Free Dosing Coffee

I finally got my hands on a Azkoyen Capriccio. With 64 mm Ditting blades and 4 sec grind time, I'm loving my new toy.

I have always used Mazzer dosage grinders for my espresso bar, but since we don't go through a huge amount of beans we needed a grind on demand grinder for aura fresh espresso; equal to the Mazzer but I didnt want to purchase a grind on demand Kony as I already have a Mini Electronic Mazzer - its good, but just too slow 17sec for a double basket. Nice to have a change, try a different brand of grinder.

So this brings me to a little soap box I have:-
I am observing many cafes, restaurants, espresso bars using dosage grinders as grind on demand grinders. I call them Free Dosers. FDs' try to simulate the benefits of on-demand grinding by using dosage grinders in ways that they were not designed to be used.
The biggest fundamental flaw with using a dosage grinder for free-dosing is that you are using your eye to estimate the grams. This will produce either an inconsistent watery and weak, or bitter molasses over extracted espresso. (I bet anyone reading this post has had a few in their time)
I know a hand full of 'extreme professional' baristi that can achieve perfect espresso time and time again with the free dosing method. The average coffee maker can not.

The average coffee maker inevitably end up air-rating the coffee with FD. Ironic that the one thing that they think they are doing by free dosing - making the freshest coffee available, but instead they are losing all that beautiful rich delicate oils by allowing the coffee to free fall back into the big empty chamber from scraping any over fill from the basket. How to make fresh coffee lose creama and flavour so quickly.
Also within this floored method, many coffee makers are wasting kilos and kilos of coffee by over filling the baskets with unnecessary gram age, wastage around the grinder and in the time it takes to stuff around with the frantic flicking of the grinder handle you could of loading up two double portafilters.

Some times you just have to really think about every single move you make within espresso, pull it apart, don't run with the trends, and completely understand what you are trying to achieve. Taste is everything in coffee, and if its not making your taste buds cry out in joy then you need to work out why.