Baratza Encore Electric Burr Coffee Grinder

Product Information

But we’d rather you have a machine that can make you better tasting coffee for up to a decade instead of one that’s mere eye candy. A timer would also allow you to turn on the machine and walk away, knowing the machine would stop at a certain point; this is convenient but not essential, since grinding enough coffee for a full pot usually takes less than a minute. This slow speed reduces heat, noise, and static generation in the grinder and ensures beans feed smoothly into the burrs.

Speed Control: With unique speed control, the Encore uses a combination of gear and electronic speed reduction to control the rotation of the burr to 450 RPM.Kyle Ramage said he worries more about there being too many boulders than too many fines, partly because fines are inevitable as brittle beans are jostled or ground, and partly because he thinks boulders are what really muddy the flavor of the coffee. These burr grinders cost less in part because their burr sets aren’t as good as a conical or flat set (video). Yes, I know it’s possible to calibrate it to grind finer, but this doesn’t mean that it will survive for a long time grinding this fine.

None has been easy and reliable for me that I can not-mention this topic in this Baratza Encore review. In our tests we looked for machines that had easily removable parts—particularly around the burr set—to allow for regular cleaning and, if necessary, replacement. What’s worse: because it’s so finely ground and naturally scatters, it’ll spread all over your counter and/or floor. Its simple features and consistent grind will help you get a good start in the world of specialty coffee without hurting your wallet more than necessary. Make your brew with properly ground beans—as in, beans ground to a consistent shape and size—and you’ll easily detect a difference in aromatics and complexity of flavor, in sweetness and acidity, and even in the coffee’s texture and body.

The C2 did well in our grind consistency tests, because it uses a custom-designed steel conical burr, rather than the ceramic burrs common in the Porlex and many other lower-cost manual grinders. This is especially important for some low-cost manual grinders, as certain roasts can be noticeably hard to crank through. Baratza is a coffee grinder company—this is the only thing it does, unlike the majority of other companies whose electric grinders we tested.

The OXO totally clogged up on me, to the point where it couldn’t grind anything,” she said, but she fixed the problem by taking out the burr and cleaning it and the clogged chute with a stiff brush. First and foremost, every electric burr grinder is going to be better than a blade grinder (for reasons discussed above) and better than a manual system for the reasons of physical labor.

So the swapping of different collections of beans you keep in the hopper is a cool feature we didn’t want to pay for.

These two types of burrs work in slightly different ways, and you’ll find plenty of experts arguing that one type is slightly better than the other for various reasons, from speed to minimizing heat retention. The reason is that unevenly ground beans yield muddy cups of coffee with unpleasant sour or bitter notes—or both.But from our experience, the grind size adjustments are more for the journey from AeroPress (approaching-espresso-fine) to french press (rather coarse). Alejandra Matos, a former deputy audience director with Wirecutter, also had many issues with her chute and grinder clogging after using darker-roasted, oily beans. I’ve got nothing against an espresso shot, but it’s too strong and intense a flavor for me to get really excited by it.