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I've got the Esp and the bellow attachment. I have never gone above 28 expect for cold brew. I'm typically just sitting at 20 to 22 for pour over and aeropress. Frenchpress is around 27 for me.
I also have a non-ESP Encore, original burrs, and I just leave it set on 10 for everything from French press to moka pot.
That doesn't work for the ESP, 1-20 on that one is for espresso, extremely fine. Normal coffee starts around 20-21. I've found 25-26 to be good for pour-over, it's a medium fine there, especially at 25. Not sure about french press, I haven't experimented yet, but it seems like going over 30 it starts to get less consistent. At around 38 I had chunks mixed in with grounds, and some of the chunks were so large they were like 1/4 to 1/3 of a whole bean.
For some reason, I was thinking the ESP was something else, probably the Virtuoso.
Of course the ESP is designed for espresso grinding, so the settings are going to be different, slaps head duh.
the grind is indeed less consistent on this grinder the coarser you go. also take it apart and check your setup (no stuck beans/fragments, gasket in the right place, upper burr wiggled down into place with red tab at around the 30 setting position. it sits down a little when you're close and when you wiggle it around it should sit down a bit more and only barely turn.)
I have the non-ESP Encore with an M2 lower burr and it has the same issue with coarse grind, but I found a trick that helps a lot.
Do you notice that the hopper moves around while you're grinding? The hopper and the ring burr are both slotted in to the adjustment mechanism, which is a plastic ring with channels that the tabs of the ring burr follow. The adjustment ring on my grinder moves around a good amount when I push on it, which means the burr also moves around and causes a less consistent grind. The force of the adjustment ring moving also kicks the hopper around.
The trick is to push down on the hopper while you're grinding to get rid of all the slack and keep the adjustment ring in place. I find it grinds a lot better when I do that.
The downside of this trick is that it puts more strain on the tabs of the plastic ring burr holder. All the force that was moving the adjustment ring around will go into those tabs. It's a sacrificial part that needs to be replaced occasionally with normal usage, holding the hopper in place will make that happen sooner.
Yeah, the hopper bounces around a lot. Not like vibration but literally shaking and bouncing. I’ve double checked and it’s all assembled right. Encore says it’s normal, but I’m not a fan. Already considering aftermarket solutions to stabilize it AMA make the grind more consistent, I don’t care if that makes the grind a little finer overall.
I also bought a hopper bellows, but it doesn’t seem as necessary, the grounds retention isn’t nearly as bad as my old Capresso. I might pick up the single serve hopper to try.
It's definitely normal and probably designed that way to help feed the beans in. The whole motor and burr assembly is mounted on rubber grommets, it will move.
On the non-ESP model it is possible to change the position of the screw which changes the range of grind sizes. I assume the ESP is similar? If you set it to a coarser range you will run into inconsistencies in the finer end however
I've also got the non-ESP model and the calibration won't affect how consistent it is. It just changes where 0 starts and 40 ends without changing any other characteristics, so it'll grind exactly the same at a particular size.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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