Baratza Encore ESP Review

What Baratza actually changed

The original Baratza Encore has been the default recommendation for a first burr grinder for more than a decade — for filter. Pushed to espresso it ran out of resolution: the fine end of its range gave you a handful of steps to cover the band where espresso actually lives, so you were forever stuck between a shot that choked and one that gushed.

The ESP fixes that with two changes. First, the burrs: Baratza fitted the 40 mm conical M2 steel burr set from the Virtuoso+, replacing the standard Encore's burrs. Second — and this is the one that matters — the adjustment was re-ranged. Instead of 40 evenly spaced steps across the whole brewing spectrum, you get fine micro-steps at settings 1-20 for espresso and coarser macro-steps at 21-40 for filter and immersion. Same 40 numbers, but the small adjustments are concentrated where small adjustments are needed.

That is a genuinely thoughtful piece of product design, and it is worth understanding why it works. Espresso is sensitive to grind in a way no other brew method is: a couple of microns changes your shot time by seconds. Filter is forgiving — nobody has ever ruined a French press by being one notch coarse. So spending half your available steps on the fine end and letting the coarse end be approximate is exactly the right allocation, and it is the reason this grinder can serve espresso without being an espresso-only grinder.

Baratza's own framing on the current product page is that the ESP "delivers the grind resolution you need to brew creamy, syrupy shots of espresso" and that it "simplifies your espresso workflow." A dosing cup is included. That is close to the sum of what they publish about it today, which we will come back to.

The specs, from Baratza

Two things in that table deserve more than a row. The burr makeris named — Etzinger, in Liechtenstein — which is unusual and useful: most grinders in this bracket say "conical steel burrs" and stop, as Breville does with the Smart Grinder Pro, whose burr diameter Breville publishes nowhere. And factory calibration per unit is the quiet reason this grinder behaves: a conical grinder whose burrs are not zeroed at the factory can have its entire espresso range sitting off the end of the dial, and resolving that means a teardown you should not have to do on a new grinder.

The 550 RPM gear-reduction motor is also a deliberate choice rather than a cost saving. Slower burrs generate less heat and less static, and static is the thing that turns a dose into a clumpy mess on the way out — see coffee grinder static if yours is spraying grounds. The cost of slow is slow: this is not a grinder that keeps up with a queue.

What Baratza will not confirm

Where retailers now fill the gap, they do not agree with each other. Hopper capacity is listed as both 230 g and 300 g depending on where you look. Grind rate appears as 1.3-2.2 g/sec, as 1.5-2.4 g/sec, and as 0.8-1.1 g/sec. Power shows up as 70 W on a 100-120 V listing and 80 W on a 220-240 V one — which may simply be the same grinder in two markets, but nobody says so.

None of that changes the buying decision. All three figures are in the same ballpark, and the ballpark is "a hopper that holds more beans than you should leave in a hopper, grinding at a couple of grams a second." But it is the kind of thing most reviews quietly smooth over by picking whichever number they found first, and we would rather say that the manufacturer has stopped publishing it. Part of the reason the retailer figures are a mess is the second grinder in the range.

Encore ESP or Encore ESP Pro?

Baratza now sells a separate, dearer model called the Encore ESP Pro, and a meaningful share of the "Encore ESP" listings and spec sheets you will find are actually describing it. This page is a review of the standard Encore ESP — the grinder in the price box above.

From retailer and reviewer descriptions, not from Baratza's own published specifications, the Pro differs by: doubling the espresso-range settings and making the adjustment stepless between them; adding timed and single-dose modes with a digital readout of the grind setting; and adding an ionizer for static, with a larger hopper. We are attributing those to retailers deliberately, because we have not seen a Baratza spec sheet for the Pro and we are not going to review a grinder we have not researched properly.

What to do with that.If stepless adjustment and a single-dose mode are the things you were missing, the Pro is addressing exactly your complaint and is worth pricing up. If you are buying a first espresso grinder and the stepped range sounds fine, the standard ESP is the better value and the subject of this review. Just check the model name on the listing before you buy — "ESP" and "ESP Pro" are two grinders, and the specification tables on the open web have thoroughly mixed them up.

What it is like to live with

Three honest things, in order of how much they will annoy you.

