Rocky: Still a Mighty Contender

Author's Rating:

Pros: Very rugged; long-standing reputation; near-commercial quality; relatively quiet

Cons: Price; clumping due to static; finger-guard catches beans; dated design

The Bottom Line: 
Despite formidable new challengers, Rocky will go the distance. After 19 years, still one of the best burr grinders on the market.

Author's Review
Before I started making espresso at home, I did my homework and learned the importance of having a high-quality burr grinder. Such grinders are a world apart from the cheap whirly-blade models; regardless of the brewing method, the one biggest upgrade a coffee lover can make (after fresh beans) is in the grinder. When Rancilio introduced the Rocky in 1989, it set a new standard for home coffee grinders and soon became an icon for espresso-heads worldwide.

Built like a proverbial tank, with a stainless steel casing, the Rocky contains the same 50mm flat burrs and 140W motor as Rancilio's MD40 commercial grinder. One version has a doser, i.e., a hopper for dispensing the ground coffee in regular doses into your portafilter. The doser model has its own advantages & disadvantages; in my opinion, unless one goes through a large volume of coffee every day, the doserless version (Rocky-SD) is more practical. For one thing, it's easier to clean; a small amount of coffee grounds will accumulate in the chute, but a burst of compressed air or a brush will get those out. Some owners have improvised other means of blowing out trapped grounds from the hopper end. Periodically I also clean the burrs with Grindz, specially-designed pellets of grain that one runs through the grinder like beans.

The multilingual manual adequately explains how to operate Rocky; it's simple, once you grasp the adjustment method. One rotates the cylindrical bean hopper left or right in increments for coarser or finer levels (55 steps). One first has to confirm where "true zero" is, when the burrs touch -- it is not always "0" on the dial. Rocky can grind coarse enough for French press, but where he shines is in the finer range used for espresso. All other things being equal, each step on the hopper-dial can add or subtract as much as 10 seconds in an espresso shot; then it's up to the barista's skill in dosing & tamping to get the shot within the ideal time-window of 25-30 seconds. It is the precision, the uniformity of the grind, that distinguishes machines of Rocky's caliber from the inferior models (i.e., pretty much everything under $200). Another praiseworthy detail is that the Rocky is relatively quiet, about 70 dB. Still, I would not grind coffee in a thin-walled apartment at 5 AM!

For convenience, the doserless Rocky comes with a removable steel bracket to hold your portafilter under the exit chute. To start grinding, you press a switch on the front. One disadvantage of this model is that a static charge can build up in the spout, making the coffee grounds come out in little clumps. Clumping can lead to extraction problems that can ruin an espresso shot. The countermeasure devised by home baristas is to break up the clumps prior to tamping by stirring the grounds with a piece of wire or a thin stick like a satay skewer. Rancilio should have replaced the plastic spout with a metal one long ago. Now there are competing doserless grinders on the market which don't have this static problem to nearly this degree. (Grinders with dosers have the advantage of breaking up clumps with the doser vanes.)

Another minor irritant is the plastic finger-guard in the hopper; its recessed screw-holes always catch a few beans as you pour them in. One doesn't want beans getting stuck and going stale in the hopper. The easy solution is to find something to plug the holes (or to remove the finger-guard, but I am not recommending that for obvious reasons).

If there's one more thing a hardcore espresso-head would want in a grinder, it is "stepless adjustment". Ideally one would adjust the grind freely, without notches, as precisely as turning a radio dial. And in recent years, we've seen a host of "prosumer" grinders appear, such as the Mazzer and the Macap, that have that much-desired feature, as well as conical burrs as opposed to flat burrs. So, despite Rocky's stellar reputation, he's getting long in the tooth. Nowadays one can always find a better grinder, occasionally even at lower cost. $310 isn't chump change, and the way the dollar-euro exchange rate is going, prices can be expected to go up.

I certainly don't regret buying the Rocky, when I consider its minor shortcomings versus the quality of espresso I can make with it. But even if Rocky lasts till my hair turns white, I can always imagine upgrading -- that seems to be the nature of this hobby-obsession. But for many coffee lovers who appreciate quality, Rocky may be all the grinder they need, and then some.

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