Siliconslave's how to make espresso thread
- Thread starter Siliconslave
- Start date
Man of Honour
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Awesome deal. I'm extremely tempted.
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ditto, and I've already got one... it might be good to have a spare?
Thanks for posting this!
I ordered it a few minutes ago for home delivery but that option seems to have disappeared now, only reserve and collect remains. Hope the delivery comes through as the nearest store to me is at least 30 minutes drive.
Man of Honour
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Just thought of a better plan..you get a new one and sell me your well maintained old one for even cheaper than this
Soldato
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can somone point me the right direction for this offer?
I will certainly be getting this finally if it is a place I can spend my vouchers at.
also what exactly is the difference between the classic and cubika plus?
edit: never mind found out where after trying the various electrical appliance websites.
I will certainly be getting this finally if it is a place I can spend my vouchers at.
also what exactly is the difference between the classic and cubika plus?
edit: never mind found out where after trying the various electrical appliance websites.
Last edited:
- Joined
- 11 Dec 2002
- Posts
- 10,909
- Location
- Darkest Norfolk
Just thought of a better plan..you get a new one and sell me your well maintained old one for even cheaper than this
with the PID fitted I'd want more than that's selling for
Soldato
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right just ordered one so will go and pick up tonight after work.
Can't use my vouchers but for £129 can't go wrong.
So what extras do I need and where to get them from.
I understand a tamper is a must. but what basket should I get.
I guess i know what I will be doing this weekend
Can't use my vouchers but for £129 can't go wrong.
So what extras do I need and where to get them from.
I understand a tamper is a must. but what basket should I get.
I guess i know what I will be doing this weekend
Soldato
- Joined
- 27 Mar 2003
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So have just got home and will post my experiences with this machine and some photos over the weekend once I start unboxing and using it.
Any tips before I start.
any advise on what setting I should set the rocky too? I am so used to having it set for chemex (30+) i am guessing somewhere in the 10 - 20 range is probably going to be a good starting point.
Have also got some tester beans to see how things go before I start putting my 'has bean' beans through the unit.
Any tips before I start.
any advise on what setting I should set the rocky too? I am so used to having it set for chemex (30+) i am guessing somewhere in the 10 - 20 range is probably going to be a good starting point.
Have also got some tester beans to see how things go before I start putting my 'has bean' beans through the unit.
Nice. I take it you got my message then
Didn't want to risk a stock error or problem with home delivery so I picked mine up this morning. I've also got one reserved at the New Malden store until the end of today so if anyone is after one and can pick up from there, send me a trust message and I'll give you the reservation number.
Soldato
- Joined
- 27 Mar 2003
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Nice. I take it you got my message then
Didn't want to risk a stock error or problem with home delivery so I picked mine up this morning. I've also got one reserved at the New Malden store until the end of today so if anyone is after one and can pick up from there, send me a trust message and I'll give you the reservation number.
Yes I did thanks.
I had actually just found the deal just before getting your message.
has been a fun morning/early afternoon playing with it and testing.
Here are some images of the days activities:
So started to unbox the unit last night but thought to myself I would leave it until today to get it up and running.
So here's the photo's
The new toy has arrived... Time to unbox
So first part of the unboxing. Oh look the manual.
So removing the manual we see the packaging used. Time to wake it up.
No we see the top of the unit. lets get it out and see what it looks like
Comparing size of the unit against the box it came in. significantly smaller than I was expecting.
Say Cheese
Front profile
Right side with Steam knob and steam wand
Left hand side
Top again
Front again with steam wand extended
First shots pulled through the machine.
Grinder (Rancilio Rocky) and Espresso Machine (Gaggia Classic) My new work setup once I have got to grips with the espresso machine.
Untampered grinds (Rocky set to level 18. first shots pulled at 21)
Tampered down to form a relatively good puck for a second attempt. Using the basic plastic tamper.
Unit warming up and ready to go.
Shots being pulled took around 18 seconds to pull.
The finished article. Two shots pulled which tasted ok.
review to follow
Soldato
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So this mini review is as much about my journey so far into the world of coffee as it is about the machines/equipment I have.
So a bit about me and how I got here.
