Baratza Encore Coffee Grinder ZCG485BLK, Black

UPDATE March 8, 2025:The grinder has been wonderful to use over the past year. I am changing my review to five stars.In addition to the star bump, there are three important updates, plus a comment:1) I upgraded the burr from the original "M3" burr to an M2 burr I ordered directly from Baratza (now Breville). I think it was worth the money.2) Lighter roasts do make for a slightly messier cleanup than darker roasts. My original review noted not having experienced much of that.3) Pay attention to your grinding. If it suddenly seems inconsistent, inspect the ring burr holder to make sure all three outer tabs are intact. These are plastic parts designed to break under load to protect the more important internal components. I highly recommend ordering spare holders. I have had two break in the past year, reasons unknown. It sucks to have your grinder down waiting for replacement parts to arrive.Finally, this grinder is not going to give you better coffee if there are problems besides the grinder you're replacing. For me, I discovered the house water had been a secret roadblock to making good coffee at home. Once I realized how bad it was (cheap TDS meter purchased here on Amazon), I switched to using distilled water remineralized with Third Wave Water (also sold here on Amazon).ORIGINAL REVIEW:This is a "5-stars, but" review that makes me drop the rating to 4 stars. I'd give it 4 1/2 stars. Compared to the blade grinder I was using, though, it's worth 10 stars.I ordered the Encore in March 2024, shipped from and sold by Amazon.com. I wanted to be sure of the sender, even if it might have saved a few dollars ordering from a different vendor.The first thing you have to do is to do some minor assembly, and you would think that should be easy to do. There is a fluted rubber gasket that would not stay seated on the ring burr, though, and I ended up tearing it even before making a single pot of coffee. I did some googling and found out that there's a new version of the gasket that is supposed to be with newer Encores, so I'm not sure why mine had the old one. Regardless, I could have tried to obtain a replacement gasket either from Baratza or here, but I ended up ordering some aftermarket gaskets from Aieve (sold here on Amazon) that are a perfect match to Baratza's new gasket. If you get an Encore and it comes with the new gasket, congrats on not having to deal with that headache.After getting it assembled, I followed another online recommendation to run a small batch of beans through the grinder as sort of a break-in. That worked fine.Since then, the grinder has performed admirably. It has been used nearly every day on a variety of dark and medium roasts. It hasn't been especially staticky or messy. An occasional brushing of the chute and burrs is all I've needed to clean it out. I've been careful to keep the grounds below the line on the hopper, so I've avoided clogging it. I did buy some Urnex Grindz tablets, and I'll be using them soon to give the internals a more thorough cleaning.As for the coffee itself, I'm not an expert, but it seems fairly consistent in grinds for drip and French press. Any failures on making a less-than-tasty batch of coffee are almost certainly my fault, not the grinder's.Besides the finicky original gasket, the only complaint I have would be the noise. There are remedies for that, most notably upgrading the conical burr to the one found in the Virtuoso+ or Encore ESP, but I'm not ready to do that yet.Depending on who you ask, the lack of a timer on the Encore is either a curse or a blessing. I'm happy with it. I don't store the coffee in the hopper. I weigh each batch of beans before pouring them in the hopper, so I just turn the grinder on and let it empty the hopper. You can tell by the noise level when the grinder is done, it's significantly quieter. The resulting grounds have been the same weight as what I put in the hopper, so I know the grinder isn't leaving large quantities of coffee behind.There are tons of videos on YouTube regarding the Encore. I recommend checking those out.

I love fresh-ground coffee and have been using pour over brewers for a number of years. We would use pre-ground grocery store coffee for fast morning drip machine brews and save the good stuff for other occasions.All of that changed when we accidentally got a two pound bag of whole bean coffee instead of the pre-ground version for the morning. We thought we could grind it by hand, but boy were we wrong.After two pounds of grinding with my Hario hand grinder, my left wrist has carpal tunnel, but my right forearm is ripped. Quite the combo. However, we knew that grinding by hand wasn't sustainable any longer and our small grinder was just about to scream. We've talked about splurging for a grinder and I've seen this Baratza Encore mentioned over and over in forums, we finally decided it was time.First thing that stood out to me was the packaging. It was packed very nicely in the box, but the cardboard was folded in a way that made it easy to removed. Felt like it was designed for an actual human and assumed it was a good sign. I was right!Assembly is easy, the manual is simple and straightforward. Can't ask for much more than that. The grinder feels very solid and well made once it is all put together.The design of the grinder is really nice and modern. My hope was that it would be visually appealing enough for my better half to want to leave it on the counter full time. After a couple of days, it's still sitting out in plain site. It fits directly under our cabinets and in my opinion looks really nice. With as much as we plan to use it, putting it away after every use just doesn't seem right.When I set it down on the countertop, I discovered an issue. Whoever assembled my grinder at the factory forgot one of the rubber feet on the bottom. I fired off an email to Baratza and an actual person responded in, no joke, five minutes. They apologized and shipped out the part immediately. I am grateful for that level of service!One of the complaints I heard about the machine was the noise level, so I was expecting it to sound like a blender. Honestly, I don't think it is that bad and I don't think it would wake up my family if I were to run it. It isn't quiet, but not loud enough that I would think twice about buying it.It's really easy to select the grind level and Baratza included a guide with good starting points for each type of brewer in the manual. There are enough setting notches that you could customize your own grind sizes. I printed out labels for each brewer type and the grind settings on the back, just so I don't forget them.It was a relief watching 30+ grams of coffee beans go into the hopper and get sucked down into the burrs and ground in less that a minute. The speed is reasonable, although anything beyond hand grinding would feel fast.The biggest thing I noticed was the consistency. I don't have experience with high-end coffee grinders, but to my novice eyes the grounds appeared to be very consistent and similar in size. I'm sure there would be some outliers if I dug through it all, but in my unscientific approach, it all looked good as I dumped it into the V60 filter.All in all, it's a great grinder and according to the other reviews I should enjoy it for many years to come. Hope this helps!