#Encore coffee grinder manual#

While some claim that the Baratza Encore can grind fine enough for espresso, it really shines in manual brewing methods. Of course it will fall short if you are comparing it to a grinder worth $500-$800, but for the price this grinder is a steal! And this plays out in the consistent grind. So where does the Baratza Encore coffee grinder fit in? And the answer is that it is far superior than virtually anything else in this price range.

If you remember that burr grinders can cost anywhere from $50 to $5000, you will realize that the quality of burrs can range dramatically. Many entry level grinders are made of low quality components, sub-par burrs, and in reality perform little better than blade grinders. It is often thought especially by those beginning the foray into coffee, that any burr grinder is automatically quality. What is less common knowledge is that many burr grinders are not actually much better. This is general knowledge for most coffee lovers these days. It’s not simply a matter of snobbery (although there may be traces of this), but instead it is because blade grinders cut the coffee beans rather haphazardly and thus produce highly inconsistent particle sizes. This is the reason that any coffee lover worth his or her salt will warn you that blade grinders are to be avoided at all costs. To summarize a lot of technical theory, basically the more consistent the particle sizes of the ground coffee the more even the extraction and the nicer the taste. An adapter will also be included for dosing from the ESP cup directly into standard 58-millimeter portafilter baskets.The single most important consideration in purchasing a coffee grinder is grind consistency. In addition to a full-sized Encore grounds bin, the ESP will come equipped with an anti-static plastic dosing cup with a 54-mm opening, befitting portafilters on consumer espresso machines made by Breville. The ESP rollout is the second major Baratza product launch since the company was acquired by Australian global kitchen appliance manufacturer Breville in 2020 for $60 million.

In another upgrade, the cone burr in the ESP is secured with a wing nut on top that also stirs the beans in the direction the burrs spin and feeds them in, diminishing “popcorning.” Meanwhile, the ESP comes with the same 38-millimeter conical burrs found in the more espresso-oriented Baratza Virtuoso. While the adjustment collar on the original Encore is manufactured with injection-molded plastic, the Encore ESP’s collar is made of all metal. “You can be in an espresso’s range with four clicks, two clicks on either side, whereas with a regular, you don’t even have half a click either way and you’re out of range… What we wanted was resolution.” “It feels just like an Encore, but the world changes dramatically when you get into this range now,” said Anderson. The result is a much smaller change in grind size per click of the stepped mechanism, allowing more precise control for home baristas in dialing in espresso. Year in Review: Home and Prosumer Coffee Grinders.Breville Acquires US Grinder Maker Baratza for $60 Million.Baratza Reinvents the Vario with the Vario+ and Vario-W+ Models.“So that’s how we achieve a macro and a micro with a simple mechanism, without cams and levers.”Īdded Anderson, “It turns out no one’s ever done anything like that, so we patented it.” “It’s a thread that then flattens out to 1/10 the slope of ,” Baratza Co-Founder Kyle Anderson told Daily Coffee News. The coarse end from settings 40-20 remains the same as the original Encore, while at settings 20-1 the screw-down adjustment collar’s helix angle levels out, resulting in less travel up or down as the collar turns. While the overall range of particle sizes from coarsest to finest remains the same, the Encore ESP includes a redesign to the adjustment collar that maintains the original Encore’s performance in coarser grinds for filter preparations while also providing adjustments in smaller increments at the finer end for espresso. (Find DCN’s complete 2022 SCA Expo coverage here.)

Unveiled at last month’s Specialty Coffee Expo in Boston, the ESP version of the Encore includes a number of tweaks under the hood designed to improve espresso preparation, including a different burr set and a new system for finer resolution in the grind size mechanism. All images courtesy of Baratza.īellevue, Washington-based Baratza has lifted the curtain on a new espresso-focused take on its entry-level consumer grinder called the Encore ESP.