Believe it or not my early years on this planet did not include coffee. I was just not really intreseted in consuming hot drinks. That was until I went to university back in the late 90's. I'm not sure if it was coinceidence but it seemed that Coffee culture inspired by "Friends" I suspect was hitting the UK and when meeting up with friends it would be either over a pint or a cup of coffee. In these early days I didn't really enjoy the coffee it was warm gave you a bit of that caffiene kick you expect but just didn't do it for me. If I needed that instant buzz I would go with one of the new energy drinks that started to hit the streets like "red bull" or take "pro plus"
So after finishing uni in 2002 I started working for an IT Support call centre doing a twilight shift (4:30pm - 2am) so I would usually get to work a little early and have a drink just to lubricate the vocal chords. Generally this was either a fizzy pop drink or a cup of coffee. So during my time there I started to migrate more away from the fizzy pop to the coffee. This was purely down to the 'tuck' shop having a proper espresso machine and being staffed which meant I could have my foamy cappacino with cinammon. I think this was more about the textures and cinammon flavour rather than the coffee as when I think back now the coffee was relatively tasteless and very hit and miss with quality depending on who prepared it.
So roll on a few years I leave that company and move somewhere else and start to work days. (How I hate the mornings)
Well no such luck the only coffee options available to me were instant or machine (cup of brown liquid) so after deciding for speed, machine would be the way I go. So I suffered with this for a few years until one day I decided I had had enough of this. If I am going to drink something I should at least enjoy it rather than just tolerate it.
So I decided that the simplest thing to do was get a french press and some prepackaged filter grounds not really knowing any better as that had really only been the other method of brewing that I had experienced other than a full blown espresso or filter machine.
It was also a nice cheap thing to get so if I got bored of this new hobby I wouldn't have spent too much.
So after some trial and error I eventually got a drink that was nice to the taste and would give me that caffiene kick that i craved.
I was still having my coffee relatively milky as I wasn't happy with the somewhat inconsitent taste I would get from the french press. So I plodded along with this method for about a year before I decided to actually do some research and see what I could do to improve my overall coffee experience.
This opened my eyes to a whole world that was not only exciting in terms of the level of knowledge I was picking up but scary knowing that this could get very expensive very quickly.
So my first decision was to ditch the preground coffee and move into grinding my own. But after researching all the various grinding methods and finding prices varying from £20 - £1000+ for an electric grinder and deciding if I am going to grind my own beans then I really need to get a burr grinder as it is considered the best and a cheap electirc burr grinder was out of my price range the decision was made to get a porlex hand grinder as it was relatively cheap and looked pretty cool as well. During this time I had been given some "Kopi Luwak" AKA cat poo coffee as a secret santa gift which also required me to get a grinder.
So my first experience of home ground coffee was this. Not amazing it was very muddy and earthy to the taste and considering how much it costs was very dissapointing. (Have never had it since and since reading about how this is cultivated will probably never have it again.)
In purchasing the grinder I had also purchased some beans from 'Has Bean' based on Steve's recommendations when I sent him what I liked in a cup and that thankfully restored my faith in home grinding.
So the french press continued as my primary method of brewing for several months till I went to visit a friend in Lincoln and went to Coffee Aroma. A fantastic little place that served Has Bean beans (the primary reason for going) and experience some weird and unusal method of brewing after closer inspection and talking to the barista's it turned out they did their filter coffee via a chemex. After having this method of filter I was hooked. It was that instant. That following day I order a Chemex and some filter papers and started looking at all the reviews, techniques and various you tube videos to get the best out of it. I felt the woodneck's were a bit too clunky for my tastes so opted for a handled version instead. The taste difference between the french press and the chemex is night and day and the french press is hidden in a cupboard somewhere at work and only ever comes out if I run out of filter papers.
So the back end of last year I was finding that hand grinding was becoming a bit of a chore so felt it was time to invest in a decent electric grinder. Now it seems grinders at the lower end of the market are generally better at either filter or espresso and there are few if any that do both well. So after doing a lot of research and pestering the good folks on here I decided on the Rancilio Rocky as it seemed to suit filter coffee well but was decent enough as an espresso grinder for when I eventually decided to go down that route. Plus from all the research that I saw it seems that the rocky is considered one of the better entry level grinder's for the serious enthusiast. Its not to say that it doesn't have its faults it does but these were minor compared to what the grinder offered me.
