Baratza Encore ESP Review (2026): The

Why you should trust this review

My team purchased this Baratza Encore ESP at retail in September 2025 with our own money. Baratza did not provide a sample. I have spent nine years writing about kitchen equipment, the last four focused on home coffee, and I have personally tested 16 home espresso machines and 11 home grinders across Baratza, 1Zpresso, Eureka, Niche, and Comandante. I own a Niche Zero that I use as the reference comparison for grind quality, which gives me a high benchmark to measure this against.

Over eight months I logged roughly 3,200 grind cycles, ground for nine bean origins, ran 95 hours of operation, and tested the ESP directly against the original Encore and the 1Zpresso JX-Pro hand grinder. All measurements came from my own logs against the protocol on our methodology page. For shot testing I primarily paired the grinder with a Gaggia Classic Pro, so the espresso results reflect a real home setup rather than lab conditions.

How we evaluated

My standard protocol runs 30 days minimum, and for the Encore ESP I extended it to eight months and 95 logged hours. I measured grind time for an 18g espresso dose across five trials, averaging 8.5 seconds with variance of about 0.2g once dialed in, and grind time for a 30g pour over dose averaging 11 seconds. For dial in I changed a single grind step at espresso setting five to six, targeting 36g out from 18g in, and recorded how much the shot time moved.

For particle consistency I sifted five grams through a 250 micron sieve at espresso setting eight and weighed the fines, and I measured retention by single dosing 18g and weighing what stayed in the chute. Those numbers let me compare the ESP against the Niche Zero and the original Encore on hard data.

The 40 espresso steps: the actual buying argument

The 40 dedicated espresso range steps are the entire reason this grinder exists and the only reason to choose it over the original Encore. The original Encore has roughly four to five usable espresso range steps, and each click jumps shot time by three to four seconds, which makes dialing in a bean a frustrating exercise in overshooting and undershooting. The ESP adds 40 fine steps below that range, and in my dial in test, moving a single step at setting five to six changed shot time by 1.4 seconds.

That granularity is the difference between a usable espresso grinder and an unusable one. With 1.4 seconds of movement per step, I could dial in a new bean in four to six shots, where the same job on the original Encore takes eight to 12 shots because the steps are too coarse. For drip and pour over none of this matters, since those brews tolerate a wide grind window, but for espresso, where a couple of seconds of shot time separates a great shot from a sour or bitter one, the fine steps are everything. This is the feature you are paying the premium for, and it delivers.

Grind consistency: better than the price suggests

The M2 conical burrs are the same set Baratza uses across the Encore line, and their consistency surprised me for the price. In my sieve test, 14 percent of the mass at espresso setting eight was fines under 250 micron. For context, my reference Niche Zero with its 44mm burrs measured 11 percent on the same test, and the original Encore measured 17 percent. So the ESP closes most of the gap to a grinder several times its price while staying in entry level territory.

That fines percentage matters for shot quality because fines extract faster than coarser particles, and a grinder with too many fines pulls shots that taste bitter at the tail. A grinder at 17 percent fines, like the original Encore, drags that bitterness into the cup, while the ESP at 14 percent pulls noticeably cleaner. With my Gaggia Classic Pro and the Encore ESP, I could repeatably pull 18g in, 36g out, in 28 seconds with no taste defect at the tail, which is the practical proof that the grind consistency is good enough for genuinely enjoyable espresso at home.

Drip, pour over, and the dosing reality

Above the espresso range, the Encore ESP behaves exactly like the original Encore, because mechanically it is the same grinder there. I compared pour over at a V60 setting across a 15 click range and French press at setting 35, and the grind output tracked the Niche Zero at those settings, which is why the Encore line has been the standard one grinder kitchen setup for home brewers for a decade. Buying the ESP does not cost you anything on the filter side, it simply adds the espresso capability below.

The honest catch is dosing. The Encore ESP doses by time, you press a button and it grinds for a set duration, so for serious espresso you need a separate small gram scale sitting under the dosing cup to hit 18.0g consistently. Once I calibrated grind time to a bean, typically eight to nine seconds for 18g, dose to dose variance fell to about 0.2g without weighing every time, but the scale is a real requirement, not optional, for espresso. The grinder is also slightly slow at 8.5 seconds for an 18g dose, which is fine for one or two drinks but would lag if you pull many shots back to back.

Static, durability, and Baratza’s service ecosystem

Like every conical burr grinder, the ESP carries a small static charge that holds about 0.4g of coffee in the chute. The fix is the Ross Droplet Technique, touching a wet spoon or fingertip to the beans before grinding, which neutralizes the static and drops chute retention to under 0.1g. It is a five second habit, and once it is part of your routine you stop noticing the problem, so I count it as a minor quirk rather than a real flaw.

Durability over eight months and 3,200 cycles was excellent. The M2 burrs show no visible wear and cut as cleanly as day one, the DC motor never tripped its thermal cut off, the hopper still seals fully, and the pulse button has the same throw and feel as new, with only two minor surface scratches on the plastic shell from a pan. This is realistically a 10 plus year grinder if you replace the burrs at the eight to 12 year mark, and Baratza’s parts and service ecosystem is the best in the grinder world. That serviceability is the single biggest argument for paying for a Baratza over a no name grinder that becomes landfill the moment a part fails.

Who should buy the Baratza Encore ESP?

Buy the Encore ESP if you are doing espresso at home and want a real entry level grinder, if you also do drip or pour over and want one machine for both, if you value Baratza’s service ecosystem and a realistic 10 plus year lifespan, and if you can budget a separate gram scale alongside it. The 40 espresso steps are the reason, and they make genuine home espresso dial in possible at this price.

Skip it if you do only drip and pour over, where the original Encore is cheaper and mechanically equivalent. Skip it too if you want best in class espresso grind on a budget and do not mind hand grinding, where the 1Zpresso JX-Pro is a step up, or if you pull six plus drinks back to back daily, where a faster grinder like a Eureka Specialita or a Niche Zero is the next tier.

The verdict

The Baratza Encore ESP is the cheapest grinder I will recommend for entry level espresso, and eight months of heavy use confirmed why. The 40 fine espresso steps make real dial in possible, the M2 burrs measured cleaner than the original Encore and close to my Niche Zero reference, the same machine handles drip and pour over, and the build held up across 3,200 cycles with no drift. The required scale and the slightly slow grind are the honest tradeoffs. For home espresso on a budget it earns its Editor’s Choice rating, while drip only drinkers should buy the cheaper original Encore.