Baratza - Encore 230V Coffee Grinder - Electric Coffee Bean Burr Grinder with 40 Grind Settings, Black

It's noisy, but then I suppose it has to be to grind those beans, but it does a great job. For our drip feeder, we've got it set at 24, and it's perfect.

Great piece of kit. Does the job well and looks good.

This grinder is perfect unless you want to make espresso coffee, which it cannot do adequately. That is not a criticism of the grinder, just a fact that at it's price point grinders won't do every type of grind. However, this grinder is superb for cafetiere (French Press), coffee drip machines and pour over filter coffee. It is very well designed and unlike some grinders, even more expensive ones, does not spray coffee all over the place as it has a good fitting receptacle to catch the grounds. It is simple and accurate to use. The only slight drawback is that it's a bit noisy. I understand that Baratza provide good technical support and this machine is easy to change burrs, etc, because of it's design. I previously had a Mignon Specialita grinder that gave up the ghost after a year and two months of one grind per day and much prefer the Baratza.

I had to return this product, but immediately ordered a replacement. I encountered a problem with the hopper. This is rotated as a means of adjusting the grind size. At the finer and of this scale, the hopper all but came loose, lolling to one side. There seemed to be no remedy. I do hope that this is not a manufacturing fault that I will find in the replacement. I'll know what to look for and return the replacement immediately, if it turns out to have the same fault.

Triple cardboard boxed, excluding the Amazon box, so well protected, but more challenging to unpack because of this. This grinder has a conical Stainless Steel burr, which I suspect maybe superior to a flat grinder; the instructions say to not wash this because it may rust! After washing all the removable all-plastic parts, I learnt that the bean hopper has to be inserted with the silver band on the righthand side, then turned anti-clockwise to set a lower (finer) grind number. By trial and error I figured out that 8 is near to common pre-ground coffee fineness, but I probably need to try an even lower number to better match it. The rule seems to be, the shorter the brew time, the finer the coffee can-be/needs-to-be ground, but not so small that it clogs or goes through filter holes. Longer brewing must have a coarser grind to limit brew acidity. The grinder can be powered-on by keeping the front button pressed, or by the lefthand rotary switch clockwise. Finally, no more need to use my black ceramic conical-burr hand-grinder with a cordless drill. My only criticism so far, was that the case need better dampening to reduce noise, because I could significantly reduce the emitted noise by holding my palms on the lefthand and righthand sides of the case while it was grinding.

I don't do espresso so am not sure of the full capability, but it is a capable relativey quiet grinder which seems to grind the same every time and the same setting. And my coffee tastes nicer!

Quality ground, good value entry level proper burr grinder.

A bit of looking at reviews and a book and it seemed that this would be a good coffee grinder - and so it has turned out - it's in its first youth but produces nice ground coffee with less noise than the old blade version I was using.