So I have been happily grinding away with the rocky and chemex combo now for the year and over recent months have been thinking about moving into the espresso world.
As much as I wanted a Rancilio Silva to match the rocky it simply was outside of my price range. So given that a lot of the good folks on here either have or have had a gaggia classic it seemed that was the one to go for.
Well after trying to get on a month or two back with no success the pricing of this one seemed to be a bargin for a machine that usually retails a lot closer to £200 or more.
So if you have managed to get to this point well done
Now for the review bit.
So as you can see hopefully from the pictures the unit is very simple and elegant in its styling. I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened up the box but I was pleasantly surprised at how small the unit is compared to the size of the box. i would estimated 20% of the height is down to the packaging.
Another thing that struck me was how light the unit is. Having lugged the rocky around from home and work a couple of times I was expecting something to be quite weighty but it is deceptively light.
So while assembling the unit I found the instructions realtively clear although one criticism I have is that it assumes you know that the pipe on the left hand side comes out so that you can get the water tank out which contains the power lead when first opened. A suggestion to Gaggia would be putting the pipe in the accessories bag rather than having it assembled.
But once that issue was out of the way the instructions from that point onwards are relatively clear. Due to this being my first machine and not knowing what to do it was good to have the instructions laid out clearly and concisely on how to 'prime'(remove any airlocks) from the system.
So after priming and then letting the unit warm up it was time to actually see what this could do.
After reading some entertaining experiences of this unit I was half expecting to see coffee spraying all over the place in the kicthen. So in order to combat that I decided to leave my grind settings fairly loose and set the grinder to level 21 the rocky can go from 1 (ultra fine/Turkish?) - 40+ (french press) to give you and idea I usually have my chemex grind anywhere between 35 - 40. So going this low was new teritory for me. The beans being used in this initial testing is Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Columbian fairtrade which has a nutty quality to it as is generally the beans I use when testing a new piece of equipment/brew method as they are fairly forgiving beans if things go horribly wrong.
So after dosing the grinds I then used the included plastic tamper and pressed down to get a nice tight puck but found that there is a bit of gap left around the egde so to try and seal the puck as best I could I rotated and pressed down on one edge to try and force a nice even layer which seemed to work well. (I shall be getting a new tamper as soon as I can).
Forgot to mention the included basket is a 2 shot portafilter. This has two inserts for it. Out of the box it has the ground coffee insert in it and in addition it has a pod insert for E.S.E (Easy Serving Espresso) coffee pods (if memory serves these look like little flying saucers). Between the main basket and the insert is some sort of rubberised plastic gromit which supposedly creates a better crema in your espresso shots. I'm not sure if this is true as I have nothing to compare it too but based on my initial results it certainly seems to create some form of crema (head) to the espresso shots i have pulled.
So after attaching the portafilter and ensuring it was on tight I then pressed the water button and expected to be showered in coffee but instead all I got was the hum of the pump firing up and then slowly result! coffee coming out into the two shot glasses i had placed under the portafilter. Unfortunately I don't have any proper espresso shot glasses/ espresso cups so had to make do with some normal shot glasses. So as the slow black liquid started to pour into my make shift glasses the first thing that came to mind was the guiness advert when you see the swirling swell from the liquid as it settles. So the first shots seemed to taste ok. Not too bitter but not exactly flavourful. My experience with espresso hasn't been the happiest as much as I have tried ot enjoy it in the past the flavours seemed to be over powered by a bitterness that is quite unpleasant to me.
So although this first shot didn't have that bitterness to it the flavour wasn't exactly popping out which indicate to me that the extract was too weak.
So after this first attempt I dialled the grinder down to 18 to try and get a longer extraction time. I have read that a shot should take around 23-28 seconds to pull. On these first shots I forgot to time it so can only presume it was sub 20 seconds.
So on this second attempt following the exact same method of tampering but putting a little more coffee into the portafilter the extraction time was close to 21 seconds. Again no bitterness but still not as flavourful.
Also on top of this I tried the steam wand for the first time to see if I could create my own latte or cappacino.
This did not end well. To froth the milk you switch the middle button on to heat up the water to steam temperature and then twist the knob to get the steam out. I was surprised at the pressure and force the steam vapour came out at. So I think I need a bit more practice as I seemed to create a lot of foam more akin to a capaccino rather than a latte. (More research and practice is required on this aspect of the machine and I think could take me a while to get right).
