Eureka - Mignon Notte

Kingrinder K2 or 1zpresso j-ultra if you don’t mind hand grinding for espresso. Baratza Encore ESP Pro or Eureka Mignon Notte for electric. If you don’t mind playing the QA/QC lottery, there’s also Chinese white label grinders like the Turin SK40 or Starseeker E55.

I suggest you spend  ~$350 on a grinder & <$50 on a scale. Not sure about your region specifically, but in many you can get a eureka mignon notte in this price range. This will have the biggest impact. After that, you'll want to get a real tamper, but you don't have to spend too much on this.

DF54 for my regular coffee, Eureka Notte for my decaf and a Shardor I got off the FB marketplace for other beans. I'm weird about mixing my beans with other beans because they're all perfectly dialed into one so it would be counter intuitive and odd to mix different ones into the same grinder. DF54 was $190 open box, same with the Eureka and the Shardor was $30. Shardor's are also massively underrated IMO. Barely any retention with the one I have.

Stay away from the Opus. The ESP is a good choice, though I feel like the Mignon Manuale/Facile/Notte is the best budget espresso grinder you can get, and SCG has it for $280. ESP for the easy adjustments if that’s important to ya.

I'd personally get a filter-only grinder. Wait for a sale, grab an Ode Gen 2, and buy an espresso grinder when the time comes (DF54 is insane value). The best grinders for double duty are medium-high clarity conical grinders like Comandante, K-Ultra etc IMO. The Femobook A5 and Lagom Casa are a couple electric grinders that are in the same category (I haven't tried either, but they're well reviewed). I previously used a Lagom Mini for both filter and espresso and it was fantastic. The DF54 and 64 both do a decent job at filter, but it's not great. The 64 mm SSP MP burrs are often recommended as a do-it-all burr set, but they are for a very specific espresso profile and they are not beginner friendly for espresso. I didn't enjoy the espresso with them. SSP Cast are supposed to be decent for both, but you're giving up the clarity everyone is always seeking. A couple other decent options that I've tried are Ditting 54mm steel burrs in the Vario+ and Eureka's 50 mm brew burrs in an entry level mignon. The UX is not ideal with either of these setups compared to a grinder designed to single dose. If the Ditting burrs fit in the DF without crazy mods it would be a great option. Edit: I forgot to mention that there are now brew burrs available for the DF54. I'm planning to grab a set to try out once they're available in Canada.

Eureka Mignon. I would not go cheaper than that ($200-$250 for an espresso grinder). edit: reasons to go with Eureka: you get a consistent grind. easy to clean, easy to disassemble, easy to replace parts and replacement parts are available. reasons to go no less than $200-$250 for any grinder: below that you just won’t get a consistent grind which will be frustrating as you learn to make espresso and ultimately cost you a lot of money in beans. for brewing coffee it doesn’t matter but for espresso it really does.

Ode2 and Baratza Encores are the buy once for AP/PO. I’ve had my Encore for years pushing AP or doing the occasional PO. I also have a Eureka for espresso and 1z JX Pro, but once you go electric, it’s a luxury. I only take the manual when travelling or at our cottage.

The Eureka Mignon series will grind to the 190-195 micron range depending on which model.

I got a home grinder initially so that my coffee wouldn’t go stale as fast.  Whole beans last longer than preground.  Part of the bonus was, hopefully, that I could buy a larger bag for cheaper and still get good coffee for less money per cup. Then I got better at dialing in my grind size and getting the smoothest flavor I could, so now rather than spending ten dollars per kilo of commodity-grade coffee, I’m happy spending twenty per 300g of specialty coffee. 🤣 For the same money, you’ll get much better grind quality in a hand grinder than you would for electric.  Get a Timemore or 1ZPresso and it’ll rival electric grinders costing double or triple as much.  It’ll take a bit longer, but with the modern class of hand grinders, you’re only looking at maybe 45 seconds for a 3-cup pot without working very hard (which is much better than multiple minutes in a Hario Skerton). In electric grinders, the bare minimum I’d recommend would be an Oxo or a Baratza.  But I’d rather step up to, say, the DF54, Eureka Mignon series, Urbanic, and some others.

Yes, I think they are great. Much less retention than the Mignon we originally bought & then returned. Easy to adjust, reliable. We use it for decaf, V60 & filter in a small cafe.