Here’s The Quick Summary
The X-One is a brand new grinder, the first built fully in-house by Italian machine manufactures Sanremo. It’s an expensive and incredibly premium grinder that replaces three separate grinders in a coffee shop setting – with two dedicated hoppers perfect for brewing espressos and a third bypass hopper for decaf, single origin, filter coffees and grinding for retail bags. The large 98mm burrs produce incredible coffees at all grind sizes and brew methods, and the innovative weigh-by-bean technology ensures a low retention workflow, seamless swapping between recipes, and easy cleaning. It’s a fantastic option for coffee shops looking for a complete all-in-one package if they’re aiming to serve a range of coffees day-to-day.
Reviewing the Sanremo X-One Grinder
The X-One is a brand-new grinder by Sanremo Espresso Machines, marking their first fully in-house produced coffee grinder. This machine introduces advanced features and technologies that set a new standard in the commercial grinder market. It’s expensive, but is built to provide a coffee shop with all of their grinding solutions previously only served by having multiple grinders.
Dosing System and Unique Features
The two key features of the X-One are its empty grind chamber and its weigh-by-beans dosing system. The X-One brings single dosing to the commercial market, ensuring all coffees are weighed to the correct dose before entering the grinding chamber. Two bean hoppers and a third bypass hopper feed into the same, huge, 98mm titanium coated burr set.
Key Benefits:
- Consistency: Ensures each dose is precise.
- Low Retention: Prevents beans from sitting by the burrs.
- Easy Cleaning Workflow: Beans are dosed straight into the hopper.
- Increased Burr Lifespan: No hot starting of the burrs.
- No Purging Required: Eliminates waste when changing grind sizes.
The X-One is equipped with 98mm burrs, capable of grinding up to 250 grams at once. It features three RPM modes (1000, 1200, and 1400) or a selectable range between 800 to 1500 RPM, allowing baristas to control grinding time effectively.
Workflow
The grinder offers complete control over recipes, motor speed, and burr distance via a touch screen. It has three buttons for the left and right hoppers and a middle button for the bypass hopper.
- Select a Dose: Tap one of the hopper buttons to weigh out and dispense the selected dose of beans into the grinding chamber.
- Adjusting Settings: Adjust grind size, dose, and RPM via the touch screen.
- Saving Recipes: Save and reload recipes for different coffees, speeding up the dialing-in process.
The middle hopper allows setting four preset grind sizes, which cater to various brew methods, from espresso to cold brew.
Our Recommended Grind Sizes:
- Espresso: 150-180 microns
- Aeropress: 300 microns
- V60: 400-500 microns
- French Press/Batch Brews: 600-800 microns
Are There Any Downsides?
While the weigh-by-beans technology offers precision, it is slower than traditional on-demand grinders. Weighing an 18-gram espresso dose can take around 20 seconds. However, the pre-dosing feature mitigates this by preparing the next dose in advance, reducing the time to about 6 seconds, which is on par with industry standard for an 18-gram dose from other commercial grinders.
Zero Retention and Easy Cleaning
The X-One is designed as a ‘zero retention’ single dosing grinder, eliminating the need for purging when changing grind sizes. This system also simplifies cleaning:
- Daily Cleaning the Burrs: Use standard cereal-based cleaning beans straight into the bypass hopper. No need to remove the bean hoppers or interrupt workflow. Absolutely brillaint.
- Deep Cleaning: Requires an Allen key to remove six screws, take off the screen to reveal the burr set. Clean with a brush or dry cloth.
This ease of cleaning and maintenance, combined with its advanced features, makes the Sanremo X-One a compelling choice for coffee shops seeking high-quality grinding in a versatile, compact package.
Why The X-One is Exciting
The X-One represents a significant innovation by Sanremo, indicating a promising future where they might expand their grinder lineup. This could potentially include more affordable models while retaining the advanced features and technologies of the X-One.