The steam wand is a bit restrictive in its positioning and I understand this can be replace with the silva steam wand. A design change that I think would help with the steaming is to have the steam knob on the opposite side of the unit to make it easier to maintain control of the milk jug and adjust the steam pressure rather than it being slightly awkward to control everything from one side. Maybe I just need to get used to this.
So from a complete novice's point of view I think this is a wonderful machine to practice on and at the current low price it is amazing value for the amount of machine you get.
Other than the minor issues I have experienced these are more irritations to me rather than major issues with the machine.
The overall styling of the unit is very modern and wouldn't look out of place in most people's kitchen or office.
That pretty much covers it.
I hope this has been useful to those on the fence with this unit or anyone thinking about getting into the entry level home coffee brewing. I certainly think at the £129 - £150 price range it makes for a more affordable alternative to the slew of nespresso machines that have hit the market over the past 12 months.
So a bit about me and how I got here.
Believe it or not my early years on this planet did not include coffee. I was just not really intreseted in consuming hot drinks. That was until I went to university back in the late 90's. I'm not sure if it was coinceidence but it seemed that Coffee culture inspired by "Friends" I suspect was hitting the UK and when meeting up with friends it would be either over a pint or a cup of coffee. In these early days I didn't really enjoy the coffee it was warm gave you a bit of that caffiene kick you expect but just didn't do it for me. If I needed that instant buzz I would go with one of the new energy drinks that started to hit the streets like "red bull" or take "pro plus"
So after finishing uni in 2002 I started working for an IT Support call centre doing a twilight shift (4:30pm - 2am) so I would usually get to work a little early and have a drink just to lubricate the vocal chords. Generally this was either a fizzy pop drink or a cup of coffee. So during my time there I started to migrate more away from the fizzy pop to the coffee. This was purely down to the 'tuck' shop having a proper espresso machine and being staffed which meant I could have my foamy cappacino with cinammon. I think this was more about the textures and cinammon flavour rather than the coffee as when I think back now the coffee was relatively tasteless and very hit and miss with quality depending on who prepared it.
So roll on a few years I leave that company and move somewhere else and start to work days. (How I hate the mornings)
Well no such luck the only coffee options available to me were instant or machine (cup of brown liquid) so after deciding for speed, machine would be the way I go. So I suffered with this for a few years until one day I decided I had had enough of this. If I am going to drink something I should at least enjoy it rather than just tolerate it.
So I decided that the simplest thing to do was get a french press and some prepackaged filter grounds not really knowing any better as that had really only been the other method of brewing that I had experienced other than a full blown espresso or filter machine.
It was also a nice cheap thing to get so if I got bored of this new hobby I wouldn't have spent too much.
So after some trial and error I eventually got a drink that was nice to the taste and would give me that caffiene kick that i craved.
I was still having my coffee relatively milky as I wasn't happy with the somewhat inconsitent taste I would get from the french press. So I plodded along with this method for about a year before I decided to actually do some research and see what I could do to improve my overall coffee experience.
This opened my eyes to a whole world that was not only exciting in terms of the level of knowledge I was picking up but scary knowing that this could get very expensive very quickly.
So my first decision was to ditch the preground coffee and move into grinding my own. But after researching all the various grinding methods and finding prices varying from £20 - £1000+ for an electric grinder and deciding if I am going to grind my own beans then I really need to get a burr grinder as it is considered the best and a cheap electirc burr grinder was out of my price range the decision was made to get a porlex hand grinder as it was relatively cheap and looked pretty cool as well. During this time I had been given some "Kopi Luwak" AKA cat poo coffee as a secret santa gift which also required me to get a grinder.
So my first experience of home ground coffee was this. Not amazing it was very muddy and earthy to the taste and considering how much it costs was very dissapointing. (Have never had it since and since reading about how this is cultivated will probably never have it again.)
In purchasing the grinder I had also purchased some beans from 'Has Bean' based on Steve's recommendations when I sent him what I liked in a cup and that thankfully restored my faith in home grinding.
