A La Marzocco Jay Grinder at the Out of the Box event in Milan. Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.
Italian coffee equipment company La Marzocco last month unveiled the Jay, a commercial grinder with simple external controls that belie the impressive mechanical and digital advancements inside.
The company displayed the Jay publicly for the first time in conjunction with the HostMilano expo in Milan at its private Out of the Box event. (Read all of DCN’s HostMilano 2025 coverage.)
Breaking from current commercial design trends, the Jay has no touchscreen. Three physical buttons store different timed grinding settings while a basic seven-segment digital display shows stored and live duration of the grind. An analog dial around the base of its quick-release hopper indicates the grind setting.
La Marzocco courtesy photo.
Hidden are wireless connectivity powers that activate when pairing the Jay with an optional La Marzocco Connected Scale for grind-by-weight capabilities. Once enabled, settings are adjustable using the Jay’s physical buttons or via an app on a separate device.
“If you ever need to remove the scale for charging, you can continue to use the grinder in time-based dosing mode,” La Marzocco Product Marketing Manager Aric Forbing told Daily Coffee News. “It will automatically use the time of your last grind-by-weight dose, continuing right where you left off.”
Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.
Mechanical advancements include a magnetically attached burr assembly that comes apart in seconds, using the portafilter holder as the lever. The 68-millimeter flat burrs sit at a 45-degree angle for low retention.
It’s the first La Marzocco grinder equipped with blind burrs — i.e. mounted to the carrier from the back, free from screw holes that interrupt cutting surfaces. The mating surface on the upper burr is spherical, ensuring consistent alignment without shims and automatic realignment after cleanings.
“As we expanded our new grinder lineup to include flat burrs, our engineering team spent two years researching how to make burrs that could be more efficient and consistent, as well as how to achieve a system that would perfectly align the two burrs,” Forbing said of the proprietary system, which is incompatible with third-party 68-millimeter burrs. “The blind burr design resulted from those two goals.”
La Marzocco courtesy photo.
The Jay grinder is La Marzocco’s third grinder release in as many years. In 2023 the company launched the Pico home grinder, followed by the commercial Swan grinder last year.
The Connected Scale, developed with scale-maker Acaia, also made its debut in 2023 as the Brew-by-Weight Scale. The scale is sold on the La Marzocco Home website for $400. Pricing information for the Jay grinder is not yet announced.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
