OnTheTable: The Best Coffee Grinder for Your Home

Pictured are grind samples from three grinders. From left: $2,500 professional grinder; $145 Baratza Encore; cheap and inadequate blade grinder. Note the vast inconsistency of the sample on the right. Photos by Micah Redfield

Baratza Encore, $145 new, $99 refurbished, Baratza.com

Two weeks ago, On The Table lectured you on the importance of your ground coffee. No matter how fancy your coffee maker is, if you don’t have fresh, evenly ground coffee, your morning cup will suffer. And if your morning cup suffers, you know you will, too.

Enter the Baratza Encore grinder. There are numerous attributes of Baratza’s grinders that make them standouts amongst other home grinders. Baratza grinders are durable, serviceable, available new or refurbished, consistent, and just plain good at what they do: making you a better cup of coffee.

The Baratza Encore coffee grinder. Investing in a grinder of this caliber makes all the difference for your coffee.

Durability

When you pay a premium for a “prosumer” product you expect it to last. If you expected differently you would never pay the premium. 

Baratza claims that their steel burrs will remain sharp through the grinding of 500 to 1,000 pounds of coffee, and that their ceramic burrs (found on some higher-end Baratzas) will perform brilliantly through 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of coffee. To put that in perspective, On The Table grinds 30 grams of coffee every morning (making 400ml of brewed coffee), and 30 grams most afternoons. At 60 grams per day, and approximately 454 grams to a pound, that’s one pound of coffee ground every week. At that rate, Baratza’s steel burrs are capable of lasting anywhere from 9.6 years (500 pounds) to 19.2 years (1,000 pounds). As we have owned the Encore since December of 2012, we still have 5 to 10 years before we must replace the burrs, at which point it will cost only $29 for a new burr set. Which brings us to our next point: serviceability.

Serviceability

We live in an age plagued by a mentality of disposability. If a product breaks, throw it out and buy a newer, shinier version. But we at On The Table wash and reuse even our Zip-Lock bags (landfills ain’t pretty). Our kitchen equipment must be the opposite of disposable; it must perform with excellence and be serviceable.

To prove their prioritization of serviceability, Barazta sells most every component of every grinder they produce, and they post video tutorials that step you through anything from simple maintenance to full overhauls and part replacement. In the case you are not predisposed to DIY servicing, Baratza offers a grinder repair program that will, in most cases, have your grinder fixed and ready for return within three business days of receipt. (They know you can’t be without your morning coffee for too long).

Quality & Consistency

If you consult most any buyer’s guide produced by industry insiders, you will find at least one, if not multiple, Baratza grinders on the top-choices list. Why? In part because of their durability and serviceability, but mostly because Baratza grinders, for the money, outgun the competition in build quality, grind quality and consistency. The burrs’ durability translates into consistently even coffee grounds, and therefore better coffee, and therefore a happier you.

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