So the french press continued as my primary method of brewing for several months till I went to visit a friend in Lincoln and went to Coffee Aroma. A fantastic little place that served Has Bean beans (the primary reason for going) and experience some weird and unusal method of brewing after closer inspection and talking to the barista's it turned out they did their filter coffee via a chemex. After having this method of filter I was hooked. It was that instant. That following day I order a Chemex and some filter papers and started looking at all the reviews, techniques and various you tube videos to get the best out of it. I felt the woodneck's were a bit too clunky for my tastes so opted for a handled version instead. The taste difference between the french press and the chemex is night and day and the french press is hidden in a cupboard somewhere at work and only ever comes out if I run out of filter papers.
So the back end of last year I was finding that hand grinding was becoming a bit of a chore so felt it was time to invest in a decent electric grinder. Now it seems grinders at the lower end of the market are generally better at either filter or espresso and there are few if any that do both well. So after doing a lot of research and pestering the good folks on here I decided on the Rancilio Rocky as it seemed to suit filter coffee well but was decent enough as an espresso grinder for when I eventually decided to go down that route. Plus from all the research that I saw it seems that the rocky is considered one of the better entry level grinder's for the serious enthusiast. Its not to say that it doesn't have its faults it does but these were minor compared to what the grinder offered me.
So I have been happily grinding away with the rocky and chemex combo now for the year and over recent months have been thinking about moving into the espresso world.
As much as I wanted a Rancilio Silva to match the rocky it simply was outside of my price range. So given that a lot of the good folks on here either have or have had a gaggia classic it seemed that was the one to go for.
Well after trying to get on a month or two back with no success the pricing of this one seemed to be a bargin for a machine that usually retails a lot closer to £200 or more.
So if you have managed to get to this point well done
Now for the review bit.
So as you can see hopefully from the pictures the unit is very simple and elegant in its styling. I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened up the box but I was pleasantly surprised at how small the unit is compared to the size of the box. i would estimated 20% of the height is down to the packaging.
Another thing that struck me was how light the unit is. Having lugged the rocky around from home and work a couple of times I was expecting something to be quite weighty but it is deceptively light.
So while assembling the unit I found the instructions realtively clear although one criticism I have is that it assumes you know that the pipe on the left hand side comes out so that you can get the water tank out which contains the power lead when first opened. A suggestion to Gaggia would be putting the pipe in the accessories bag rather than having it assembled.
But once that issue was out of the way the instructions from that point onwards are relatively clear. Due to this being my first machine and not knowing what to do it was good to have the instructions laid out clearly and concisely on how to 'prime'(remove any airlocks) from the system.
So after priming and then letting the unit warm up it was time to actually see what this could do.
After reading some entertaining experiences of this unit I was half expecting to see coffee spraying all over the place in the kicthen. So in order to combat that I decided to leave my grind settings fairly loose and set the grinder to level 21 the rocky can go from 1 (ultra fine/Turkish?) - 40+ (french press) to give you and idea I usually have my chemex grind anywhere between 35 - 40. So going this low was new teritory for me.
The beans being used in this initial testing is Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Columbian fairtrade which has a nutty quality to it as is generally the beans I use when testing a new piece of equipment/brew method as they are fairly forgiving beans if things go horribly wrong. So after dosing the grinds I then used the included plastic tamper and pressed down to get a nice tight puck but found that there is a bit of gap left around the egde so to try and seal the puck as best I could I rotated and pressed down on one edge to try and force a nice even layer which seemed to work well. (I shall be getting a new tamper as soon as I can).
Forgot to mention the included basket is a 2 shot portafilter. This has two inserts for it. Out of the box it has the ground coffee insert in it and in addition it has a pod insert for E.S.E (Easy Serving Espresso) coffee pods (if memory serves these look like little flying saucers). Between the main basket and the insert is some sort of rubberised plastic gromit which supposedly creates a better crema in your espresso shots. I'm not sure if this is true as I have nothing to compare it too but based on my initial results it certainly seems to create some form of crema (head) to the espresso shots i have pulled.
So after attaching the portafilter and ensuring it was on tight I then pressed the water button and expected to be showered in coffee but instead all I got was the hum of the pump firing up and then slowly result! coffee coming out into the two shot glasses i had placed under the portafilter. Unfortunately I don't have any proper espresso shot glasses/ espresso cups so had to make do with some normal shot glasses. So as the slow black liquid started to pour into my make shift glasses the first thing that came to mind was the guiness advert when you see the swirling swell from the liquid as it settles. So the first shots seemed to taste ok. Not too bitter but not exactly flavourful. My experience with espresso hasn't been the happiest as much as I have tried ot enjoy it in the past the flavours seemed to be over powered by a bitterness that is quite unpleasant to me.
