Siliconslave's how to make espresso thread

quickshot89 said:
Think it was around the £160 mark last week(s) when I looked last. Not having a good time with missing cheaper prices for stuff I want atm :(
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The normal price for it is £220 ish, seen it as high as £300 (that's the RRP I think).

Anything close to £150 is a no brainer....

Use camelcamelcamel to track it and email you when it hit a threshold.
 
Just primed my Gaggia - all seems to be working okay (I think!)

Did an initial test run with some Illy pre-ground stuff (not sacrificing my beans yet!). Was surprised how quickly it came out. I tried 14g initially, which took about 12 seconds (very sour) and then i tried 19g which took slightly longer (~15 seconds) and tasted slightly less sour.

Clearly I want to be adding about 10 seconds to those times... Is it normal for pre-ground stuff to pull so quickly? Do you think I should just skip it and go straight to dialling in my grinder?

Also gave milk steaming a quick go. Didn't take long to reach ~60C, didn't really produce much in the way of microfoam.. but then i rushed it and wasn't really looking at using any kind of technique (I was mostly checking to see that it reached the correct temperature). The end result was essentially... warm milk! Is using skimmed milk a total no-no?

Cheers!
 
I don't think pre-ground stuff is ground fine enough. You could try Illy beans, but in my experience, all supermarket packaged type beans are really old and dry and you have to grind them so fine to get a decent pour.

Good luck )
 
I have one. Owned it about 18 months now.

Not as well built as a classic, the controls are plastic & the water tank is a pain to take out as the inlet hose drops into the tank from the top of the machine & its prone to kinking. Only a matter of time before it will split.
No need to buy a tamper as it pushes the coffee down when you put the portafilter into the machine. IMO the water tank is too big.

Apart from that its good for the price, it needs descaling & backflushing regularly. I would buy a classic but a classic is too tall for where I keep my machine.

Its certainly better than the last machine I had, which was a £30 Woolworths own brand jobbie. :p
 
I'd opt for the Gaggia Baby personally, which is somewhere in between the Cubika and Classic in terms of price.

The same innards as the Classic for the most part, inside a more modern looking plastic shell. I know a lot of people love how the Classic looks, but the Baby actually fits in better with my kitchen and I don't notice any difference in its coffee making ability.
 
Having fun dialling in my MC2. I think I was a bit overly paranoid when I initially set it up (to make sure I didn't accidentally set it too fine). As a result... after about 30 clockwise turns, it's still chucking out a really coarse grind (resulting in a 7 second double shot!) :D

I think i'll just use that for my cafetiere. Waste not want not! :D
 
My finished setup :D

b5sp.jpg
 
Thanks :)

and yeah, once i've got into the swing of things i'll most likely invest in a PID and will possibly do the OPV mod as well
 
love the black iberital, looks so much nicer than the silver :)

its worth doing the opv mod sooner rather than later tbh, makes a solid difference to the pour and will improve your coffee - sooner you do it the better imho :)
 
Just to add to the above - the OPV mod is incredibly easy to do. I was a little daunted by the idea but the Classic was easy to take apart and after I'd read a couple of the online guides it was really obvious how to do everything.
 
Yep +1 on the mod, first thing I did with mine tbh. I was looking at a pid as I couldn't seem to get great steam power and temp surfing was proving interesting.
 
bastic said:
whats the PID mode and why it costs so much ? ;)
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Its not expensive - £20 kit on ebay would do it.

As I understand it, PIDing a machine simply reduces variance in non-operator parameters for the shot - if I can get an accurate temperature, then almost all of the potential for failure is on my side of the portafilter handle.

PID
 
yup, as a very vague example - your aiming for about 102C in the boiler to get the right temp at the basket (apparently).

The stock system will fluctuate around like crazy, say 70-110C because its a simple system that turns on the heat when it gets below temp X (say 90C) and off again when it goes above temp Y (say 100C). The 'momentum' of the boiler carries it up over the needed temp and allows it to drop down, well below the required temperature.

The PID however 'learns' based on the behavior of the system so knows that initially you need to have the heat on until it gets to 90, then turn it off, it'll hit 102 then start dropping, so give it a small boost when it goes down to 100 and your good... meaning the variance in temperature is kept to say 95 - 107C (in reality I think its much lower, mine seems to go upto 102 and stay there!)
 
My grinder tweaking continues!

I've been making some long blacks and i've noticed that i'm starting to get a puddles on the top of my pucks. Could this be due to possibly not using enough coffee? I've been using about 13g which does seem to leave quite a bit of a gap in my portafilter (I'm using a bottomless one, not the standard Gaggia one). Could it also be caused by pulling it for too long? (i'm guessing that even when you're making something like a long black, you're not really supposed to continue after blonding has occurred, as you'll end up with an over extracted drink?)

EDIT: Should probably add that I think i'm happy with the grind coarseness now. I'm getting about 20ish seconds, so I don't think the wet puck would be due to the grind being too fine (IMO anyway!)
 
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