Baratza Encore ESP Review: The Best Beginner Espresso Grinder?

Most first-time buyers put all their budget into the machine and treat the grinder as an afterthought — sometimes skipping it and grinding with whatever's already in the cupboard. That's the most common mistake we see, and it's why so many beginners think they just aren't good at making espresso. They are; their grind isn't. The Baratza Encore ESP fixes that, and after months of daily shots, it's the grinder we point almost every first-time buyer toward.

The Encore ESP is a variant of Baratza's best-selling Encore, re-engineered for espresso. It uses 40mm flat steel burrs and a stepped dial with enough fine settings to actually reach espresso grind sizes — something the standard (non-ESP) Encore, built for drip coffee, cannot do. If you already own a Breville Barista Express or another machine with a built-in grinder, you may not need this at all; but if you're pairing a standalone machine like the Gaggia Classic Pro or a beginner-friendly espresso machine, this is where to start.

Why the grinder matters as much as the machine

Espresso is unforgiving about particle size in a way drip coffee isn't. Grounds slightly too coarse and water rushes through in seconds, leaving a sour, thin cup. Too fine and it barely pushes through, pulling out bitter compounds. The sweet spot is often a fraction of a millimeter wide, and it has to repeat shot after shot. That's why a blade grinder, which chops beans into random-sized chunks rather than shearing them evenly, can't do espresso at all. See our roundup of the best coffee grinders for espresso for the full comparison.

A $600 machine with a mediocre grinder makes worse coffee than a $300 machine with a great one. The grinder is where extraction actually gets decided.

Build & grind quality

The 40mm steel burrs are smaller than most espresso-specific grinders — the step-up Eureka Mignon Specialita uses 55mm burrs that grind faster and cooler — but they're capable at this price. Grind speed is slow and the motor gets loud during a dose, though it's over quickly. The housing is mostly plastic, less premium than the metal-bodied competition; what matters more is that Baratza designs it to be serviced, selling replacement burrs, belts, and hoppers directly.

Retention — old grounds trapped in the chute and burr chamber that contaminate your next dose — is the Encore ESP's weakest point. It's noticeably higher than pricier single-dose designs, so purge a bit of grounds first or expect some carryover. It's a real limitation, not a dealbreaker, and the main thing you're trading for the lower price.

Dialing in espresso

Because the Encore ESP is stepped rather than stepless, you're choosing from a fixed ladder of settings instead of fine-tuning infinitely like on the Specialita. Dialing in takes trial and error: pull a shot, check time and taste, move a click finer or coarser, repeat. It's a decent way for a beginner to learn what under- and over-extraction taste like, but expect wasted beans and a few "close but not quite" mornings early on. Once you land on a setting it holds steady, though it's worth noting your setting per bag, since roast and density shift where "fine" sits on the dial.

Who it's for / who should skip it

It's right if this is your first standalone grinder, your budget tops out around $200, and you're pairing it with a manual or semi-automatic machine such as the Gaggia Classic Pro, a Rancilio Silvia, or anything in our best espresso machines roundup. It also works if you split time between espresso and drip.

Skip it if you want stepless micro-adjustment (go straight to the Eureka Mignon Specialita), you grind very fine Turkish coffee, or retention matters more than price. If you already own a Breville Barista Express or another built-in-grinder machine, see our Barista Express review instead.

The verdict

For most people buying their first standalone espresso grinder, the Baratza Encore ESP is still the easiest recommendation on the market. It does the one thing a beginner grinder needs to do — reach real, repeatable espresso fineness — without enthusiast-level spending, and Baratza's serviceable design means it'll keep working for years instead of becoming e-waste. The retention and stepped-adjustment tradeoffs are real, but they're the right ones at this price. If your budget stretches further, the Eureka Mignon Specialita in our grinder guide is the next step up.