Hi all. My first post - I have finally got a great brew. Its a long story. I have had a Gaggia Classic for about 5 years, got it second-hand, and I have never been able to get a decent espresso out of it. I have adjusted the OPV many times and never gotten anything slower than 8-9 seconds. It also had steam production issues. I had put it aside thinking it was maybe time to either give up or buy a new machine that worked. A nice guy I work with got talking about coffee with me and he enthused me enough to try again. I had a Gaggia Baby with a cracked shell sitting idle so I wondered if I might be able to scavenge any parts. Lo and behold when I pulled out both boilers, the Classics was heavily corroded, but the Babys was just about perfect. Ditto for the group head. They looked the same after I removed the steam pipes, so I have swapped them over, and again set the OPV (thanks to this site). Hmm, first efforts - 9 seconds again, no matter how hard I tamped it. In desperation, the work guy counseled me that I really needed a grinder to sort things out properly - I had been relying on Illy tins and some supermarket grinds up to this point. I bit the bullet and sourced a Sunbeam EMO450 at the right price, set it to 10 and it just about choked the Classic - success at last! I wound it back to 15 and using some coffee from a great Canberra roaster (Lonsdale Street, thanks again Nick!) made a just about perfect (for me at least) espresso, thick crema and a nice pour in 30 seconds with just a light tamp. Unbelievable, I had thought the Gaggia was past it, but not so. Moral of the story - this just again re-iterates the advice I have read over and over - its not the machine, its all in the quality of the coffee and the grind...
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