Baratza Sette Drop-Down Portaholder Fork

This is a must if you are using your sette for espresso. It keeps grinds from making a mess because it puts the portafilter lower, and theres a built in funnel that directs the grinds. Still some stray bits get around but significantly better than with stock arms.

I have a Baratza Sette 30, also from EightOunceCoffee, that works very well with only one deficiency - minus a fixed portafilter holder. This is now solved with the UPS delivery on Christmas Eve of the Baratza Sette Drop-Down Portaholder Fork. It is a very solid and surprisingly heavy accessory that is reasonably priced and packed in a box with a very helpful instruction sheet. The setup was straightforward and took about 15 minutes. It involved two steps. The first is to adjust the dropdown accessory to fit your portafilter before installation. You do this by loosening the two Phillips screws in the rear of the assembly, adjust the forks to fit your portafilter, and tighten the screws again. The second step for a Sette 30 grinder is to rotate the adjustable arms in the open wide (bin) positon, resting the dropdown holder on the rubber arms. Here, I was lucky to have at hand a very very small Allen key that inserts in the four holder screws to clamp onto the rubber forks, being careful to tighten the right and left sides evenly to prevent added vibrations. I am happy with the results. I can now insert my portafilter into the dropdown holder and grind my coffee beans handsfree. Previously I had to cup both sides to prevent excessive scatter of coffee grind while attempting to hold the portafilter steady and then pushing the on switch to activate the grinder. Now all those steps are eliminated, with no coffee wastage, courtesy of the holder chute that sits below the grinder mouth at the exact distance that will cause no blockage. Get it to improve your home barista experience! Please note that a short video of the second step is referenced in the instructions sheet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0T4ErR7nq8&feature=youtu.be.

I have been struggling between giving this 4 or 5 stars because it is a great option, is right for the price and is manufactured really well but has small things to consider regarding Sette 30 compatibility.

I own a Baratza Sette 30 on which I have upgraded the assembly to have all 270 settings. This is because the Baratza Sette 30 in Canada was a whole 230$ cheaper than the Sette 270 while the assembly to upgrade it to 270 settings was only 100$. However it also didn't have the hands free portafilter fork that the Sette 270 so I bought this to make this upgrade. This drop-down portafilter fork includes a funnel which is a blessing to get fewer grinds outside of the portafilter and when using a 21g portafilter basket it offers a greater distance between the portafilter and the mouth of the grinder making less grounds fly upwards and stick to the grinder with static which was an issue when trying to get those final grinds on a 3-shorts basket before tampering them. So in this sense this is definitely an ergonomic upgrade over the Sette 270 portafilter fork.

There as screws that allows you to adjust this for different depths of portafilters but the default setting was good for working with both my bottomless portafilter and the one with a stream splitter which I both use. other screws can tighten it to the existing fork arms. Now this is where it could have lost a star. While being advertised and designed for the Baratza Sette 30, the stock arms the come with the Sette 30 are too small for this piece to hold onto tightly andit used to pivot and sit unevenly unable to carry the weight of the portafilter without tilting. Therefore I put some black electric tape on the Sette 30's forks to make them thicker like the rubber-padded arms on the Sette 270 and then I turned the adjustments screws until the Sette 30s plastic fork arms were locked in place to this drop-down fork. It works fine like this and is a definite upgrade.