About
Who is behind this.
Dialed is run by one independent person. Iris Calder is the pen name of the person who runs Dialed: it is the name on our guides, so every page has someone answerable for it, without putting a private name online. There is no team, no publisher behind it and no brand sponsor.
Why it exists
Most espresso buying advice treats the machine and the grinder as two separate purchases. They are one decision: a machine is only as good as the grinder feeding it, and both have to fit the same budget and the same counter. Dialed answers a single question, which machine and grinder belong together for how you drink, and shows the reasoning, so you can check it and disagree with it.
How the data is gathered and checked
- Specs come from manufacturers’ public product pages, checked against retailer listings. Each product carries a label for how well its specs are confirmed: 9 are “Specs from the maker”, 13 “Specs mostly confirmed” and 33 “A few specs unconfirmed”. Anything unconfirmed, or where sources disagree, is named on the product page. What the labels mean.
- Prices are read from public retailer listings and brand stores (97 listings at 13 US shops), on Oct 27, 2026, with 4products re-checked on Oct 29, 2026. Every price on the site is shown with that date. Prices and stock change, so we never claim live availability.
- Import charges: where a product ships from abroad with charges collected on delivery, we use the maker’s own warning to estimate a landed cost and say so.
How picks are made
Recommendations come from a short set of written rules, the same for every visitor and every page: a grinder must be able to grind for espresso and cost between 15% of the machine and 1.5× it, then setups are filtered by your budget, counter, drinks and workflow, and scored. The 10 ready-made pairs on the home page are editorial. Every rule and weight is listed on How we choose.
What we don’t do
We don’t review hardware hands-on. Dialed is a data and rules-based guide: we have not pulled shots on these machines or ground coffee on these grinders, and no page claims otherwise. Photos marked “Illustrative photo” are AI-generated and show generic hardware, not the listed models.
Money
Nobody pays for placement. No affiliate programs are active today; if that changes, the disclosure page will say so first, and the rules that make the picks will still not know about commissions.
Corrections
If a spec, price or link is wrong, email hello@lzhgus.com with the page and, if you can, a source. Confirmed errors are fixed on the page. Every catalog refresh, with products added or hidden and prices that moved, is logged on What changed.
Contact
hello@lzhgus.com reaches Iris Calder directly. Corrections, questions about a pick and suggestions for products to add are all welcome.