The encore has 40 grind size levels. It is literally an espresso grinder.

Um lol no, it doesn't work like that. Doing 40 or 400 or for that matter stepless is mechanically trivial in a grinder. If that was all it took, nobody would buy Kafateks.

best entry level brand at this price. You will only be disappointed by comparing it to machines multiple times the cost

That doesn't sound BIFL to me, if you buy it today and then upgrade to a better one when you can afford to. While not being absolutist, BIFL to me means that you have a reasonable expectation that it is the last one that you are ever going to buy. So the gear has durable enough to last that long, and good enough that you feel that it will always meet your standards.

Do you know what the difference is? Between a general purpose grinder and an espresso grinder?

Yes, OP didn't ask about espresso at all. Espresso is a huge money sucking rabbit hole that I wisely(?) avoided entering back when I was into this kind of thing. It's a permanent upgrade treadmill. I have several aquaintances with Kafateks, Lyn Webers, machines of the week, lab instrumentation, microscope photos of coffee grounds, etc. I decided not to care. Once in a while I go to the local cafe and have a Slayer shot and I'm satisfied. I don't have to be able to do that at home.

As for the Encore, well, you've had a dozen broken ones in your shop. I'm not an abusive or especially heavy user and I've broken two of them myself. It's an ok grinder but BIFL doesn't come into it, it just doesn't. It's nice that you can get repair parts from them today but do you really expect the company to exist (and not be absorbed into some evil conglomerate) through your entire lifetime? The Forte (Baratza's semi-commercial model at around $800 new) might be a plausible BIFL grinder for the average person. Basically you want a grinder made for commercial or industrial duty, so its service interval (however many thousand pounds of coffee it is supposed to grind before needing major repairs) is larger than a home user is likely to use in their lifetime. If I had unlimited funds I'd probably want a Kafatek, but mostly because I think they are cool.

Baratza was founded in 1999. Do they still sell repair parts for the grinders they were making in those early years? The part that failed on my second Encore was the burr collar, a weird shaped piece of plastic that probably can't be gotten anywhere else. Maybe I could 3D print one but that's beyond the call of duty.

Also don't forget that lots of Encore users like to upgrade the burr to the one sold in the next higher (Virtuoso) model. I never bothered doing that with mine.

The OP was asking for a BIFL grinder with a maximum budget of $100.

Yes and I'm asking for a flying pony. I think it's best to give a realistic answer, which is that what they are asking for does not exist. That happens in every area of life and adults are supposed to be used to it and not get upset. There's a Bunn G2 on Craigslist right now for $275 and that's totally BIFL after a mod or two. There's also a G9 for under $200 but my coffee nerd buddies advised against that model. We don't have to be like AI chatbots who tell hapless humans what they want to hear even if it's nonsense.

It's not completely impossible to keep it under $100 if you see something that is being thrown out from a restaurant or whatever. But that's a matter of luck.

The OP question wasn't about seeking a cheap grinder, it was about seeking a BIFL grinder. I can accept that there's no realistic way to get both without being lucky.

I seem to remember there is a way to get stepless adjustment for the grind size in a Bunn. Also the Encore isn't much of an espresso grinder either.

TLDR: they do a bunch of gaming benchmarks and find that the CXMT ram is a tiny bit slower than the name brand ram sticks but seem to work fine. They do absolutely no testing of error rates, Rowhammer, temperature tolerance, etc. The stuff that users trying to compute stuff actually care about.

If you've had to refurbish a dozen Encores, that doesn't sound very durable. Bunn G1 = buy once, use forever. It's a commercial grinder like you'd see in a grocery store. No home user will ever cause significant wear on one of those things. I've seen them on craigslist in the 300 range fairly often. I don't have one because it's too big for my tiny kitchen.

I don't know where to get a Baratza Encore for $60 even used. They are $150 new. Hmm I do see one on Craigslist for $75 right now, so that's pretty close. It's a good value in a cheap grinder, but it's not BIFL in any meaningful sense of the word that doesn't include "keep fixing it forever".

Re Skerton: I don't remember exactly how I got it, but I didn't understand at the time what crap they were. I used it a few times and got an Encore which I still have, which has broken twice so far (once replaced under warranty, once I bought a repair part from them). The Encore doesn't suck but it's light duty and semi-disposable IMHO.

Again if you think of spreading the grinder cost across say 5 years (that's not long for a BIFL item) and compare it to the cost of the coffee you're going to run through it, that helps put the initial price tag in perspective.

Baratza's lower models work ok when they are new but I wouldn't call them durable. Hario Skerton is crap. If I can find mine, you can have it for free. I'll give OP first dibs though, and will say I don't recommend it except as a backup. Rancilio Rocky is a reasonable choice I guess.

Um it's difficult at that price level, but monitor craigslist for a used Bunn G series. $100 is unlikely though. If you're caffeinating multiple people with it, you might grind 100lb of coffee a year at $10+/lb, so $300 up front for a grinder spreads out quickly.

No don't. Even for just moving the toilet (to replace the wax seal underneath) you're supposed to disconnect the tank from the toilet, to make sure that the stresses on the bolts don't cause cracks in the porcelain. Toilets aren't held together all that well. I've been watching plumbing youtubes because I'm trying to fix a leak in one right now. It's not pretty.

Standing on the toilet seat is probably less dangerous than standing on the tank.

You need to have the hardware set up ahead of time.

https://xkcd.com/644/

Writeup: https://keyt.com/news/ventura-county/2026/02/12/police-body-cameras-capture-federal-agents-fabricating-attack-by-local-activist-in-october/

I've never heard of any of those. No description of what they are for but they mostly look video related. Ffmpeg and mplayer have sufficed for me so far, but who knows.

So if I talk about hemorrhoids enough, it will think I'm old and let me into the pr0n sites! Cool!!!

Is that good or bad? What cpu? How big is the screen? What encoding?