The Baratza ESP Pro at the 2025 SCA Expo in Houston. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Coffee grinder maker Baratza just raised the roof on its entry-level Encore line of home coffee grinders, introducing the Encore ESP Pro.
Revealed in conjunction with the Seattle-based company’s appearance at the SCA Expo in Houston last month, the Encore ESP Pro builds upon the mechanical platform established by the core Encore and its espresso-oriented sibling, the Encore ESP, with a variety of new features and material upgrades.
(Read all of DCN’s 2025 Expo coverage.)
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
The ESP Pro occupies the same countertop footprint and utilizes the same conical burr and motor as the Encore ESP, which launched in 2022. Yet the ESP Pro is designed for quieter operation, more stable burr alignment and even greater overall longevity through a heavier-duty anodized metal housing, a grind-adjustment mechanism made from die-cast, precision-machined zinc, and other robust materials.
“There has been a substantial upgrade to the motor plate and gearbox final drive to ensure far better alignment, and the use of ball bearings as opposed to sintered bushes,” Phil McKnight, global specialty coffee president of Baratza parent company Breville Group, told Daily Coffee News. “This has resulted in a reduction in noise and higher durability.”
With a bright new digital display, the ESP Pro also introduces stepless grind adjustment, with 250 degrees of adjustment rotation, up from ESP’s 180-degree adjustment range.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
At the SCA Expo in Houston, McKnight told DCN that while the Encore ESP was designed to improve upon the “feast or famine” nature of the original Encore’s resolution in the espresso range, the ESP Pro takes the system several steps further.
“When we launched the ESP, we changed [the Encore’s linear adjustment pitch] to a dual pitch, a much shallower slope in the espresso range, but still without compromising other brew methods,” said McKnight. “[The ESP Pro] takes a different approach in that it’s got two ramps, two different tracks.”
Of the 60 positions on the ESP Pro’s dial, 40 are in the espresso zone, calibrated for a difference of 2.2 microns of vertical burr gap.
A flow-control disk between the hopper and the bean entry port slows the flow of beans for a consistent feed and to avoid bottlenecking. A new ion-generating static neutralization system in the Pro aims to reduce retention and tidy its LED-illuminated output. Grinds flow into a portafilter or the included dosing cup, which fits both 54-millimeter and 58-millimeter baskets.
In single-dose mode, an auto-off feature stops the grinder when the chamber clears. The grinder can also operate in timer mode, with settings and seconds counting down on the digital display.
Phil McKnight with the ESP Pro. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
The last time Baratza significantly evolved a popular model through additional metal parts and performance upgrades was with the Forte, a fortified version of the Vario model that found adoption behind pourover bars in commercial cafes. Some Forte features were eventually worked back into the consumer model, which is now called the Vario+.
“We will not be recommending [ESP Pro] for light commercial use, as we do for the Forte series,” said McKnight. “It was not designed with commercial use in mind, but it is still a high-performance, highly robust grinder, designed for daily use on multiple occasions at home.”
In terms of price, the ESP Pro arrives at the top of Baratza’s best-selling Encore line. Priced at $299, the ESP Pro sits near the brand’s mid-range Baratza Sette 30 grinder.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
“It’s the top of the Encore line, but still in the middle of our range,” said McKnight. “It’s the legacy of the Encore itself. We want to lean into that. Every single publication you open, when they’re doing a grinder shootout, the Encore is always the most recommended.”
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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