Hi all,

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this. I purchased a brand new Gaggia Baby Twin back in August. When I first received the machine, both the coffee side and the steam wand was creating water with large amounts of white sediment (the first few times I ran it through it actually had a cottage cheese consistency, which later turned to white flakes). After descaling a few times, the coffee side was okay, but the steam wand was still creating black/white flakes.

Took the machine in to the official Saceo/Gaggia distributor's shop, they changed the boiler which was inexplicably rusted.

After that I noticed a bad plastic smell from the steam side. Boiled water from it for months but it never went away. Took the machine in 3 times but they thought I was crazy and told me there was no smell, but they still claimed to have changed all the pipes inside. I thought the smell was gone at the shop, but now it's back again.

The only way I can explain it is it smells like plastic and appears whenever I use the steam wand to make steam or hot water. A similar smell can be smelled emanating from the machine if I just leave it on for 5 minutes and the thing gets hot. The smell is noticeably absent from the coffee side.

Any thoughts? I was told by the repair people NOT to use vinegar or that would destroy the thermal insulation inside the machine. The store I bought this from has a no return policy...

Ciao Leo,

I haven't owned a Baby Twin, but I can tell you that other owners have had similar complaints; you need only read these reviews to get the impression that this was not a very successful design:

http://www.coffeegeek.com/reviews/consu...iababytwin

I used to own a Saeco Starbucks Sirena, which had the same boiler + thermoblock layout and some parts in common. Unlike others, I was lucky not to have major problems except for wet steam. Perhaps the "poor man's double boiler" idea has been better executed in the more expensive Ascaso Steel Duo Prof and Quickmill Silvano. Sorry I have no solutions for getting your Baby Twin to run properly. FWIW, there is a Gaggia user group on Yahoo:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Gaggia/

This is a thermoblock mechanism in a plastic machine. Thermoblocks get hot, possibly you're smelling the machine's plastic, not the actual steaming mechanism. To test this, use the steamer to steam some plain water, then let the water cool down and smell/taste it.

White sediment is generally either galvanic corrosion or dried milk. You shouldn't have either in a new machine. If you have milk in the thermoblock - it can get sucked in if there is milk on the end of the steam pipe as it cools - that too can lead to a smell.

Thanks for the help guys. I hope it's just the plastic and nothing actually bad I'm smelling.