Why grind range decides this and grind quality does not
Both grinders mill coffee between two burrs to a size you select, which is what separates them from a blade grinder that chops beans into dust and chunks at random — our burr vs blade guide covers why that distinction matters more than anything else about a grinder. Within the Baratza range, though, you are not choosing between good and bad grinding. You are choosing which end of the scale the settings live at.
Brewing methods want very different particle sizes. Cold brew and French press want coarse grounds, drip and pour-over want something in the middle, and espresso wants coffee ground fine enough that pressurised water takes twenty-odd seconds to force its way through. The standard Encore’s forty settings are distributed across the filter part of that scale. The ESP redistributes them so more of the range sits at the fine end, where espresso lives. Our grind size guide lays out which method wants what.
Buy the standard Encore if…
They make drip coffee, pour-over, French press or cold brew, and there is no espresso machine in the house. That covers most coffee drinkers, and for them the ESP’s extra fineness is range they will never select. Paying for it is like buying a car with a higher top speed for a commute through town.
It is also the right pick when the budget is doing double duty. If the same money has to cover a grinder and a brewer, the standard Encore plus a decent pour-over setup makes noticeably better coffee than the ESP alone. Our full Baratza Encore review goes deeper on what it does well and where it stops.
Buy the Encore ESP if…
There is an espresso machine, or one is arriving in the same gift. This is not a nice-to-have — a machine like a Breville Bambino or a Gaggia Classic is unusable in any satisfying way without a grinder that reaches espresso fineness, so if you are buying a machine, the ESP is the version of this grinder you want alongside it.
Buy it also for the household that does both. Plenty of people pull a shot in the morning and brew a pour-over at the weekend, and the ESP covers both without owning two grinders. It handles the filter range as well as the standard model; it simply also goes further down.
The case for a hand grinder instead
Worth raising honestly, because at these prices it is a real alternative. A good manual grinder in the same band typically has larger, better burrs than an electric grinder at the same price, because none of your money went into a motor and a housing. For espresso in particular, that difference is easy to taste.
The cost is a minute or two of arm work per brew, every time, forever. Some people find that a pleasant part of the morning and some find it insufferable, and it is worth being realistic about which the recipient is — a hand grinder given to somebody who wanted a button is a gift that gets used for two weeks. Our best manual coffee grinders covers the options from about $30 upward, and our Comandante C40 review looks at the top of that range.
What both of them get right
The reason we keep recommending this family of grinders is not the burrs. It is that Baratza sells the parts. Burrs are replaceable, components are available individually, and a grinder that develops a fault is something you fix rather than something you bin. In a category where most sub-$200 appliances are disposable, that is the feature worth paying for — and it applies equally to both models here.
For a gift, it also means the present has a long tail. Burrs dull slowly over years of use, and replacing them restores the grinder rather than starting a new purchase. Keeping them clean helps too; our how to clean a coffee grinder guide covers what that actually involves and how often it is worth doing.
The verdict
No espresso machine: the standard Encore. It is cheaper, it covers every brewing method they use, and the difference buys beans or a brewer.
Any espresso machine, or one in the same gift: the Encore ESP. Not as an upgrade — as a requirement. The cheaper grinder cannot make espresso, and buying it for an espresso household means buying a second grinder later.
Not sure whether they will end up making espresso? Buy the ESP. It does everything the standard model does, so the downside of over-buying is small, while the downside of under-buying is a grinder that cannot do the job at all. The full field is in best coffee grinders.