expired Posted by socalkevina • Jun 18, 2020
Jun 18, 2020 5:19 AM
Item 1 of 1
expired Posted by socalkevina • Jun 18, 2020
Jun 18, 2020 5:19 AM
Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
+ Free Shipping$125
$139
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Regular "burr" grinders and traditional cheaper blade/chop grinders are very inconsistent and produce a ton of "fines". These way too fine ground pieces make your coffee bitter / off. Instead of chopping, this has two blades that almost look like gears interlocking and crushes the coffee much more consistently. How close together these burrs are determines how finely it gets ground.
The lack of consistency in the grind in general means the amount of coffee extracted with vary a ton, changing the way your coffee tastes along with it.
As for why more expensive - the burrs are more expensive, mostly. This one is great because they WILL wear down (with any grinder) and you can replace, upgrade, or repair them. This is the gold standard entry level conical burr grinder. Google "Best coffee grinder reddit" for a ton of additional info on why.
Hope that helps.
For those who don't know, Baratza offers parts for their grinders - they are meant to be repaired! You can also buy an upgraded burr (the M3, I think) and this grinder will perform just like their next model up. The only practical difference is the cheaper plastic housing and the extra $80 or so in your pocket. All the grinding guts are the same. this is more or less a Buy it for Life type of product.
Ive used mine for a week, and the grounds are so much more consistent than any of my previous grinders. And that's without the burr upgrade. The motor doesn't bog down in the least while grinding beans. It would be nice to have a timer to shut off the grinder while I'm doing other things, but whatever. It works so well that I don't really care all that much.
If you have a budding coffee nerd in your life, or just want to buy once this is a great grinder.
Unfortunately it does not have enough adjustment steps or consistency at the super-fine grind settings to make great espresso with a non-pressurized portafilter setup. Their Sette line is much better if espresso is your thing.
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Hi there,
Yes they are! There are a lot more companies than fit on that list, but Peet's is definitely a trusted seller.
Thanks for checking!
My Capresso is starting it death now. It still works, but the motor makes a terrible smell when it runs...so I've been hand grinding every once in a while to prolong it as I wait for a deal on a Baratza. Capresso doesn't offer any parts at all, so it's essentially going to get trashed once it quits for good. I've worked on a ton of Baratzas at my former job, and am convinced it's the way to go. I personally have the Capresso because I was a noob and also because of price (BBB 20% coupon!) but have learned that it is better to buy once, cry once...granted I did get a good deal of use with my Capresso, but I'm sure the Baratza could easily double it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyQ_Ayw
It is a fairly easy process and yields good results. I have the virtuoso and it is going strong on ~9 years. The maintainability and flexibility of these is a real selling point IMO.
If you're on more of a budget, you may be able to find an older Baratza Precisio, which is basically a Virtuoso that has an upgraded grind adjustment mechanism to give finer steps. It has a second micro-adjustment which divides each of the Encore/Virtuoso's 40 grind settings into an additional 11 settings.
If you have a higher budget, there are grinders which go up into the thousands, but IMO the Baratza machines above are a solid entry point into grinders that actually perform well for espresso grinding.
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If you only want espresso grinding then there are better options as you listed. But as a general grinder that can do the fineness you need for things like turkish coffee and moka pot brews (which is what I use the finest settings for), it is workable. Particularly at this cost and reliability level. Though to be honest, for Turkish I just generally use my hand grinder anyhow, habit from growing up in a Lebanese home.
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If you only want espresso grinding then there are better options as you listed. But as a general grinder that can do the fineness you need for things like turkish coffee and moka pot brews (which is what I use the finest settings for), it is workable. Particularly at this cost and reliability level. Though to be honest, for Turkish I just generally use my hand grinder anyhow, habit from growing up in a Lebanese home.
Example - I have a Virtuoso plus. I grind 90 grams of coffee for 48 oz of water for my Oxo 9 cup "Barista Brain" coffee maker. Depending on the type of coffee I use this can take between 40 and 120 seconds. Darker roasts grind slower because the beans tend to stick together just a bit more. A peaberry will grind super fast because the beans are rounder.
Don't grind by time. Weigh your coffee first and run the grinder for as long as it takes for that coffee to grind.
For those that don't have a scale, buy one from Amazon for like $12-15.
Here's the brass tacks. This is about as cheap as an electric coffee grinder can be and still produce something decent. I read everyone bitching about "$125 of my god that's so expensive". No. Just stop. Especially not for something that will literally last for a decade and can be repaired if something breaks.
As with most things in life there are varying levels of what is considered "good" or "great". For most people that enjoy coffee an Encore or a Virtuoso would be plenty. It basically is for me - I have a Virtuoso + that I picked up this past year after using a Solis Maestro ( Encore predecessor) for almost 15 years. It's out in the garage now, but it still works.
But just speaking about Baratza above this you have the Vario ($500), which uses flat ceramic Malkoning burrs. That is fantastic for espresso, and pretty good for filter coffee, but can be made better by swapping the burrs for steel burrs. But to get the best out of this you need to align the burrs, which is hard to do because in the Vario it uses nylon for the grind chamber and there can be flex. So then there is the Forte which is around $900 dollars. This is a commercial grinder that is basically a Vario on steroids. Fully metal grind chamber and can produce probably the best ground coffee for pour over or filter available.
And you know what? It does it at a bargain price. Because above this you are looking at a Malkoning EK43 - which is about $2200, and also needs to have it's burrs aligned to get the very best out of it.
But what about espresso you may ask? Well most espresso enthusiasts have dedicated espresso grinders - you would never try to move back and forth between espresso and filter grind or french press normally because you've worked hard to have your grinder fine tuned to your espresso machine. Even still humidity in the air, type of beans, freshness of beans, etc means that the grind has to be tweaked daily or more to get it right.
So in the Espresso world $300 is pretty much entry level for your grinder, and they can rapidly go up. The Niche Zero right now is a well regarded and inexpensive one at around $600. But if you are really serious you are looking at Monolith. This is a single dose grinder with 98mm burrs that costs around $2200.
Basically I'm so damn tired of people here not batting an eye at spending $1000 on a couple video cards to play games that will be scrap in 4 years but bitching about how much a coffee grinder that costs $125 is when it will last for 1-2 decades.
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