So although this first shot didn't have that bitterness to it the flavour wasn't exactly popping out which indicate to me that the extract was too weak.
So after this first attempt I dialled the grinder down to 18 to try and get a longer extraction time. I have read that a shot should take around 23-28 seconds to pull. On these first shots I forgot to time it so can only presume it was sub 20 seconds.
So on this second attempt following the exact same method of tampering but putting a little more coffee into the portafilter the extraction time was close to 21 seconds. Again no bitterness but still not as flavourful.
Also on top of this I tried the steam wand for the first time to see if I could create my own latte or cappacino.
This did not end well. To froth the milk you switch the middle button on to heat up the water to steam temperature and then twist the knob to get the steam out. I was surprised at the pressure and force the steam vapour came out at. So I think I need a bit more practice as I seemed to create a lot of foam more akin to a capaccino rather than a latte. (More research and practice is required on this aspect of the machine and I think could take me a while to get right).
The steam wand is a bit restrictive in its positioning and I understand this can be replace with the silva steam wand. A design change that I think would help with the steaming is to have the steam knob on the opposite side of the unit to make it easier to maintain control of the milk jug and adjust the steam pressure rather than it being slightly awkward to control everything from one side. Maybe I just need to get used to this.
So from a complete novice's point of view I think this is a wonderful machine to practice on and at the current low price it is amazing value for the amount of machine you get.
Other than the minor issues I have experienced these are more irritations to me rather than major issues with the machine.
The overall styling of the unit is very modern and wouldn't look out of place in most people's kitchen or office.
That pretty much covers it.
I hope this has been useful to those on the fence with this unit or anyone thinking about getting into the entry level home coffee brewing. I certainly think at the £129 - £150 price range it makes for a more affordable alternative to the slew of nespresso machines that have hit the market over the past 12 months.
Last edited:
Soldato
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- 27 Mar 2003
- Posts
- 2,710
review now added above.
I will try finer.
What I want to try and avoid is getting the bitter taste that I have experienced before as that has been the overriding factor to my delay into espresso based drinks.
I will try finer.
What I want to try and avoid is getting the bitter taste that I have experienced before as that has been the overriding factor to my delay into espresso based drinks.
Soldato
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I only have a porlex at the moment to use with my Chemex and Gaggia but I think I will go electric soon as it's a right pain having to manually grind my coffee and stops me from having coffee as often as I would like (i.e. takes too long on a work morning!). I take it the Rocky is the best entry level grinder if I want to switch between drip and espresso?
No grinder with me here in Zurich so got some beans ground for me from a place in the old town which seems like a Whittards but with fresh beans rather than the usual stale stuff. Using it with a filter machine which came with the temp accommodation I am in. Far from the ideal situation but it's still pretty good and actually better than the Nespresso at work (although that is far from bad and a definite improvement from the muck that comes out of the machines at work in the UK)
No grinder with me here in Zurich so got some beans ground for me from a place in the old town which seems like a Whittards but with fresh beans rather than the usual stale stuff. Using it with a filter machine which came with the temp accommodation I am in. Far from the ideal situation but it's still pretty good and actually better than the Nespresso at work (although that is far from bad and a definite improvement from the muck that comes out of the machines at work in the UK)
Soldato
- Joined
- 27 Mar 2003
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- 2,710
Well in the sub £250 bracket I think the rocky is the best all rounder doesn't truely excel in one area but gives you enough scope to alter grind settings to your hearts content. I am certainly happy with it. Sometimes think I should have got the doserless one but I am happy with the doser one in general.
Maybe the rocky is a step up from true entry level but I think most people will agree getting a slightly more expensive grinder will last longer than a cheaper one as you will generally not need to replace the grinder as often as you would an espresso machine.
This will sound quite geeky, but weigh the shot glasses before you pull the shots into them and then afterwards.
You should be getting around 40g difference for a double shot.
Knowing the height of the classic, it almost looks like you were close to pulling 2 double shots.
