Las moledoras de Baratza son legendarias en el mundo del café de especialidad. Son equipos de alta calidad y desempeño que han pasado la prueba del tiempo.

La Encore es el modelo más económico de Barazta, pero seamos sinceros es una maquina costosa. Ahora la Encore es exactamente lo que se necesita, nada más, nada menos. No tiene pantallas táctiles, cálculos de cantidad de cafés o cosas similares. Tampoco es la más bonita, mi esposa dice que tiene la estética de un computador de los años 90 y puede tener razón. Sin embargo, la Encore se concentra en hacer lo que tiene que hacer, y hacerlo muy bien: moler café de manera precisa y consistente.

De hecho las dos principales ventajas de la Encore son justamente esas: Fácil de usar y molienda muy consistente y precisa. De hecho el molido es mucho más parejo que el que he visto en modelos un poco más costosos.

Tiene una gama muy amplia de tipos de molienda (40 pasos distintos) que van desde muy grueso para hacer cafés fríos tipo Cold Brew hasta muy fino (cercano a una molienda de Espresso). Sin embargo, puede que no sea lo suficientemente fino para hacer buen Espresso. Si usted quiere hacer Espresso, existen algunos tutoriales en Youtube para modificar la maquina y moler más fino.

Justamente, esa es otra virtud de la Encore. Barazta aplaude que las personas le hagan mantenimiento e incluso modifiquen sus moledoras. Si algo sale mal y es posible repararla fácilmente Baratza asesora telefónicamente a sus clientes para que ellos mismos puedan reparar la moledora. También en caso de ser necesario tienen un programa de servicio post-venta excelente. Por ejemplo, se comprometen a contar con repuestos disponibles para todos sus modelos sin importar hace cuanto tiempo fue descontinuado.

Es decir que una Encore es una maquina para toda la vida.

Pros:
-Molienda muy pareja
-Múltiples opciones distintas de molienda
-Fácil de usar
-Excelente servicio post-venta

Contras:
- No permite hacer Espresso (o por lo menos no sin modificaciones)
- Costosa
- No es la más bonita

Ok, you wanted a review: Grinds the beans consistently every time. The machine is a pleasure to use. I'm guessing most burr grinders are be a bit of a nuisance to properly clean. Only takes about 3 minutes though.

The following are all observations about the idiosyncrasies of the machine, none of these are showstoppers, I would recommend this rig to everyone I know. Like with anything worth having you need to learn the proper operating technique.

There are nooks and crannies deep inside the mechanism you can never really clean, or see. You can get most of the way there. The machine would have to be completely disassembled in order to remedy this issue. A problem with any burr grinder I'm sure unless you buy some $$$ commercial unit.

It's takes a bit of a knack to get the snug fitting rubber gasket to seat properly which is necessary to do each time you brush out the internals. A good thing I suppose as it does provide an excellent seal but I can see someone messing up the seating. If it is not right the hopper won't quite fit and you may get people trying to force things or damage the gasket (see below).

Notes about some usage techniques are lacking in the manual, nothing you will not figure out for yourself over the course of time though. For example, there is a fixed on/off switch and a pulse button for controlling the motor. They don't tell you what the pulse button is for though. Spoiler Alert: It is to be used at the very end of the grind when there are like 4 beans left. You should shut the main switch off at this point and then use the pulse button to coax those last few beans through the grinder. Otherwise they will just bounce around the container.

Important: when you clean the machine you can easily/accidentally rotate an internal ring, associated with the lower burr grinder, away from its' home position. It rotates in one direction or the other when the bean container is in place to select the grinder setting. So anyway, if you unwittingly rotate it out of its home position while cleaning you will never get the bean hopper back on the machine. You will be convinced the machine is broken and have no idea why? And only after the second use! So, I refer back to the manual because I recalled a note about something or other not fitting right. There is a single sentence in there alluding to this situation about having to rotate the ring all the way in one direction. That of course fixed the problem, BUT, if you don't read manuals you might be in trouble. Also, though the manual does mention this, it should do a much better job of calling it out as an IMPORTANT "feature" that can be encountered during cleaning. I suspect they have had machines returned by folks thinking they were broken. None of these issues are going to trip up an experienced or "technical minded" coffee jock. But a burr grinder rookie may sweat this one out a little and possibly damage the machine trying to force something. Once you know or figure out all of this stuff you will never have another problem. But never let an inexperienced person disassemble the machine for cleaning unless you have schooled them on these caveats.
Conclusion
Great grinder, manual could be improved upon. Oh yah, ship an extra rubber gasket with the machine! If that thing fails [for whatever reason] I suspect the grinder becomes unusable. And all for lack of a 50 cent gasket that at a minimum, must be painful to replace. That extra gasket is a great marketing tool that for pennies will immediately improve customer perception of your product.

If you're looking for a low maintenance burr grinder backed by a company with good customer service, this is it. Easy to adjust grind size and after some use one of the grinders we had wouldn't adjust well, cleaned it and serviced it, and issue repeated. Reached out to customer service and they sent a new one. highly recommend.

Other than the assembly this thing rocked my world. I have been drinking coffee for the age of two. Has a small grinder and a bigger one in the past. When I switched to this grinder with the same coffee beans. The taste was like a switch had been flipped on. Also I has a lot of grinds in the bottom of my cup now absolutely nothing. The only thing that changed is the grinder. If you are struggling with the choice and cost this is well worth it. I am tight with my money and have to say that this was a game changer.

The grinder is not as loud as the last one I had, but it's not quiet either. I only gave it four stars because the lid doesn't stay on during grinding. The grinder vibrates so much that the lid pops off.

And the assembly was way harder than it should have been. I had to go to Reddit to find the trick to connecting the top to the base.