It is stepped. You twist the hopper and it clicks from one setting to the next, and there is nothing between them. For espresso on a forgiving medium-roast blend this is a non-issue — one of the micro-steps will land where you want. On a light, dense single-origin, you will occasionally find that setting 7 chokes and setting 8 runs fast, and your only remaining levers are dose and temperature. If that sentence sounds like a problem you will actually have, read stepped vs stepless before you buy — and then consider the DF64, which is stepless and is the usual next step up.

It retains grounds.This is a hopper-and-bin grinder, and coffee stays behind in the chute between doses. In practice that means the first few grams of today's shot are yesterday's coffee, and that changing beans requires grinding a small amount through to purge. If you single-dose — weigh exactly the beans you want and grind them all — retention is the whole ballgame, and this is not the grinder for you; single dose vs hopper covers that properly.

It has no scale and no timer. You run it until the bin holds your dose and then you weigh that dose. This is not a flaw so much as a required accessory: a grinder without a timer needs a scale beside it, and you wanted one of those anyway. Budget for it.

What you get back for all three is the thing that does not show up on a spec sheet. Baratza publishes repair guides, sells the parts, and the burrs are a replaceable service item rather than the end of the grinder's life. That is why the original Encore has a reputation built on units that are eight and ten years old, and it is the single strongest argument for buying into this range rather than a cheaper grinder with no parts behind it. How long any of this lasts in practice is covered in how long coffee grinders last — including the fact that nobody publishes a burr-life figure for a conical set like this one.

Which machines it suits

The Encore ESP is the grinder we pair with more machines than any other here, and the reason is its range: it is fine enough for a 58 mm commercial basket and sane enough for a pressurized one.

• Gaggia Classic Pro — the classic pairing. The Gaggia has no grinder and no PID, so the grinder is where its shots are won; the ESP gives it fine steps without pushing the total spend into a different tier.
• Breville Bambino Plus — the Bambino has no grinder at all, which makes this pair one of the most sensible complete entry setups available.
• De'Longhi Dedica and Stilosa — both ship with pressurized baskets, and the ESP is what makes graduating to a standard basket possible.
• Rancilio Silvia — it works, but the Silvia is the point where a stepless grinder starts to earn its price. Read that pairing page before deciding.

Where it makes least sense is alongside a machine that already has a decent grinder built in — a Barista Express or Barista Pro. There is still an argument for a second grinder there, and the Barista Express pairing page makes it, but it is an upgrade argument rather than a necessity.

What we would buy instead, and when

If you want stepless: the DF64. It is the standard next rung and it is exactly the thing the ESP is not. The head-to-head is at DF64 vs Baratza Encore ESP.

If you want to spend less: a hand grinder. The Timemore C3 ESP or Kingrinder K6 will out-resolve the ESP for espresso at a fraction of the price, and the cost is your arm and about a minute per dose. Our hand vs electric page is the honest version of that trade.

If you are deciding against a Breville: the Smart Grinder Pro grinds straight into a portafilter and has a programmable timer, which is a genuinely better workflow — but Breville publishes no burr diameter for it, and its 60 steps are spread across the whole range rather than concentrated at the fine end. The comparison is at Encore ESP vs Smart Grinder Pro.

If you only drink filter: you do not need the ESP. The dual-range dial is the thing you are paying for, and if espresso is not in your future the standard Encore or the Fellow Opus are better uses of the money.

The verdict

The Encore ESP is the grinder to buy if you are starting espresso at home and you want one machine on the counter that will still be useful after you have changed your mind about everything else. The dual-range dial puts the fine adjustments where espresso needs them, the factory calibration means it works on arrival, the 40 mm M2 burrs are a published, traceable component, and Baratza will sell you the parts to keep it running. That package at this price has no obvious competitor.

What you are giving up is stepped-versus-stepless adjustment, a single-dose workflow, and any kind of speed. If none of those three sentences describes a problem you expect to have, buy it and stop reading about grinders. If one of them does, the DF64 and the better hand grinders are both one page away — and the thing worth remembering is that the grinder matters more than the machine, which is why this is the component to get right first.

Two accessories make it noticeably better and together cost a fraction of it: a scale, because it has no timer, and a WDT tool, because a conical grinder clumps and clumps channel.