I had some rewards points stacked up at Amazon, and I picked up this little toy.  And, by little, I mean physically small…really small.  The American Weigh Scale Ac-650 is billed as a “pocket gram scale”, and they aren’t kidding.  This thing is smaller than your phone.

I had never bothered to weigh out my portafilter coffee doses before.  I always just went pretty much by sight, and reading that my grinder would produce about one gram per second.   I was using what I thought was an 18 gram dose for a double shot.  Since, this thing was essentially free, I decided to see how close I was, and see if I could really fine tune things further.

So, how close has I?  What I had been assuming was an 18 gram dose, was, according to the scale, exactly 18 grams!

The scale is drop dead simple to use.  Take the cover off, put it on a flat surface, and push the power button.  The clear cover doubles as a way to make the weigh surface larger if needed, but the surface fits the portafilter spouts perfectly without the cover in use.  There’s a clearly labeled Tare button on the front too.   The accuracy is plenty fine for coffee use, and if you really want, you can change the units to ounces, or even Karats.

All in all, not bad for “free gift”.  Since the thing is so darn small, you could easily add it to a travel setup if you are really anal about weighing your dose.