Not to DeLonghi's usual standard

For years I regularly enjoyed a lot of coffee, then backed off because I decided I was ingesting just too much caffeine. I gave away my beloved old Braun grinder as part of going cold turkey. Now, some four years later, having decided life without at least some serious coffee is too hard to bear, I needed to find a new grinder (and coffee maker and source of good beans, etc.).

I wish I hadn't been so quick to buy the DCG59.

The design attracted me. It is also a burr grinder (essential for good coffee-making). The respected DeLonghi name was a factor as well, and I couldn't at the time quickly find anything just like my old machine. In any case, I thought, a newer design should be even better, right?

Wrong. For example, keeping your grinder clean, clean, clean is an essential step to making dependably good coffee; but design quirks make cleanliness almost impossible to achieve, let alone maintain, in the DCG59.

An indicator of the target market is the manual's suggestion that if, after grinding, "you would like to store the ground coffee ..." Why on earth would anybody serious enough about coffee to want to buy a quality grinder want to "store" ground beans? DeLonghi even provides a complicated little plastic cap thing that you turn to close off the container opening where the ground coffee fires in. That closure device attracts fine coffee "dust" and is an absolute beggar to clean: it shouldn't even be there.

Notice too, the manual's description of how to clean the burr wheels: "Turn the coffee container in the direction of the arrow and remove it." There is no arrow. There is also no cleaning brush supplied.

At the medium setting there's rather a lot of very fine coffee dust -- you expect some, but this machine produces quite a bit, compounding the cleaning issues.

The styling is attractive, I think, it does grind coffee, and cord storage is particularly well handled (the cord reels into the base). But I'm afraid I do wish I hadn't bought this particular model.