0 to 40 clicks for espresso, 41-59 for moka, and 60-80 for filter.
In reality though, the filter settings are much coarser than I would ever use for a v60, chemex or even a batch brewer. For a one cup v60 I was at the very bottom of the moka pot range at around 40 to 45 clicks.
For brewing on the aeropress I personally prefer using a pretty fine grind, and to make that work I was grinding well into the espresso range and 20 to 30 clicks. If you want to learn why I’m grinding so fine for an aeropress then definitely make sure to check out our Aeropress recipe built for light roast coffees.
Having such a large range dedicated to moka is also slightly strange to me personally. I’m not convinced that there’s a huge number of people spending up to £900 on a flat burr grinder and then brewing with a moka pot, but I guess this grinder is coming from two Italian companies so who knows. I would personally prefer this range to be broken down a little more into say espresso, aeropress, v60, batch brew and cafetiere, and cold brew. Though at the end of the day, each person’s experience will differ based on the coffee and their own personal preferences, so perhaps the best thing to do would simply be to mark each click with a number, and let the users preference dictate where they should be grinding for their chosen brew method.
One of the concerns with stepped grinders, especially when grinding for espresso, is that you might not be able to fine tune the grind enough for the exact espresso recipe you’re hoping for, so people often tend to go for stepless grinders.
To test if this was a problem on the All Ground, I ran two shots back to back, firstly at 15 clicks. Using an 18 gram dose and 72ml of water going through the puck, I got an extraction time of 28.6 seconds. Then I repeated the test going one step coarser at 16 clicks, keeping the recipe fixed at 18 grams to 72ml, and I got a 26.8 extraction time. So a difference of just 1.8 seconds, which is absolutely a small enough difference to be able to fine tune your espresso before you even have to think about changing your dose or recipe to dial in your shot any further.
Grind Quality and Workflow
User experience when actually grinding the coffee is really nice. The grinder is relatively quiet and the sound isn’t offensive in any way.
The distribution of the grounds is fantastic with no clumps and a fluffy texture, and the grounds go straight into the middle of the portafilter so there’s no issues with spillage. You can also tap the portafilter gently to level the bed of grounds during grinding to distribute the grounds throughout the basket.
Levels of static are pretty impressive. All grinders will make a little bit of mess with some grounds sticking to the machine or flying out of the portafilter, but with the All Ground it’s hardly noticeable at all.
The portafilter fork is adjustable using an Allen key, and the holder does a great job of keeping the portafilter in place with no movement or vibrating whilst grinding. The rubber coating also helps absord the vibrations so there’s no additional sound made by the portafilter.
The grinder also comes with an additional dosing cup which I can’t seem to find, but that has an 80 gram capacity and makes grinding for filter much easier.
Can you Single – Dose?
So most coffee grinders will typically fit into one of two categories, either single dosing or on-demand.
On the surface and judging by its design, the All Ground appears at first to be an on-demand grinder with a typical large hopper and grind-by time system. In actual fact, the All Ground is somewhat of a hybrid due to the separate grinding modes for espresso and filter.
When grinding for espresso, the All Ground is designed to be used on-demand with a full hopper and timed doses. We would recommend using an external scale to make sure you’re getting the right dose and topping up or removing grounds as needed, but the timer is actually very reliable once dialled in.
However, when grinding for filter, due to the on/off button it actually makes more sense to weigh out your beans first and then single dose exactly what you need into the hopper rather than trying to guess how many seconds you should let the grinding run for. And if you want you can even remove the hopper entirely and dose straight into the burr chamber, or buy an extra bellows attatchment to blow any grounds or beans through the grinder and reduce retention.
Speaking of which, there is a small issue with retention and a noticeable amount of grounds falling out when giving the grinder a few taps. Many people recommend purging around 10 to 12 grams of coffee through after every big change in grind size and I think that’s generally pretty good advice.
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How Does the Coffee Taste from the All Ground?
When it comes to coffee grinders in this price range, one of the main considerations is whether you want to buy into a flat burr or conical burr system.
Typically a conical burr will have more of a range in its grind distribution producing more fines and boulders, leading to a more varied level of extraction and therefore more complexity in the cup and more of a body and texture in espresso
With flat burr grinders, typically you get a more uniform grind size which enhances clarity and gives you more precise flavour notes rather than a complex overall cup.
With the All Ground I have been finding that it’s flat burrs actually lean more towards a varied grind size distribution. It produced very complex and full bodied shots of espresso that worked very well with medium to dark roasts and shorter ratios, whilst filter coffee was also complex and had a nice sweetness but was difficult to pick out specific flavour notes.
Having a grinder produce more fines and boulders works great for those textured shots of espresso that the Italian coffee culture is known for. Whether that is something you’re interested in comes down to personal preference. Personally I have really enjoyed the espresso shots coming out of this grinder, but for filter coffee I do prefer a more even grind size with fewer fines and a higher clarity in the cup.
Final Thoughts
So to sign off, the All Ground is a really enjoyable grinder to use with a heavy duty feel, quiet grinding, a large capacity and incredibly easy cleaning and maintenance.
It has a great grind range from espresso all the way up to cold brew and produces rich and syrupy shots of espresso with complex filter coffees. The main annoyance with this grinder for me was the fact that you can’t override the three different grinding modes, and that the suggested grind sizes were actually quite far away from the grind sizes I was using for well extracted filter coffees.
Although it’s probably somewhat useful to people that are grinding their own coffee for the first time, my suggestion would be to remove the stated brew methods and just have numbers on the dial for the user to track their grind settings. They could also make all three grinding modes available at all settings.
At £700 to £900 pounds, the All Ground is quite an investment for most home users. That being said, it provides good value for money with great machining and tolerances and a good overall user experience, though there are cheaper grinders on the market that offer a higher quality grind. Being rated for 1.4 tonnes of coffee, the All Ground would make for a great investment by a café that is looking for a secondary grinder to offer guest espresso, decaf or filter coffees, or by small businesses that want to offer freshly ground coffee like a car showroom or barbershop.
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