I'm trying to methodically sort through all of the information on this forum and elsewhere and come up with a prioritised list of things I can do to my entire coffee process to improve my espresso. I was hoping to get some thoughts from you all on whether this list seems reasonable, is in the right order, that sort of things sorting the essential improvements from the nice-to-have hobby upgrades.
The background to this is that I've just recently disassembled my 9 year old Gaggia Classic and done a deep clean and service, replacing seals as necessary. I had a spare portafilter so I grabbed a hole saw and took the crotch out of it. I had a few good pours, but these were the exception. Lots of jetting, lots of blonding, or conversely nothing but a few drops of tar dripping through. I played around with the grind a bit but in cleaning on basket with a pin, I think I may have damaged a few of the holes and ensured jets will always blast through these.
I've changed my grind size right down as per most people's recommendations, and getting some half decent results, but I'm getting very sloppy, wet pucks now where as before I used to get nice, solid dry ones that you could pick up and handle easily. Because of the fineness of the grind, I now find I'm unable to tamp anywhere near as hard as I would have thought was required (haven't tested pressure on scales yet, but will do asap).
Machine is a Gaggia Classic
Grinder is a De Longhi KG100
ALREADY DONE
PLANNING ON DOING
THINGS I DON'T PLAN ON DOING
The background to this is that I've just recently disassembled my 9 year old Gaggia Classic and done a deep clean and service, replacing seals as necessary. I had a spare portafilter so I grabbed a hole saw and took the crotch out of it. I had a few good pours, but these were the exception. Lots of jetting, lots of blonding, or conversely nothing but a few drops of tar dripping through. I played around with the grind a bit but in cleaning on basket with a pin, I think I may have damaged a few of the holes and ensured jets will always blast through these.
I've changed my grind size right down as per most people's recommendations, and getting some half decent results, but I'm getting very sloppy, wet pucks now where as before I used to get nice, solid dry ones that you could pick up and handle easily. Because of the fineness of the grind, I now find I'm unable to tamp anywhere near as hard as I would have thought was required (haven't tested pressure on scales yet, but will do asap).
Machine is a Gaggia Classic
Grinder is a De Longhi KG100
ALREADY DONE
- Use a clean, well serviced machine with filtered water.
- Use fresh coffee, preferably less than 2 weeks after roasting.
- Good, fine grind on a half decent grinder
- Upgrade steam wand to Rancilio Silva v2
- Naked portafilter
- Disassambled steam valve, cleaned, put back together
PLANNING ON DOING
- Replacing double shot basket
- using scales to test tamp pressure
- Testing/adjusting OPV
- PID temp control
- Prewarming coil
THINGS I DON'T PLAN ON DOING
- Upgrade grinder
- Upgrade machine



Comment