English · US / UK / Buying guide
One grinder for espresso and filter or a second grinder
One grinder can cover espresso and filter coffee, but whether it is convenient depends on your morning. Before buying a second machine, count how often you change settings, whether you also change beans and how much coffee you actually discard during those changes.
US / UK; documented guidance, no hands-on product tests.
Published .
A second grinder may be worth buying for convenience even when it will not repay its price through lower waste. Keep those two reasons separate. If switching is easy and the coffee is good, continuing with one grinder is a perfectly reasonable result.
This is a workflow and cost guide for US and UK readers. It does not assign tested retention figures, flavour rankings or return-to-setting accuracy to products.
Confirm that the grinder covers both jobs
The original Baratza Encore ESP is a useful documentation example. Its manual assigns settings 1–20 to espresso and 21–40 to filter coffee, with finer adjustment steps in the espresso part of the range. That establishes intended coverage for both methods; it does not establish how well switching will suit every household. Encore ESP manual.
Check the exact model name when comparing listings. Encore, Encore ESP and other generations should not inherit one another's settings or instructions. UK and US buyers should also check their local electrical version and service arrangements.
For the Encore ESP, the cited manual says grind adjustments must be made with the machine running or completely empty of beans. Follow the instructions for your own grinder rather than applying that procedure universally. Adjustment instructions.
Count transitions rather than cups
Four drinks do not necessarily require four setting changes. An espresso, another espresso, a filter coffee and another filter coffee require one change between those groups. Returning to espresso for the next session adds another.
Write down a normal day's sequence. Include whether each person uses the same beans. A household happy to single-dose one coffee has a different routine from one wanting to keep two different coffees ready in hoppers.
Before buying anything, see whether making the same-method drinks together is convenient. Do not reorganise breakfast around the grinder if it makes everyone's morning worse, but a small sequencing change may remove the problem you were planning to spend money on.
Also record the work you dislike: finding the previous setting, emptying a hopper, changing the catch cup or checking the next espresso. The strongest purchase reason may be one repeated annoyance rather than measurable coffee loss.
Use the coffee you discard as the cost input
For this calculation, measure the coffee you intentionally discard because of switching. That might include a purge or an unusable dial-in attempt. Do not count ordinary drinks or all coffee used that day.
A difference between beans put in and grounds collected is not, by itself, a measurement of annual waste caused by switching. Likewise, a review's retention figure is not automatically the amount you need to discard after every adjustment.
If you already own the grinder, keep a short record across representative mornings. Weigh the coffee discarded, note the transition and record why you discarded it. You do not need to waste extra coffee to create a larger test.
If you have no such measurements, use a range of clearly hypothetical values when budgeting. Do not quietly adopt a convenient “two grams per switch” as a specification.
A worked example in US dollars
Assume, purely for illustration:
- Two setting transitions each day
- Two grams discarded per transition
- Use on 365 days a year
- Beans costing $40 per kilogram
- A second grinder costing $200 including required purchase costs
That is 2 × 2 × 365 = 1,460 g, or 1.46 kg, of coffee a year. At $40/kg, the switching-related discard costs $58.40 annually.
If a second grinder eliminated all of that discard and introduced no extra running or maintenance costs, dividing $200 by $58.40 gives about 3.4 years of simple payback. Those are favourable assumptions about the second grinder, not a prediction.
Change the hypothetical routine to four transitions and five grams per transition. Annual discard becomes 7.3 kg, costing $292 at the same bean price. The same $200 purchase would have a simple payback of about eight months under the same assumptions.
The difference comes entirely from the inputs. Neither example describes the measured performance of the Encore ESP or another named grinder. UK readers can use pounds and their own local bean and purchase prices in the same calculation; no exchange-rate conversion is needed.
Compare the second grinder with the right alternative
A hand grinder dedicated to occasional filter coffee may deserve a look if you are comfortable with the effort. Check its capacity and suitability for the method before choosing it solely on price.
If you already own two suitable grinders, retaining them may cost less than replacing both with a more expensive all-purpose model. If you own none, compare complete setups rather than treating one purchase as free.
Allow for the second grinder's counter space, cleaning, repairs and any coffee it still wastes. When the net saving is zero or negative, there is no cash payback from waste reduction. You may still value the easier routine, but say that is what you are buying.
Choose one grinder when both methods are supported and switching is acceptable. Consider two when separating the workflows removes a frequent problem at a cost you are happy to pay. A modest convenience purchase is easier to judge honestly than a savings claim built on somebody else's purge estimate.